Computer Shuts Off Whenever I Play COD2...

Well, I don't know where you are located, but in a lot of places now, it is getting warmer, much warmer due to fact summer is on our doorsteps (again most of us, northern hemisphere anyway).

check you case temperatures, it may have a lot to do with it. make sure cables aren't blocking air flow, and there is no dust inside case and all your fans are functioning properly.

computers will shutdown without warning if they are too hot, and hopefully you have not done any permanent damage to your system.

As for the power supply issue, your wattage is usually right on the label of the power supply itself, although, if you were able to run the game to begin with, then I doubt that is the problem, unless on the off chance it is dying.

You do not list your specs, so by suggesting you are having trouble with COD 2, I presume you have an older machine. give us your specs so that we may be able to narrow down more.

One last thing, when you upgraded your graphics card in november, you didn't move the cpu cooler did you? if you broke the contact of thermal compound between the cpu and the cooler, it can overheat pretty easily.

But like I said, without more info, we cant help much more.

Well, I don't know where you are located, but in a lot of places now, it is getting warmer, much warmer due to fact summer is on our doorsteps (again most of us, northern hemisphere anyway).

check you case temperatures, it may have a lot to do with it. make sure cables aren't blocking air flow, and there is no dust inside case and all your fans are functioning properly.

computers will shutdown without warning if they are too hot, and hopefully you have not done any permanent damage to your system.

As for the power supply issue, your wattage is usually right on the label of the power supply itself, although, if you were able to run the game to begin with, then I doubt that is the problem, unless on the off chance it is dying.

You do not list your specs, so by suggesting you are having trouble with COD 2, I presume you have an older machine. give us your specs so that we may be able to narrow down more.

One last thing, when you upgraded your graphics card in november, you didn't move the cpu cooler did you? if you broke the contact of thermal compound between the cpu and the cooler, it can overheat pretty easily.

But like I said, without more info, we cant help much more.

OneNeo1

It's probly overheating, See if a fan fell of, it happened to me, started like that and the mobo ended up burt

Well, I don't know where you are located, but in a lot of places now, it is getting warmer, much warmer due to fact summer is on our doorsteps (again most of us, northern hemisphere anyway).

check you case temperatures, it may have a lot to do with it. make sure cables aren't blocking air flow, and there is no dust inside case and all your fans are functioning properly.

computers will shutdown without warning if they are too hot, and hopefully you have not done any permanent damage to your system.

As for the power supply issue, your wattage is usually right on the label of the power supply itself, although, if you were able to run the game to begin with, then I doubt that is the problem, unless on the off chance it is dying.

You do not list your specs, so by suggesting you are having trouble with COD 2, I presume you have an older machine. give us your specs so that we may be able to narrow down more.

One last thing, when you upgraded your graphics card in november, you didn't move the cpu cooler did you? if you broke the contact of thermal compound between the cpu and the cooler, it can overheat pretty easily.

But like I said, without more info, we cant help much more.

OneNeo1

Yeah, it's hot near me too (I live in Pennsylvania) and it's basically summer already. However, I have air conditioning and it's not hot in my computer room so I doubt that's the problem. Later today, since I am busy doing something right now, I will turn my computer off and open my case up to remove all dust and check everything just as you said. I alraedy know that my computer has a lot of dust that I never removed in the past, so that will be my number one priority right now. While I do know a good amount of things about PC hardware, I still don't know a lot. When you say to check if my fan is functioning properly, I don't know what to look for. I know that a couple months ago, weird noises were coming out of my computer every once in a while and would last for a while. It would literally sound like a chainsaw, and I think it was my video card. But I really don't know, and I don't know if that has anything to do with this.

Once again, as for my power supply, I don't even know what it looks like. I didn't look yet (I'm very lazy and the back of my computer is hard to reach to without unplugging some things), but I doubt I would find it right away.

Also, I don't know what the cpu cooler is, but I know that I didn't move anything besides my old video card, at least as far as I know. Something could have happened by accident. I have a feeling that my computer IS overheating, but I don't know why or from what.

And, finally, here are my specs. I do have a somewhat older computer, and the only thing I ever updated in it was the video card. Here you go:

Dell XPS 400

Intel Pentium D Processor

2.80 GHz (also says 2.79 GHz?)

1 GB or RAM (do I need to upgrade?)

ATI Radeon Power Color HD 2600 Video Card

I'm pretty sure those are all the specs you need. If there are any others, please tell me what they are and where I can find them. As a note, though, I don't want people telling me to upgrade things just because it would be better for newer games. Right now, I'm just interested in playing my older games. If I wanted new games, which I do, I would buy a whole new computer, which I will eventually but just don't know when. I have Windows XP, but if I were to upgrade I would get Vista. So if I need to fix or upgrade/update something, only tell me it if it's for the specific problem I presented to you in this thread about my computer randomly turning off. Thanks for the help guys :D

Get a temperature monitoring software like Speedfan and make sure the temps aren't too high. Record the CPU and GPU temps.Luminouslight

I downloaded Speedfan and I performed an in-depth online analysis of my hard disk, and everything seems to be fine except for one thing. My temperature is 39 degrees Celcius, none of my specs were below the attribute threshold (except for 1, which I will get to in a sec), my overall fitness of my drive was 94%, and my overall performance of my drive was 91%. The only thing that was bad was for the Power On Hours Count which was below the average limits. My value was 209, where as the normal range is 217-253. According to the site, this is what it said about it:

"NOTE : your hard disk Power On Hours Count attribute current value (209) is below the normal range (217 - 253) reported for your specific hard disk model. Basically your hard disk was powered on for more than the maximum time the average user did. This means that either all of the reports collected are from hard disks that were not powered on for too long (this is realistic for recent models) or that your hard disk is becoming old. Usually this is not considered as a pre-failure advisory, but you should check whether you want to replace the hardware or keep an eye on its performances over time."

Does anyone think this has anything to do with it?

I agree, try another game just to see what happens. If you can, try one of your older "high spec required" games versus a more recent one (COD 2 excluded) just to see what or if anything happens. Even if you have a power hungry 3D screensaver, this might be a way to test. I have found that Halo Custom Edition is really hard on older computers (if you have it), also a lot of newer flash media games are pretty rough on systems too.

To see your power supply you will need to pull the side cover off of your tower, and it most likely is mounted at the top rear of the tower (I am not too familiar with the XPS 400), but every other Dell I have worked on has been there, the easy way to tell is wherever the power cord goes in, that is where your power supply is. Lood at the label either on the side or the rear of the power supply for wattage, etc.

I will tell you that Dell (and other out of the box manufacturers) is notorious for using the lightest duty parts that will do the job in their computers.

For the record you probably have a 375 watt power supply in your system, and from what I know the HD 2600 requires a 400 Watt power supply, but the 375 should do the job with the games you are trying to run.

As for the hard drive tests, well in my experience, the computer doesn't normally just shut off due to hard drive errors, usually it just freezes, or you get the beloved BSOD.

Sooooo, to me it still sounds like an overheating issue.

I would try running speed fan (with logging turned on, I haven't used in a while I think it might automatically track in the Charts Tab) while you run the COD, but only play it for a few minutes, so that you can exit out of the game and see what your log says, then let us know what the high value was, because while 39 degrees C is warm, it is not hot enough to shut down the system. If Speed fan doesn't do it, try Motherboard monitor ( http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=311 ), while it is not in development any more, it does track your temps for later viewing for sure. Asus has another version of a hardware monitoring program that works nicely, but I can not remember if it works on non-Asus boards.

I wouldn't bother as much with speedfan I would check the temperature in your BIOS when you boot and see if that is close to speedfan just to make sure it is close then maybe rely on it. I'm sure most have already said this but, try some other intensive games that will really push your system (if you own any) if not download "orthos" and do a memory and cpu test that will stress both to 100% and leave it for 20 minutes. If your computer gets really hot (in the 70's) on speedfan during orthos odds are you will need to go buy a heatsink for your CPU and maybe some case fans depending if you have a place to mount them. If you run orthos and your temps are fine than it's probably something to do with your hardware performance, if its borderline for the game especially your powersupply, if you are under supplying your rig when you start to stress your GPU it could give you issues.

Unreal 3 should stress it a bit,

does anyone know a program that will stress test the GPU, so he could stress the GPU, ram, and cpu seeing if there is maybe some power problems?

Ok, I will use all of your suggestions as soon as I can. As for other games to test, I don't think any of them are more "spec heavy" than Call of Duty 2. However, I do have Unreal Tournament III (yes, I know that's BRAND new), but that never ran properly on my system since the beginning. Should I still test Unreal Tournament III anyway? If not, other games I have that I guess would be close to CoD2 are Halo: Combat Evolved/Custom Edition (yes, I do have it) and Unreal Tournament 2004. Everything else is much older or doesn't require a lot of specs (such as Roller Coaster Tycoon). Are any of those 2 good?
grndyfn19

Use Halo Custom or UT2004, I really doubt your system is going to cooperate with UTIII (since you have already stated that) as most of those games require similar specs, they should tax your system about the same, and you should be able to tell if it shuts down again.

Unless you can get UTIII to run... then use it, but obviously you will need to turn most of the settings down to even be playable.

As for the any program that stress tests hardware, you need to remember that if it wasn't broken to begin with, a stress test can aggrevate any minor flaw in the hardware making it a potentially bigger problem. That is way stress testing programs always warn you before you run them.