Computer Diagnostics Help

The Duke of Juke
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Hey all, I'm fixing a computer for a friend, but it's turning out to be tough to find the exact cause because of what is happening. Basically her will shut completely down when she is playing a game with no error message before the crash or one during the boot either.

Now I know that since it is crashing during the game, that means the cause is probably one of a few things:

A. The lack of an error message makes me wonder if it's temp related, except her computer is completely clean on the inside and the problem just recently started happening.

B. It could also be a problem with her graphic or sound card, probably graphic.

So for now I've downloaded driver updates for all the hardware that typically fails during gaming, but I'd like to see if any of you know of a good Diagnostics program that might dump such pertinent information to a text file? Something that hopefully includes CPU temp and potential hardware-caused crashes. Plus if you can think of other potential problems, that would help too.

Thanks guys!
 
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It sounds like it is overheating to me personally. What is the specs of her computer?
 
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Does it happen with only that specific game? Also, is her game just completely shutting off? Or her entire computer?

I had a similar problem playing Diablo 3, where my computer would just turn off in the middle of the game. I don't entirely remember what I did to fix it, but I think what I did was limit the FPS. Try limiting it to about 72 at most.

If its just that game specifically, you should probably post at their forum.
 
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Sounds like a heat issue to me

Happened to me once when the fan fell off my GPU.

Happens to my cousin all the time since he dropped his laptop, he now uses a laptop cooling pad which works 90% of the time
 
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If it's not a temperature problem, it's probably the PSU. Most not-so-experienced folks just buy the cheapest there is.
 
The Duke of Juke
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Okay thanks guys. The biggest problem she has is when she plays Oblivion, but it also crashes when she and her son play Angry Birds or torchlight as well. I'll start thinking about what I can do if it is a heat problem.
 
Death from Above
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Open it up and check fans are actually spinning or get a temp monitoring program

That would be the easiest way to look for it :)
 
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Ah it's a female computer owner, does she own cats or a dog ?

Like Deverz said, check the fans and use a tool like SpeedFan.
I'm not sure if these events are getting logged, I think they are, so check out the EventViewer(Start->run 'eventvwr.msc') and check the Sytem logs, perhaps you can find something there.

Also, check the BIOS if the computer has FAN control, if so, force it to 100% and try playing then.
 
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What operating system does she use?

There is an option to enable the blue screen before it crashes.

On W7. Right click "computer" in start menu and select properties ->click "advanced system properties" -> click the advanced tab -> clcik "Settings..." at (startup and Recovery) Deselect the "Automatic restart"
 
The Duke of Juke
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What operating system does she use?

There is an option to enable the blue screen before it crashes.

On W7. Right click "computer" in start menu and select properties ->click "advanced system properties" -> click the advanced tab -> clcik "Settings..." at (startup and Recovery) Deselect the "Automatic restart"
Wow, I was unaware that they did this with Windows 7. Thanks!
 

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