Help losing video during gameplay

Ok this is my first time posting ...anywhere. So here goes. I have a HP Pavilion Elite HPE-150f. Since I bought it I have not been able to play my games. Heres what happens. I start games, get through charactor selection screen, game loads and somewhere between 1 and 10 minutes the computer crashes to a blue screen...(not the BSOD with stop codes and stuff) just a blue screen that say no video. The video card fan starts running at full speed. And I can only hard boot the computer. After the reboot I get the Windows was not shut down correctly safe mode or normal screen.

Ok so HP has replaced the video card, the mother board, the cpu fan, the hard drivve, and even reloaded windows. I have done countless system recoveries, and even installed and duel booted to Ubuntu 10.10 in order to check if it was windows 7 doing it. It wasnt, still crashed in Linux. Anyway my warrenty is now expired and HP dont wanna help me anymore yet problem still exist.

Games I try are:

Perfect World International
LMS Perfect World....(Private server of above game)
Dungeons And Dragons Online
Runes OF Magic
Forsaken World
Need For Speed World

All these games crash within minutes.

I have attached the dxdiag file for this computer and my power supply is a 350 watt supply which I personally think is too low but HP claims the video card only pulls 75 watts max. Im not sure what the rest of the system is pulling. If you guys need any more information let me know and I will post it here.

Video card 1.5 gig
memory 8 gig 4x2
hard drive 1 tb

Sorry this is so long of a post just really need answers here. Hp is now telling me to do system recovery which i have done countless times and update my drivers which are all updated, including the bios. So any help you can offer would be great.

Give us the make and model of your video card. Also, what Os are you running and tell us the make and model of your cpu.

I don't know if this will help, but I've done a little digging around as to get some information about the wattage levels of your video card. I checked out 4 web sites that gave me some detailed information. Now here is where it's confusing to me, 3 web sites report that the card only draws a max of 75 watts. Where one web site officially reports that the card draws a main stay of 106 watts.

Now if the 4th web site is correct and your card is indeed drawing that 106 watts, and the fact that you are currently running with a 350 watt power supply, I would suspect that might be where your problem is.

If you have the time do a "look up" of all your major devices, sound card, motherboard, network interface card, CD ROM drives, diskette drive (if any), hard drives (internal and external) ect. ect. ect. Look up how much wattage each device draws and write down your findings on scratch paper and when done, bust out the calculator and add it all up. If the total power draw as far as the watts adds up to beyond the power supply ability, than that is where the problem is.

I think your system is playing it safe and implementing some sort of a internal safety cut off switch, a default tolerance detector. When the system goes beyond it's means maybe the default safety mechanism cuts off the video card first, I don't really know this, I'm just guessing "out loud".

I hope you get this all worked out and get back on the road to happy gaming here real soon!

video card

the video card is a nvidia geforce gt 230 oem card by HP. the cpu is an intel i7 and the os is windows 7 64 bit. btw im stupid when it comes to this but specs on my video card says 32 bit i was wondering if it conflicts with the 64 bit os

power

ok in relation to finding what all components are pulling from the power supply i found that both my mother board -ms-7613, and my proccesser Intel Core i7 860 @ 2800MHz
both say max tdp 95w. ok first does that mean max power they pull and second is that each or are they combined to 95w for both motherboard and processer

Both are pulling that power/not combined. The reason I asked about your motherboard and cpu is because I am having the same suspicions as Zen: Is your power supply enough? Plus, given the fct that HP (as well as Dell, etc.) do not put the most reliable psu's in their systems.

Try this:http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

* Get back to us what you find using that calculator.

Video Card

Ok not sureif i did it right but heres what i did on hat calculater:

processor is correct

video card wasnt listed so i used gt240 it draws 70 watts compared to the 75 watts for the gt 230

using 1 pci e x16 for video card

using 1 pci e x1 for wireless network

hard drive is 7200 rpm sata hard drive i have it marked as regular sata...other option is high rpm sata not sure if thats what i have.

mother board is marked as high end desktop mobo other option is regular its a msi ms-7613 any ideas

4 sticks of ddr3 sdram its correct = 8 gb total

1 DVD-RW/DVD+RW Drive its a hp light scribe burns cd and dvd so hope its right

as for fans i have a 90mm fan on back plus the cpu fan inside not sure of size so i put 1 92mm fan and 1 80mm fan not sure if im correct

i left the System Load and the CPU Utilization (TDP at 90% (recomended)


ok so what i got was Minimum PSU Wattage 321 and Recommended
PSU Wattage: 371. i have a 350 watt does this all look correct.

ty in advanced and again sorry for posting so much i really need to know if this will fix the problem before i go buy a psu.

also i have a psu picked out that loos like it will fit my case but its 750 watt. i want it incase i updrade video card in future. is this over kill for current system orwould it be fine. ty

Paul47043 :

First off your list looks pretty good, a bit jumbled for my taste, but good all the same. Now my question to you is, with that list of yours did you indeed add up all the watts that each device is drawing?

I understand from your post, that you might be planning to purchase a 750 Watt power supply, which is a very good thing! Plus you asked if that 750 watt power supply is going to be "overkill"? I don't think so, I learned in college when achieving my degree is computer science, that when it comes to power supply's there is no overkill, the bigger the wattage the better!

If your truly getting that 750 watt power supply, than don;t worry yourself to much about researching your list there, as far as wattage drawn, just run with the 750 and that will take care of the issues. Personally I prefer 1000 watt to 1500 watt power supply's myself, that way with me going that big, it ensures me of not worrying one bit about future devices that I may or might want to install.

Oh yeah, in regards to your statement about maybe upgrading your video card in the future. That 750 watt power supply should do the trick as far as giving you some peace of mind that everything will be ok and everything will work. You will be fine!:grinthumb

One note of caution: Since this is an HP it will be limited in size as to how large a PSU you can install. Find the dimensions first before purchasing.

I just happened to notice this thread.

I'm not a hardware guy so can't provide more specific answers. But just skimmed your Dxdiag report in your first post which shows something odd

The System Devices section of a dxdiag report displays "PCI connected" devices and their driver ("PCI devices" are connected to the computer's primary data bus). I've included a "snippet" of the System Devices in your report. It's odd that none of these devices show a driver (they all show n/a). Not displaying any drivers in the report seems odd. Try reinstalling your chipset drivers

Code:

--------------
System Devices
--------------
     Name: Intel(R) processor PCI Express Root Port 1 - D138
Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_D138&SUBSYS_2A9C103C&REV_11\3&11583659&0&18
   Driver: n/a

     Name: Intel(R) 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller - 3B34
Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_3B34&SUBSYS_2A9C103C&REV_06\3&11583659&0&E8
   Driver: n/a

     Name: NVIDIA GeForce GT 230
Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0603&SUBSYS_90441B0A&REV_A2\4&30136BC7&0&0018
   Driver: n/a

     Name: Intel(R) processor DMI - D131
Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_D131&SUBSYS_2A9C103C&REV_11\3&11583659&0&00
   Driver: n/a

     Name: Intel(R) 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller - 3B30
Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_3B30&SUBSYS_2A9C103C&REV_06\3&11583659&0&FB
   Driver: n/a

     Name: Intel(R) processor Miscellaneous Registers - D158
Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_D158&SUBSYS_009C003C&REV_11\3&11583659&0&43
   Driver: n/a

     Name: Intel(R) Management Engine Interface
Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_3B64&SUBSYS_2A9C103C&REV_06\3&11583659&0&B0
   Driver: n/a

     Name: Intel(R) H57 Express Chipset LPC Interface Controller - 3B08
Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_3B08&SUBSYS_2A9C103C&REV_06\3&11583659&0&F8
   Driver: n/a

     Name: Intel(R) processor System Control and Status Registers - D157
Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_D157&SUBSYS_009C003C&REV_11\3&11583659&0&42
   Driver: n/a

     Name: High Definition Audio Controller
Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_3B56&SUBSYS_2A9C103C&REV_06\3&11583659&0&D8
   Driver: n/a

     Name: Intel(R) ICH8R/ICH9R/ICH10R/DO/5 Series/3400 Series SATA RAID Controller
Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2822&SUBSYS_2A9C103C&REV_06\3&11583659&0&FA
   Driver: n/a

     Name: Intel(R) processor Semaphore and Scratchpad Registers - D156
Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_D156&SUBSYS_009C003C&REV_11\3&11583659&0&41
   Driver: n/a

     Name: Intel(R) 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 4 - 3B48
Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_3B48&SUBSYS_2A9C103C&REV_06\3&11583659&0&E3
   Driver: n/a

     Name: Intel(R) 82801 PCI Bridge - 244E
Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_244E&SUBSYS_2A9C103C&REV_A6\3&11583659&0&F0
   Driver: n/a

     Name: Intel(R) processor System Management Registers - D155
Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_D155&SUBSYS_009C003C&REV_11\3&11583659&0&40
   Driver: n/a

     Name: Intel(R) 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 3 - 3B46
Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_3B46&SUBSYS_2A9C103C&REV_06\3&11583659&0&E2
   Driver: n/a

     Name: Atheros 802.11 a/b/g/n Dualband Wireless Network Module
Device ID: PCI\VEN_168C&DEV_002A&SUBSYS_1000168C&REV_01\4&2ED86587&0&00E3
   Driver: n/a

     Name: Intel(R) QuickPath Interconnect - D151
Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_D151&SUBSYS_009C003C&REV_11\3&11583659&0&81
   Driver: n/a

     Name: Intel(R) 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 1 - 3B42
Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_3B42&SUBSYS_2A9C103C&REV_06\3&11583659&0&E0
   Driver: n/a

     Name: VIA 1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller
Device ID: PCI\VEN_1106&DEV_3403&SUBSYS_2A9C103C&REV_00\4&1F410527&0&00E2
   Driver: n/a

     Name: Intel(R) QuickPath Interconnect - D150
Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_D150&SUBSYS_009C003C&REV_11\3&11583659&0&80
   Driver: n/a

     Name: Intel(R) 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller - 3B3C
Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_3B3C&SUBSYS_2A9C103C&REV_06\3&11583659&0&D0
   Driver: n/a

     Name: Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller
Device ID: PCI\VEN_10EC&DEV_8168&SUBSYS_2A9C103C&REV_03\4&3B8885A0&0&00E0
   Driver: n/a

Also.. some add'l info/ fyi: those dxdiag reports usually include some system specs as well (look at the beginning of a dxdiag report) Here's yours
/* Start Edit */
btw. Is that a current report??? Or is your clock set wrong?? i just noticed it provides a report date of Mar 16, 20011!
/* end EDIT */

Code:

------------------
System Information
------------------
Time of this report: 3/16/2011, 13:34:23
       Machine name: PAUL-PC
   Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (6.1, Build 7600) (7600.win7_rtm.090713-1255)
           Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: HP-Pavilion
       System Model: AY603AA-ABA HPE-150f
               BIOS: 06/25/10 11:11:05 Ver: 5.15
          Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU         860  @ 2.80GHz (8 CPUs), ~2.8GHz
             Memory: 8192MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 8152MB RAM
          Page File: 1985MB used, 14314MB available
        Windows Dir: C:\Windows
    DirectX Version: DirectX 11

Report and PSu

as for the report no its not currenct but nothing has changed since then no new drivers available etc. as for the drivers na part not sure why because in device manager i try to up dae drivers for both vid card and processers and it say the most current drivers are installed.

as for the psu the the length and the height is just slightly more but theres room only thing that might be tight is the width. the new psu is .1 of an inch wider than old one. i have about 1/16th of an inch between old psu and wall. i hope that .1 is less than 1/16...lol not sure.

heres a question though being this would be my first updrade ever. is the mounting holes/brackets on psu's standarized or universial or what ever. Or would i have to drill new hole for mounting.

ty

direct x

sorry one more thing. my computer has diretx 11 but the video card is a directx 10 card. both HP and Nvidia said that dont matter but you know how that goes. Question is does that cause crashes by chance. I hear you cant downgrade directx.

Thanks for the feedback. Two more bits of info

1. It looks like you haven't installed Windows 7 Service Pack 1 yet. I don't know that it makes any difference for your specific problem but just noticed that fact

2. Also, just fyi.. It also looks like you ran the 32-bit version of dxdiag (which is maybe why it shows drivers n/a?? idk). On 64-bit systems

> From the Start menu, select Run.
> Enter DXDiag.exe and click OK.
> In the dialog box (this will only appear on a 64-bit computer), click Run 64-bit DxDiag. The 64-bit version of DXDiag will launch.

updated info

4 bit dxdiag

Problem Solved For Now

Ok This is probally my last post here but I wanted to post an update for anyone who has my problem.

Ok so I read somewhere that underclocking a video card will cause it to pull less power as well as run cooler. So I installed Rivatuner and took the stock 500mhz clock down to 300mhz. I did this a little at a time like 10 % drop at a time till I got good results. So far my game has been running for 4 straight hours without crashing. It hasnt suffered from the underclocking in terms of graphics. This is compared to never being able to run for more than 10-15 minutes at a time.

Heres the only problem. It means that either my PSU is too low, Or my video card is overheating. I dont know which it is. Meaning I will have to replace both. Thats ok though......at least this 1200 doller prebuilt POS finally plays my games, I am happy about that. As a final test I am going to leave it on game all night while I sleep. If tomorrow its still good then problem solved.

Ty to all of you that tried to give me answers. I cant believe that over a year of troubles and sending my pc back to hp 4 times just got fixed with a free download....lol go figure.

Thanks for taking the time to post an update. That's a great tip

Good job :grinthumb