PC Problem, your opinions please.
 

Have bought a second secondhand pc for the kids, its a 'Medion' P4 2.8, it has,

512 DDR
Gforce ti4400
Audigy player Sound card
DVD Reader
DVD Writer

Not bad for 200 quid (No HD in it), I bunged windows on and installed the card drivers, most of the time its fine but when in Command and Conquer generals it starts making strange sounds and then locks up,

My thoughts are,

PSU not up to the job, only 250 watt
Duff memory ?
Heat issues, fit more fans ?

The game is patched to v 1.7, XP Pro is installed but only a plain install, no service packs.

I removed a firewire card to bung in my other pc along with a 56k modem for the bin and matters improved but have not gone away, there is no overclocking been done but I did put the CAS Latency back to 3T (was at 2t) so would that cause it, also not sure what speed the DDR ram is, there are three options, 200, 266 and 300 mhz, its on 266.

Any suggestions as the kids moan like hell when it locks up, doesnt seem to do it on any other games just bloody C and C Generals and thats all they want to play !

probably a stupid answer, but, start/run/dxdiag>Display>tests ??

No, not a stupid answer, will try that, have just took it apart, moved the soundcard from directly under the graphics card to try and get a bit of airflow, have also dis-assembled the graphics card heat sink and fan, cleaned out 2 or 3 years of crud that cant of helped matters !

All says its ok on DXDIAG.

remove the sound card and try again, might be worth a try eleiminating it.

Hmm, disabled it in XPs hardware profiles last night when the prob was repeatable and it did stop, dont really want to go back to the onboard sound if I can help it, will see how it goes after tonights changes, worked ok for me but when the kids get on it, it crashes !

do a search for devldr.exe on your machine.


causes me untold grief, part of the souncard drivers, no devldr, no sound, but a PITA with it.

Lockups usually mean heat if the rig isn't overclocked. Could be either the CPU or GPU overheating, but initially my money would be on the GPU. Run it with the side removed and see what difference it makes.


M

Cheers, will try, did seem better (didnt lock up) after cleaning the Graphics card fan and putting a bit of space between it and the Sound Card.