ARMA2 forces my machine to shutdown

[nekraks 10]

Hi All,

wierd one here.

Only while playing A2 does my machine suddenly shutdown like someone has just pulled the power cable out. I had about 45 mins of stress free play earlier on, then it happened repeatedly when i was about 15 mins into a mission.

Vista Home Premium

Quad core 2.4

4GB DDR2 800

HIS 4870 1GB DDR5

I've patched to 1.02

I thought it might have been the graphics card overheating so i pushed the fan speed up to ensure it was cool and the problem is still happeneing.

Any ideas, id really like to play more than 15 mins :p

Thanks

Nekraks

[no use for a name 0]

could also be a cpu overheating. get CoreTemp ( http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/ ) and watch your temps while playing. Also, just because you turned your fan up on your GPU doesn't always mean it can't overheat; you'll still want to check the temps on it also (something like ATITool will work).

Either way it's something pretty serious if it's shutting down your PC

[Joseph Troska 0]

Try downloading memtest86 and seeing if it's a problem with your RAM. I had this trouble recently - my old PC started shutting itself down when I tried to render videos in windows moviemaker - soon after it started happening more regularly. Turns out my motherboard/CPU was on its way out. Also check that the inside of your computer/fans isn't clogged up with dust - this can often lead to abrupt auto-shutdowns/resets.

There's so many things it could be, but very often it's hardware related.

[nekraks 10]

Thanks guys, Ill have a look.

wierd thing is I can play, Empire total war / COD 4 / Warhammer / crysis all on full vid settings and i dont get this issue, im running a temp check widget on my GPU and its all in the green.

this is only happening on A2.

[Joseph Troska 0]

How old is your rig? Often after a fair amount of time and dust collection computers can start to shut down automatically...

IS YOUR POWER SUPPLY SUFFICIENT/WORKING? Are there other things plugged in to a multi-socket power board (if your PC is plugged into one) that is making your computer brown-out?

But saying that, it could very well be a software related issue as well.

If all else fails, you could try the most inconvenient option and do a fresh format and install of the operating system. Then try reinstalling ArmA2 along with the latest drivers. If the problem persists after a fresh format and OS install, then it may very well be hardware related. Try getting an air compressor and giving the inside of your case, motherboard etc a good blow. Check your RAM with the latest version of memtest86.

Maybe you could even take your computer in for a service. Or buy a new one, which is what I did when my old quad6600 died.

If absolutely nothing works, and you can't afford a new rig to play ArmA2 on, then I suppose euthanasia may be the only solution. :p jk

[nekraks 10]

haha :)

The Rig is 1 and a half years old, the mem is 4 months old, the graphics card is 4 months old. 750w PSU and PC is plugged straight into the wall.

Will give the PC a blast with comp air, run some cpu temp checks etc.

Cheers

Nekraks

---------- Post added at 09:19 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:23 AM ----------

Hi guys,

Ok ran core temp while sitting in windows, email, browsing my cores are around 42-45C when A2 is running that creeps up to 50 the 54 then shutdown. I know this is high but I thought QCore chips could still operate up to about 65-70

guess i need a better cooling set up.

Cheers

Nekraks

---------- Post added at 11:08 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:19 AM ----------

So the issue would appear that the CPU and case fan have a default speed of

1600rpm assume this is the cpu fan

950rpm case fan

I ran speed fan, these speeds do not change when the machine is put under pressure. Does anyone know of a utility that will let me gain control over the speed, I cant change it in speedfan.

Ive updated the bios, spec of mobo here.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c01077641&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=uk&product=3632154〈=en

Cheers

[KrIxXuS 10]

Ok im not a techie but joseph troska has a point with regards to your psu.... my pc kept shutting down after 15-20 minutes also...and i have pretty much same spec as you...i had an 800 watt but it was not sufficient and also faulty...ive changed to an 850 OCZ and it works fine with no problems....Also i reccomend turning off catalyst Ai ..as that gave me grief too....as for the quad core chips...mine runs very high and works fine....but a decent cooler wouldnt go a miss either if your in doubt?

Hope you get it sorted anyway ;-)

[MPBR 10]

Blue;1327700']Ok im not a techie but joseph troska has a point with regards to your psu.... my pc kept shutting down after 15-20 minutes also...and i have pretty much same spec as you...i had an 800 watt but it was not sufficient and also faulty...ive changed to an 850 OCZ and it works fine with no problems....Also i reccomend turning off catalyst Ai ..as that gave me grief too....as for the quad core chips...mine runs very high and works fine....but a decent cooler wouldnt go a miss either if your in doubt?

Hope you get it sorted anyway ;-)

Yeah, 800w+ cheap and nasty PSU >= 400 watt decent product.

Never ever ever skimp on PSU .. about the most important part in a PC.. the dmg a cheap and nasty can do is scary.

Having said that, I have made alot of $$ Due to ppl bring in the PC's for support or replacment due to having a cheap POS PSU.

As for the Fan speed issue, are the fans themselves varible speed ? are they connected via MB Headers or direct to the PSU ?

Also with fans, make sure that they are all clean and not gunked up with dust / crap. and that the are working the right way, e.g front sucking in, back / top blowing out etc.

[nekraks 10]

Thanks for the reply guys,

Will look at a decent PSU then, the fans are connected to the mobo but there is no fan speed control option in the bios, have done a lot of reading in HP's site and it would seem this model doesnt support manual fan control. SAying that the fans dont increase in speed as the system works harder, seem to be locked at the speeds i said above.

What confuses me is that q660 chip is supposed to run till 71C and the sys is shutting down at around 54 / 55. I've just taken the heat sink off replaced the thermal compound, cleaned the fans and its running about 5C per core cooler, I have the side off to.

thanks all

Dave

[NeoArmageddon 958]

I have the side off to.

Thats a bad idea. Having the side off will cut the airflow around important parts. the air from the fans will just go everywhere execpt the parts, where its needed.

Close you computer and install a new fan somewhere on the back or the side, this will help you more keeping you system cool.

BTW: If you clean you computer with compressed air, take a screwdriver and block the fans in the PSU and the CPU when you blow the dust off... the compressed air can speed up the fans to a dangerous level... they can be damaged!

[Joseph Troska 0]

Hey nekraks, I just noticed something... your rig is not only exactly the same age as my old rig (1.5 years) - it was also a quad6600.

I suspected that a thick buildup of dust in my CPU fan had, over time, caused long-term and permanent damage to my CPU, making it less able to operate at higher temps (which of course, they are designed to do). Remember when I first noticed the auto-shutdowns on my pc, was when I was rendering videos in MSmoviemaker. I watched the CPU activity in the performance monitor in Task Manager, and when the CPU spiked during rendering the computer resetted/shut down - sometimes with a Blue Screen Of Death showing "machine_check_exception".

It is quite telling that you only noticed this on your rig when playing ArmA2 - as this game would push your system pretty hard.

Clean out your case and motherboard along with fans, and maybe try the HDD format and fresh OS install... but it may be that your CPU has some permanent damage. Perhaps the 6600s aren't big on longevity. I have an i7 920 now - might be the perfect excuse for you to upgrade! :) good luck

Edited June 25, 2009 by Joseph Troska

[MPBR 10]

Thanks for the reply guys,

Will look at a decent PSU then, the fans are connected to the mobo but there is no fan speed control option in the bios, have done a lot of reading in HP's site and it would seem this model doesnt support manual fan control. SAying that the fans dont increase in speed as the system works harder, seem to be locked at the speeds i said above.

What confuses me is that q660 chip is supposed to run till 71C and the sys is shutting down at around 54 / 55. I've just taken the heat sink off replaced the thermal compound, cleaned the fans and its running about 5C per core cooler, I have the side off to.

thanks all

Dave

Few other things,

Check your bios, there should be a screen that lists what temp the machine will suspend / shutdown. or at least an option to enable / disable thermal protection.

If its not in BIOS there MAY be a program running in the background of windows from HP monitoring and safeguarding the system.

CPU Heatsinks and fans are not that $$, I run a ultra-120 with a a almost slient 120 fan for the CPU. This brough my everyday cooling of the CPU down by over 10° C (from high 30's at idle to med 20's). This also allowed me to OC up to 3.4GHz with temps around the max of 60° C

[nekraks 10]

Hi Guys,

I went through the bios a few days back and then updated it.

1. The bios has no CPU temps

2. The bios has no fan speeds or even fans showing

3. Good point on the program running in the back there is a prog called HP RC (obviously its a Hewlett Packard machine im using) have stopped the HP processes and am trying again *gulp*

As you said might be time for an upbgrade.

Cheers

Nekraks

[-)rStrangelove 0]

I don't think it's the PSU as Empire total war is also a very stressy game for the CPU. It should shutdown there too if it was stress related.

[Dr_Evil 0]

Nekraks:

Your not alone there matey, i've got exactly the same issue happening. I think it is an overheat prob but this is the first game that's doing it. I too play CoD4 and Empire with no probs, but this is killing the PC.

I'll try clearing out the fans and see if that does the trick. Funnily enough mine a Q6600 chip as well.

Real sod considering I was enjoying playing the game.

[Glacious 10]

Hey All

I have been having exactly the same problem ever since I installed ArmA 2. I get to play for 10-15 mins and then computer literally dies as if sumone has pulled the plug.

since installing the game, all my games i.e Left 4 Dead, ArmA 2, Overlord 2, and C&C 3 all do exactly the same. I solved this by simply uninstalling Arma 2 and it now works..... I cant explain that.

All the games that where crashing now work how they used to. Its not my power supply or any of my hardware because all my games have worked fine ever since installing arma 2. Feels abit of a waste of money if i cant play it :(

[TAW_RiEvEr 10]

A friend of mine has this problem too - he installed Arma2 and all his games started shutting the PC down after 10 minutes or so. He uninstalled Arma2 and his games started working properly again.

Wonder how many others have seen this but don't use these forums?

[roadrunner20 10]

^^ its a fan issue.

from what i belive its the fan on the VGA not being able to cool the card thus shuts down the pc.

It then happens again in other games due to the card settings being changed when ARMA 2 installs it self onto pc, then once uninstalled goes back to your previous settings which wouldnt over cook the card.

a solution is to wait for a patch to fix this, ie makes the game less stressfull on the card cooler, or to use some sort of card fan programme, ie catalist to change the fan speed for differant games ect.

ATI cards suffer a lot from this issue,

etw is actually a very very stable game and thus very rare problems happen on it and so is a good place to check your pc and stress it on.

COD 5/4 also very stable games and good for benchmarking.

this game isnt it seems very stable as the other games maybe due to it not having as big a dev/testing team, thus issues like this arise.

like others said download a VGA temp monitor, then start a record, then load game and if any issues arise check the record.

[Punisher5555 0]

This is happening to me too. Totally shut off my machine. This is a bug.

BIS needs to figure this out.

[BimC 10]

This is happening to me too.

Although I have been able too play ArmaII for some days, ArmaII now shut off my machine when I try to start ArmaII.

Cabinet: Antec LifeStyle Sonata II-EC

Motherboard: ASUS P5N-E SLI

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600

Ram: 4x A-DATA Vitesta 1 GB

Graphiscard: Geforce 8800GTS 640MB

Harddisk: 2 x WD Raptor 74GB

Soundcard: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music

DVD: NEC AD 7173A

Windows XP Pro SP3

[=Spetsnaz= 0]

i think since im getting freezes its due to one of my cores overheating since its always 10c hotter than my other core it reaches 65-75 omg.., only arma 2 does this and i would like a new patch which would be less stress on the components to keep them from overheating. I run every other game fine including crysis and never get computer freezes.. but this..

[Punisher5555 0]

Welcome to the overheat club Russianguy192.

[CallMeSir 0]

Mine freezes (hard locks) quite regularly, forcing a reset. It seems to be GPU temp related with me, as my CPU runs quite cool, but like others, no other game (Crysis, UT3 etc) seems to cause this much heat and this issue.

I have cleaned my graphics card so its free of dust, and now I'm running with the side of the case off, which has reduced the amount of times it happens, but its far from perfect.

I've tried using Rivatuner to run the fan at a constant 100% cycle, but that is not enough. Running on auto the fan is constantly spinning up and down.

My 9800GT 1GB (not overclocked) has a huge dual slot HSF, and normally runs really nice and cool, but not with this game.

Does the graphics in this game really push harder than others?…maybe so, even if it doesn’t look like it should be.

Edited July 6, 2009 by CallMeSir

[-s!Gm4- 10]

i think since im getting freezes its due to one of my cores overheating since its always 10c hotter than my other core it reaches 65-75 omg.., only arma 2 does this and i would like a new patch which would be less stress on the components to keep them from overheating. I run every other game fine including crysis and never get computer freezes.. but this..

Try to Prime it - and read out your temps when your cores are 100% busy.

Most likely temps when playing won't top those.

If you got an intel, you can find out your maxtemp on this page: http://processorfinder.intel.com/Default.aspx

A healthy temp is around (maxtemp-10°)°C.

---------- Post added at 03:36 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:34 PM ----------

Mine freezes [...] look like it should be.

I think you should try out Furmark which not only allows to stress-test ypur GPU, but also to show and log your temps meanwhile.

[xxbbcc 6]

I'm having the same issue. I have an NVidia GeForce 9800 GT and I had several instances of the machine shutting down. The GFX card is very hot so it's definitely an overheating issue and the motherboard just shuts down.