Game crashing after running for a few minutes

[goebelchx]

I decided to become a doctor, instead of a hardware engineer! There have never been any other problems with any other games I've run in my 30 years of computer gaming. After a typical day of work, I am not in the mood to add another few hours to the 12 hours I've already spent trying to get this game to work. I have tried all the suggestions on this and other forums. I am tired of downloading utilities. I am tired of looking at near-infinite torrent files and fixes to this game. 208 is not the caliber of my rifle but of my intelligence. Please post no pompous, pedantic posts here for those whom are already frustrated beyond that point.

[Dr.Disaster]

After a typical day of work, I am not in the mood to add another few hours to the 12 hours I've already spent trying to get this game to work.

It would help to tell what the problem is or an error message if you got one.

If a system crashes after just a few minutes of playing a game it's prolly a heat problem
-> check what does overheat: CPU, GPU or something else
-> check the system cooling in general i.e. all fans are working and running well, all fans and air ducts are clean and clear ..

Check FPS during play
-> if FPS > monitor refresh rate: activate Vsync+Tripple Buffering to reduce heat build-up
-> if FPS <= monitor refresh rate: increase GPU fan speed if possible, otherwise increase the air flow of the system

[goebelchx]

I tried it windowed about an hour ago. This was not a steam-powered version, but a stand-alone which I obtained from BitTorrent. I was monitoring CPR temp. It did not rise above 33 Celsius. I was monitoring the video card. It did not go above 41 Celsius. I have vsync on. I have edited the grimrock configuration file to debug ON and max frame rate to 60. I have not yet turned on triple buffering. I will give it a try tomorrow. Besides the power supply fan, cpu fan, and gpu fan, I have a 6 inch fan on the side of the case and good air flow around. It is 20 Celsius in the room here. There seems to be no overheating; the system just shuts off somewhere between 3 to 10 minutes into the game.

I have downloaded 3 versions of the game off BitTorrent. I have already paid $15 for Grimrock! And so I don't have that karma.

The power supply is 400 watt. I am considering putting in a 600 watt. Since the components did not overheat, it seems the next logical step. However, I will be more than slightly upset, if the computer turns off again!

I had all security programs save AVG exited when last I tried playing. I use spybot, superantispyware, malwarebytes, spyhunter, advanced system care, and glary utilities. I also use smart defrag when necessary. I monitor the GPU temperature with MSI Afterburner.

System requirments showed win XP SP3, and a 256 MB video card. I run Win 7 Pro 64 bit, 4 gig RAM, and a 1 GB nvidia card. I can run Might and Magic games doing aerial battles against dragons, and have 2 public game servers running with cpu usage around 10% to 20% at the same time with no problems.

I have run dxdiag and 64 bit dxdiag. I do not see a place to attach the saved text file it generated here.

Help is most welcome!

[goebelchx]

By the way, no error msgs were generated.

[Zo Kath Ra]

This is the best way to fix overheating problems :-/
http://apple.slashdot.org/story/14/12/3 ... -to-fix-it

[Dr.Disaster]

I tried it windowed about an hour ago. This was not a steam-powered version, but a stand-alone which I obtained from BitTorrent. I was monitoring CPR temp. It did not rise above 33 Celsius. I was monitoring the video card. It did not go above 41 Celsius.

If these values are correct (CPU: 33 degrees; GPU: 41 degrees) you have no heat problem in your system but when it does indeed shut down (regular windows shut down or plain power off) you got a different problem. The most likely is a going bad or plain insufficient power supply giving up.

400 watts sounds not too bad but what does it power?
What is the maker+model of the mainboard, CPU, RAM, GPU, drives, USB and other connected stuff?

This is the best way to fix overheating problems :-/
http://apple.slashdot.org/story/14/12/3 ... -to-fix-it

heh that's a temporary fix at best but it does not fix the real cause of the system heat up.

[goebelchx]

Dr. Disaster, I invite you to send me a PM so we can exchange email addresses. I will send you the text file from dxdiag.

[Dr.Disaster]

I checked the dxdiag file you posted earlier. Estimating by the components shown this system requires between 210 and 280 watts to run. A fully healthy 400W PSU should be more then enough to power your system.

[goebelchx]

Which would mean I am still chasing an electronic needle in a haystack. Any other ideas?

[Dr.Disaster]

I said "fully healthy 400W PSU". The fact that your system powers down for obviously no reason tells me it's not "fully healthy".

You can try other demanding games or gfx demos like those from Unigine to stress your system and see what happens. A similar stress test is Furmark. It will stress your GPU to the limit and it comes along with a CPU burner tool to push your processor cores to the limit.