Hi all,

As the subject suggests, i'm having some big problems with my PC lately and any information would be appreciated. I'll try to explain the problem in as much detail as i can.

For a while now since i got my 480, i have been playing games like Crysis, Mafia2, mw2, dirt2, JustCause and Doom3. They all run absolutley fine with no problems whatsoever. About a week ago i decided to buy Crysis 2 on steam and it's all gone downhill since then.

Basically whats been happening for about the last 3 or 4 days is this: I start up Crysis 2 to play some multiplayer and at some random point in the middle of a game, with no warning, my system will crash to the dreaded blue screen. The blue screen is only there for about half a second, then the screen goes blank and my monitor goes into standby mode, so i don't have enough time to see what the bluescreen says. (computer is still on, all fans are still running.)

As if this isn't bad enough, what happens next is the most worrying for me. So i turn my computer off by holding the button in for 5 seconds. I wait a few seconds, press the button and my computer fires up, but there is no beep and my monitor remains in standby mode. I can hear the hard drives spinning and all the fans are on but nothing is appearing on my screen. I turn it off and try waiting 1 or 2 minutes before trying again, same result, just a blank screen and monitor standing by. So i start yelling profanities at my computer and turn it off. Then i come back a couple hours later and fire it up. There's that magical beep sound and my monitor comes out of standby and everythings working again....until next time.

Also just in the last 24 hours, It's crashed a couple times just when i'm on the desktop.

My immediate reaction was my 480 is f*ked! But then it always seems to come back on after leaving it a few hours, so i was thinking it's an over heating problem? but then why would it crash from my desktop when i'm not stressing the card at all? Then again maybe it's something else entirely?

any ideas?


System Specs
Processor: Intel Core2 Quad CPU Q8200 @ 2.33GHz
Motherboard: ASUS SKT-775 P5QC S/L 1600FSB
Memory: 4GB Corsair xms2
Hard Drive: 500 GB SATA
Video Card:NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480
Monitor: Samsung 2233zr @ 120hz
Keyboard:Razer Lycosa
Mouse: Logitech MX 518
Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium (6.0, Build 6002) Service Pack 2
Computer Case: Thermaltake Soprano


Edit: since i posted this, my system became so unstable it would crash to blue screen of death within 5 minutes of playing any game.

This is really strange.

I just managed get through a system restore and I restored it to the 20th March, before i installed crysis 2. I've started up a few games like fear, d3 and mafia2 and played about 5 or 10 minutes on each with no problems. So far everything seems stable again. Obviously this leads me to beleive that the problem was directly caused by crysis 2.

What i find really strange though is that i played 3 or 4 days on C2 with no problems at all, then from the moment i had the first blue screen, my PC became more and more unstable until tonight when it got to the point where it was almost unusable for anything. Call me paranoid, but all this trouble started when the hackers began invading the servers.

Anyway, the good thing is it looks like the problem is solved (fingers crossed)
The bad thing is i bought crysis 2 on steam and it was deleted during the system restore process, so i have to download all 10gb of it again.

This leaves me in a predicament, do i download crysis 2 again or not? I paid ￡29.99 for it so at this point it seems like a complete waste of money if all it's going to do is f*ck up my PC.

I'll probably wait until the next major patch is released before i download it again.


Thanks for your help and suggestions. (not)

Sounds like your video card or power supply is overheating. When's the last time you pulled your system apart and blew out the dust bunnys?

I would pull the cover off the case and blow it out.

Also, try cranking your video card fan up to the max for cooling. Use EVGA's Precision to turn it to 100 %.

http://www.evga.com/precision/

Vacum Your PC

http://hoowtobuildapc.blogspot.com/

Clean it up.....if that doesn't work....reformat your HDD if you aren't comfortable doing it yourself ask your friend or go to your nearest comp shop

I f ur pc get blue screen randomly,then one thing you should get that some thing is burning in your pc hardware or some thing is messing thing up and needs to get replaced
Now read this carefully.
it seems like that you are getting same old annoying problem i had.I had problem just like that ditto.Then I searched alot on my problem.I got one clue on chip.in forum that most normal cause of blue screen is faulty and cheap power supply which causes over heat inside pc case.I checked that out if that situation apply to me.They were righy my power supply was fukin burning causing my sysytem to overheat to 80 to 70 celcius.I couldn't even touch that powersupply cuz it was hot like kabab.So i changed my crapy local dealer power supply.It worked but it also did damage to other hardware parts.I replaced them when they started to give problem also.
Now my pc never crashes or give me blue screen of death.
So chech if your power supply is cheap.If it is change it.get branded power supply from either coresair or antec.
If your powersupply is giving you ideal power and well heat managed then cause of your problem is overheating.Gtx480 is the hottest gfx card ever made.96 celcius is normal temperature in case of it.Try to remove heatsink of it and put extra layer of thermal paste.
Try to get some extra cooling space in your pc case by managing wires inside your case and put some extra fans.Also see if fans in front of pc case intake air and and those at back and side take out hot air.
If this dosen't solve the prob. Go get a new nice cpu cooler.I think prob. Is you gfx card heat or cheap power supply( you havn't mationed it in post)

Thanks for the reply.

You could be right about it having something to do with the psu. When i had my head down by the side of my pc it was making a hissing sound even with the PC turned off. It's not a cheap psu but I'll probably replace it to be on the safe side. I've had some bad experiences with PSUs in the past, blowing up and taking everything out with it.

Since i did system restore and removed Crysis 2 though, my PC has been as been running fine with no problems at all, running games like Crysis 1 which surely puts just as much strain on my system as Crysis 2. So i'm hoping it was just some fatal software/driver issue rather than a hardware issue.

Anyway, I have already redownloaded C2 from steam and installed the latest nvidia drivers but i haven't yet played and tested it. I'm a little bit nervous about trying it because blue screens are the PC gamers worst nightmare.

I'll certainly give my computer a good hoover and clean up all the crap off my hard drive, but reformatting is an absolute last resort.