FTO AUSTRALIA

Ok, so I'm playing world of warcraft, and my comp just switches off, it's like somebody just pulled the plug.
First thing that comes to my head is, is it my power supply? Time to replace it?

And I also noticed this only happens when I play games, so using my graphics card/accelerator more.

When I'm just on the forum etc it doesn't happen as much, but games, it'll work for 20 minutes and then just switch off.

And now it's gotten to the point where I have to try about 5-6 times for it to actually turn on. I hear the "beep" for the hardware check but after that it just doesn't go anywhere, and when it starts up, my screen goes blue and I get this message

"A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.
The problem seems to be caused by the following file: avt2dvag

The device driver got stuck in an infinate loop. This usually indicates problem with the device itself or with the device driver programming the hardware incorrectly."

I'm guessing it's either my power supply or graphics card..

Right now it's working after like 6 tries!

Smells like a hardware failure.

Eliminate the possiblities - pull it to peices & boot it up - adding one part at a time.

Wierd failure like that have usually been ram failure for me... but who knows.

Second the PSU. Recently had similar issues, checked the PSU and one of the rails was gone. I'm guessing when you're gaming, the vid card is trying to pull more power and in turn pushing the PSU to failure.

hardware for sure,
it could me anything though,
memory, board, cpu, or gcard is higly likely

It's probably a problem related to your videocard overheating. Try taking the side of your case off and pointing a desk fan in there.

The blue screen relates to a file associate with ATI Radeon series video cards. Try updating your videocard driver https://support.ati.com/ics/support/def ... olderID=27.

There is a chance that it could be your PSU, but it's not as likely as a heat issue. How many watts do you have in your current PSU and what sort of hardware load are you placing on it?

what hardware you running mate? as in cpu, graphic's card, psu & hdd?

Sounds like a pickle, the problems are happening before windows so it's almost certianly hardware related.

The PSU is a likely cause, followed by the videocard. But you've already established it so i'm not much help

If you have a spare PSU try plugging that in and give it a while.

Secondly you could try to do a minimum hardware start; videocard, one stick of ram, and one HDD, no other optical drives or expansion cards.

Also, if you feel like it, boot into safe mode and say how long you can stay aloft before it crashes.

Mine's is a P4 3.0 Ghz, Yep it's got a Radeon 750 graphics card, my motherboard is a 2004 RZ series, not sure of what PSU, and I just have a 120 GB hard drive.

I'll try updating the drivers, thanks for the link

Well one thing we've figured out, Yep, it seems like it must be my PSU since my graphics card tries to pull more out of it than it can handle.

Also, early in the morning it stays on for a bit longer than later in the afternoon, so it seems the power supply gets weaker the more it's used.

I'm gonna take it back to the shop soon, hopefully it's still under warranty

I'm assuming the card you got is Radeon 7500, as i never heard of 750 before, those card hardly use any power, so unless your PSU is on its way out, then it shouldn't be a problem.

Like Blasphemy said, try update your ATI driver first & if that doesn't do anything then borrow a mates graphic's card & see if it does the same thing, if it doesn't "shut down" then you know its your graphic's card.

PSU usually have 12mths warranty. So if you got it for longer then that, then you just have to get a new one & make sure you get a decent one, there are lots of cheap & nasty one for $35-$50 these days & since you using a P4 3.0Ghz, i assume its a 478 socket, so ask for a 20pins or 20+4pins as most of them are now 24pins.

Sorry, typo on the 7500*

Btw, Problem solved! Took it to the shop, found out CPU was overheating so was auto shutting down. Installed another fan, reinstalled all drivers (82 updates ) So it's all good now

Thanks for the help guys

sounds right...

Is the PC just shutting down or is it rebooting?

As mentioned before my first guess would be temperature problems if it lets you use the card for a few minutes before shutdown.

If it was a hardware conflict then realistically as soon as the DMA kicks in then it will shut down straight away.

My other guess would be that when the PC tries to blue screen, you have "Automatically Reboot PC" enabled when windows encounters a serious error.

It's all good now, problem has been solved, I posted a couple of posts above