Shutdown while playing World of Warcraft

OS: Windows XP Service Pack 2 Home Edition
CPU Type: AMD Sempron, 2000 MHz (12 x 167) 2800+
Motherboard Name Asus A7V600-X (6 PCI, 1 AGP, 3 DDR DIMM, Audio, LAN)
Motherboard Chipset: VIA VT8377 Apollo KT600
Video Adapter: RADEON 9600 SE Family (Microsoft Corporation) (128 MB)
Memory: 512MB RAM



Over the past two days I have been experiencing an issue while playing world of warcraft. I have been playing the game for nearly a year now and this problem only began recently.

Whenever I open world of warcraft, login and choose a character, after five minutes or so of playing, my computer shutsdown and I have to remove the power plug and plug it back in before I am able to turn my computer back on. I have tried reading threads and whatnot to figure out what the problem is but it seems everyone with the problem has slight differences.

I thought it might be due to the computer overheating so I monitored the MB and CPU temperature using ASUS probe while playing world of warcraft and it ranges between 55-68C while my temperature threshold before automatic shutdown is set to 80C. When Idle the temperature is slightly lower ranging between 50-58.

I also thought maybe it might be due to video-card issues but realised WoW is the only game I have trouble with.. to make sure of this I played 30 minutes of every game I have (Age of Empires, Guildwars, Sims etc) I tried loweing the resolution with WoW but that didn't seem to help either

I'm not sure what else to check other than my memory cards but I'd have no idea what to check for so..

PS: Wasn't sure what board to post this.. It is related to gaming afterall *shrug*

Have you checked your event viewer (right click my computer, choose manage, click event viewer and check applications then system)? It may shed some light on the subject. On another note have you tried playing on another realm to see if it still happens?

Problem Fixed

I'd like to thank you for your help in solving my problem. My computer gave out awhile after posting, so I had to get a computer technician and he found that while my cpu fan was working, it was no longer strong enough to support the demand that WoW put on my cpu and it would continuely force my cpu temperature to reach beyond 70C. I had my fan replaced with a stronger one and found that now my temperature stays between 35-40C

I thought I might be able to help others with this problem by urging those of you with the same issue to replace your fans often, while one may work for sometime, it doesn't mean it always will.

Again, thank you Techspot.. while you all might not have had the time to help me, you have helped me in the past and no doubt i'll have problems in the future.

You're a blessing to useless computer nerds everywhere