Incessant unknown unsolvable crashes

[Gash98]

hi there,

before i start i would just like to say that im new here and not good with coimputers so please could you explain technical terms and such to me thanks.

Firstly ive had this computer built for me six years ago, it worked fine up until a year ago when a strange and random problem came about it has proven to be unsolvable. the problem involves the computer stopping with five minutes of a game playing totally freezing and having to restart as a result it happens with EVERY game such as CNC 3 medieval 2 CNC generals everything, its not a virus and the drivers are up to date i was wondering if it was a hardware issue or soem obscure software issue my specs are. Also crashes are very frequent often being a Page Fault in non paged area and general computer freezes happen in sudden spurts whats wrong with it?

any help would be really good

ps sorry for the loong post

WINODWS vista Pro (installing this got rid of the problem for a few days but it came back soon after)

AMD ATHLON 2700 + 2.18 GHZ

1023 MEMORY OF RAM DUAL STICK

32 BIT OPERATING SYSTEM

7600 NVIDIA GS 256MB ALL LATEST DRIVERS

 

[DelJo63]

suspect memory error or HD failure

use memtest86 to test the memory

 

[Gash98]

ive tried mem test but nothing seems to be wrong with the memory
whats an HD error and how could it be fixed?

 

[Tmagic650]

"Whats a HD error and how could it be fixed?..."

A "hard drive" error can be checked and diagnosed by running a program like Checkdisk (chkdisk) or by using the hard drive's manufacturer's test/install utilities

 

[Gash98]

afriad its not the hard drive or the RAM by the way after i bought a new
graphics card it stopped for a while

 

[Tmagic650]

"i would just like to say that im new here and not good with computers so please could you explain technical terms and such"...

If the above quote is true, how can you say that the hard drive and memory is ok? Is your 6 year old computer fully updated using Windows (Microsoft) Vista Updates? Vista is at Service Pack 1 now. Also, there is no such thing as the Vista Pro version. You could benefit upping the memory to 2 GB

 

[Gash98]

i mean im not that bad with computers ive scanned the RAM and have tried two hard drives and scanned them both but its actually vista premium sorry for making that mistake. the computer worked totally fine and flawlessly for five years before the trouble started it was after i unistalled a copy of painkiller and had to unistall the CD writing programme alcohol 52% (someone else installed this first) since then its had a host of problems. i Just remembered this after trying to install piankiller again hope that gives you some more information

thanks

 

[Tmagic650]

Why don't you wipe the hard drive and reinstall Vista fresh. Be careful on what programs you install after doing that. Try sticking with programs like CCleaner and Glary Utilities

 

[Gash98]

sounds good but before i do this is there any way i can scan the whole computer to detect any kind of software/graphics flaw which might be causing incessant blue screens and such?

 

[Tmagic650]

I don't believe you can detect the cause of your troubles just by scanning

 

[FoReWoRd]

try another video card that might help u

 

[FoReWoRd]

or update the memory controller drivers , worked for me

 

[dgower2]

Dump Files???

It's disappointing that nobody has asked for the dmp files yet. These, I would think, would be the first place to diagnose the source of the crash. I would do this, but I don't have time right now. Hopefully someone else can get these from you and open them w/ Microsoft's debugger utility.

 

[Tmagic650]

Not many of us work with dump files any longer. It's just easier to test or swap memory, check the hard drive for errors, scan the registry and check for spyware and viruses... and lastly, an XP Repair or fresh install

 

[Gash98]

thanks for all the help i might finally fix this extremly irratating problem
but i would like to try most of the methods that have been mentioned but i dont
know how to do some of them
for example how do you know which memory controllers to download
and how do you scan your various software

p.s apologies for not knowing how to do anything computers arent my strong point

 

[Tmagic650]

You might try to locate a friend that is more computer savvy, to help you with this. Even a computer shop might be of more help to you...

Good luck