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I can't seem to get games to play longer than 2 minutes without my computer freezing. The sound dies out and the picture freezes and a hard reboot is needed. No error messages are displayed or sent to the Event viewer.

My system
ATX 12V 420 watts power supply
3 case fans
3.4 Ghz Pentium 4
GA-8N-SLI Royal F1 motherboard (Rev. 1001, BIOS 6.00PG)
2G RAM (PQI DDR2 667 PC2 5400)
74GB SATA drive (setup as single nvidia striping array)
Geforce 7800 GTX
Realtek onboard AC97 sound

This only happens in certain games, such as World of Warcraft and Rome Total War. The system run fine otherwise - scrolling the net, playing games such as C&C General and Star Wars Battlefront with no problems. I assume it is not a RAM issue if the problem is not universal. I updated my Direct X to 9.0c, I've tried the latest and previous Video Drivers. I disabled the onboard sound and ran the games with no sound and still it froze. I've tested the fans in the case and overheating doesn't seem to be an issue. I have a single Sata drive installed with the OS on it, but, once again, no other problems so I'm assuming I have the bios and raid setup correctly. I'm really not sure what else to do.
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Rome Total war message (Froze then closed on it's own, only got these messages once):

The description for Event ID ( 0 ) in Source ( ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. You may be able to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description; see Help and Support for details. The following information is part of the event: 6.

The description for Event ID ( 0 ) in Source ( ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. You may be able to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description; see Help and Support for details. The following information is part of the event: 7.

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Ran another test with Battlefield 2 and it froze after about 2 minutes, also with no error message. I think it may have something to do with newer games??? Any Ideas?

I just ran memtest and got quite a few errors. I then tested each stick in DIMM 1 and no errors were reported on either. I put them both back in DIMM 1 and DIMM 3 and errors again. I also tried them in DIMM2 and 4, no go. I'm not sure what the problem is? Is there some setting to get RAM to work with Gigabyte boards while on dual channel DDR2 mode? Is it a bios setting...I don't see any way to verify the voltage settings. All I see is +/- .1 changes to dimm voltage. Does turbo have to be enabled?

/sigh

I am having the same issues and getting the same eventlog messages. It happens all the time with BF2 but I played FEAR all the way through and it didnt happen once.

I have an MSI nforce4 based motherboard and a nvidia6600 video card. I used to get n4vdisp.dll errors now after the newest nforce chipset and nvdia graphics drivers installed I get this crash to desktop and this in my event log.

The description for Event ID ( 0 ) in Source ( ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. You may be able to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description; see Help and Support for details. The following information is part of the event: 6.

I'll be playing then the screen will go black, sometimes it crashes to the desktop sometimes it doesn't.

Not that this helps you any... but maybe it will flag down someone who might have an idea as to what may be wrong.

The same situation, also with BF2, but surprisingly I got that problem with that game only, so I dont think its a hardware problem. Got MSI Mainboard and Amd64, 2GB of new ram for overclockers, everything is new and power supply is enough.

Viger, although you say power supply is enough, what is the brand, model, wattage AND amps on 12V rail(s)?

This is the error I get after getting kicked out of Battlefield 2142, I have 4x512mb sticks of Corsair RAM, any help would be greatly appreciated... My specs are at the bottom of this post...

The description for Event ID ( 0 ) in Source ( ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. You may be able to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description; see Help and Support for details. The following information is part of the event: 7.

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AMD Athlong 64 FX-55
2gb Corsair RAM
GeForce Nvidia 7950 GX2 1gb
700 Watt Power Supply
320gb SATA Seagate
250gb SATA Seagate
Plextor SATA DVD-RW
Memorex IDE DVD-ROM/CD-RW
Hauppage WinTV-HVR 1600

might be the power supply or your PC is getting really hot playing total war an graphic intensive game. Try open one those games, then tab out and tell us whats your current cpu and gpu temp are at?

mine always stay around 40c* to 42c* for cpu and 65c*- 67c* for gpu while gaming using Everest with everything max out.

EDIT: holy crap! this post was made in 2005 loool, i don't think the OP gonna answer my question. o well ; P

Where can I check temperature? I have a X-SuperAlien Tower with 10+ fans on it, the air coming out of the top always feels cool to mildly warm, but never hot...??? I even have one fan blowing directly onto the GPU & of course a heat sink cooler fan for the CPU...