Game Crashes - Reboots

[DosX]

I really don't know what to do next.

My son's PC has BF2 and SF loaded on it (loaded, uninstalled, loaded actually) and he still crashes to desktop or reboots after ~20 minutes in game. This happened before the latest patch, and it still happens after the latest patch. Almost everytime the screen freezes and whatever sound was active just repeats for about 20-30 seconds, then everything goes black and it's a reboot.

His system:

Motherboard: MSI RS480M2-IL w/AMD 3000+
Ram: 1GB PC3200 (2 x 512 matched)
Power Supply: Thermaltake Silent PurePower 480w
Video: MSI PCI-E 6600GT (128MB)
Audio: Soundblaster X-FI XtremeMusic w/Logitech X-530 Speakers
Network: WMP54G Wireless Router

Now, here's the steps I've taken:

1 - Swapped 1GB RAM with known good 1GB RAM
2 - Changed from 350W Power Supply to 480W
3 - Swapped 6600GT with a known good 6600GT
4 - Replaced on-board audio with Soundblaster X-FI
5 - Updated BIOS to latest version
6 - Reloaded BF2 and SF (and patch) from scratch
7 - Reloaded DirectX 9.0c
8 - Reloaded PunkBuster using their load utility
9 - Cleaned the nVidia Drivers and reloaded 77.70
10 - Cleaned the nVidia Drivers and loaded 81.98
11 - Scanned PC with Ad-Aware, SpyBot S&D, AVG Virus Protection
12 - Ran Prime95 (cpu/ram stress test) overnight - passed
13 - Created a SlipStream WinXP disc and reloaded WinXP (the reload that keeps all the programs)
14 - Naked vodoo dance with candles and little computer shaped dolls

Ok so maybe #14 was more for me then the PC. I'm just completely at a loss as to what could be causing BF2 to crash.

He plays Battlefront 2 with no problems at all. He also plays Tony Hawk's American Wasteland, Jedi Academy, Incredible Hulk, Serious Sam 2, etc... and none of them crash. ONLY BF2 or SF causes crashes.

The only clues I have.... After doing the SlipStream thing, it froze up and I got a blue screen telling me that there was a problem with nV4_disp. This happened once, and now it just reboots again. I've also tried to alt-tab when the system is frozen and a couple times I've gotten back to windows. When I click to get back into the game it'll have that "you were disconnected from the server" message. I go back to windows and the wireless router was disconnected.

Anyone have some insight, thoughts, suggestions....?

TIA to all who take time to reply.

[romprod]

Re: Game Crashes - Reboots

I'd take a guess and say it was related to the GFX card or the drivers related to the card. I had exactly the same problem 6 months back with a 6600GT. As soon as i changed the gfx settings to something decent, i would get a reboot within 30 mins. It seemed as if i was pushing the gfx card to hard and it didnt like, but i allways used to get a decent FPS from the card.

[DosX]

Re: Game Crashes - Reboots

I thought that too. I've seen a LOT of 6600gt posts complaining about crashes with BF2. But I've tried cleaning out the drivers and loading older versions and still have the problem.

Did you ever resolve the crashes? Would you remember the settings?

I'm thinking that either a complete system nuke - reloading WinXP from scratch.... or getting a different video card. Maybe a 6800GS or even a 7800 if I can find one at a decent price.

*shhhh... I'm probably going to get a new video card for him. Then I can put that 6600gt back in my computer and use SLI again. The reason I put it in my son's PC in the first place was the problems they had with SLI and 6600gt's. I was getting terrible performance. I hear they've resolved the issues. So maybe a new video card will fix his problems and really enhance my system at the same time.