I have had the problem for about a year and have just become tired of it now and after plently of trying suggestions I've decided to actually ask myself. Before any suggestions are made, I would rather not have to re-format my harddrives unless it completely neccasary. Description of Problem: My computer runs absoloutley fine when I'm not running any game. When I play a game, I can run most games full spec and so I do and have tried my problem playing with lowest spec too. After a completely random amount of time, could be less or more than one, two or three + hours, and my computer just freezes completely. I can't control alt delete, can't alt f4, alt tab any of it. I have to restart with my power button held down. This only occurs when I'm playing a game like counter-strike and the original call of duty all the way up to the newish Bad Company 2, Modern Warfare 2. I have over 140 games which span over 17 years and I find that for most I play on for prolonged amounts of time, they jam eventually. Solutions tried: -I have tried looking at the temperature of my computer and its parts. My GPU runs at about 60C when playing a game and about 42C idle. Seemed ok to me. -My CPU cores being a quad run 0 and 1 at 40C and 2 and 3 at 50C when idle. The max I have seen while playing is 70C (60 on cores 0 and 1). Seemed ok to me. -I downloaded a CPU Stab test and ran it for 12 hours! My computer didn't jam once... -I downloaded Intel Processor Diagnostic Tool and it said my CPU was fine. -I have re-applied thermal paste using a recomended technique. -I have re-seated all of my RAM in their slots. -I have ran defrag, virus scan, spyware scans. -I ran check disk on my harddrives. -Updated all drivers for my sound, gpu and cpu. -Completely air dusted my machine making sure every spec of dust was gone. My Computer Specification: Windows XP 32-bit SP3 Intel Quad Core Q9300 2.5Ghz MSI P7N Diamond Motherboard 4x1GB RAM DDR2 800Mhz Nvidia GTX 260 896mb Maxcore 500GB SATA Harddrive (2x250GB) 600W Power Supply I have no idea whether or not the problem is to do with hardware or software so if anyone has any clue on what it could be, please let me know. If I get rid of this problem I will finally be able to play a computer without jamming, crashing and overheating problems for the first time in 2 years and will be eternally grateful. Thanks.
Problem solved. It was a power issue. Where my computer was plugged into a full extension lead it caused a lot of interferance creating the irregular jamming.
