LFS have a tendency to crash my computer. I have no idea why, other games much more demanding (like BF2) seems to have no problems at all.

Whenever I run LFS, everything is very smooth, until the computer hangs for a second, the speakers crackle and my computer reboots.

Has anyone ever had any problems like this?
I have reinstalled my gfx drivers, updated WinXP, updated my soundcard, have the latest drivers for my DFP wheel. I have reinstalled LFS two times, but that didn't fix any problems either.

I've tried to turn off all other applications like antivirus-programs, messengers and such. I have uninstalled drivers for other game controllers and my USB harddrive, but nothing seems to make LFS stable

The only thing that I am aware of that is not 100% is my system harddrive where my S.M.A.R.T. client says that the disc might have an error, but haven't had any other crashes due to this and all my discs are defragged and have at least 10% of the space free.

My setup:
Intel P4 650 3.4GHz
1.5GB RAM
WinXP pro SP2
ATI X850XT (Catalyst 6.3)
Soundblaster Audigy 2 zs

Anything in \Windows\Minidump ?
BIOS set to auto shutdown on temperature?
Tried running any memory tests for long periods of time?

Narrow it down somehow.

I think this is a problem related to your computer, and not a bug.

try those tools to check your hardware
http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=46945#post46945

You can of course use other programs, also mainstream stuff like 3dmark, but it will not go that far to the limit. But if 3dmark runs 2 hours, the system should also be capable of LFS.

ah, yeah. sorry, wroing forum.

no worries, mods can move it

Often its also a good idea to unplug all "unneccesary" hardware, like usb mouse/wheel/external drives etc.

Yeah. I found an old HD, will install windows on that one plus the neccesities for running LFS and see if that works.
I have a USB keyboard & mouse so getting rid of all USBdevices is tricky

edit: I'll try running 3Dmark and the other apps on the other page as well, thanks for the tip

Mouse and keyboard should work, it's not too bad if you dont have a PS2 mouse for example.
I hope you can find the problem.

There's not really any reason to remove anything from a well sorted pc, you should be able to run lfs or anything else for that matter with your usb webcam, usb grill and 12 usb gamepads connected. I generally dislike this sort of advice, remove your joystick for no reason, turn off your antivirus for no reason, etc.

Well if you had looked around here, you would have noticed that this can be indeed a problem, specially wheel + mouse.
If you think that your computer is running perfectly, I can show you that it isnt. Not computer runs at 100%

That's not the point, the point is it shouldn't be a problem, and on 99% of PC's it probably isn't. This kind of advice creates myths, and makes 3000 people turn off Antivirus product A when it's only Antivirus product B that has any issues, or unplug an USB gadget, when it's only a problem on Manufacturer's USB chip.

Well. I removed all of it and it did no difference. Can't be arsed to reinstall a temporary system. Perhaps I should see if I am able to run LFS in safe mode and see if that works.

Damn really, I was supposed to participate in a race tomorrow

Quote from filur :

Anything in \Windows\Minidump ?

Yeah, hm, what am I supposed to do with that?

Edit: So this could be temperature-related. Weird, but I'll try and log the temps while playing.
Cooling shouldn't be a problem since I have good coolers and no overclocking.

Quote from filur :

There's not really any reason to remove anything from a well sorted pc...

Well, obviously a pc that reboots by itself is not well sorted.

ca6: what I would do first is run prime95 for a few hours and keep track of the CPU temperature using speedfan. If prime doesn't report any errors your problem is most likely with the graphics card.

What CPU temperature are you reaching?
Have you reinstalled your graphics drivers after using drivercleaner?
Have you checked eventlog? (translation from German)
Have you disabled automatic reboots? (in Control Panel/System somewhere)

I am currently downloading this cd http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ and I hope I will find what's wrong with my system using it.

I'll try to remove my old drivers with drivercleaner as well, thanks for the tip

My CPU is ideling at just below 60C, unsure how hot it gets while gaming.

I have new coolers on both my CPU and my GFXcard, I guess something could've gone wrong, but since it was a couple of months since I did the modification I think I should've encountered theese problems before since I use this computer for digital sculpting as well as gaming.

I'll remove auto-reboot too.

Quote from J.B. :

Well, obviously a pc that reboots by itself is not well sorted.

And by randomly trying anything and everything it never will be, by trying to actually figure out what the problem is, it might be.

Quote from ca6. :

Yeah, hm, what am I supposed to do with that?

Minidumps can be used to find out exactly what is causing an error, as long as the error is "catchable" by Windows, if your PC reboots by BIOS/temperature or uncatchable hardware failure there will be no minidump. The files contains important extracts from RAM as it was the time the error occured. If you google for "minidump", you'll find a bunch of guides on how to use the dumps for finding the cause of an error, and if you can't be bothered yourself i even think you can find someone who can do it for you, it's only a 64kb file.

If you have minidumps, delete them, run lfs until it crashes again and see if you've got a new minidump generated. If there's no new file, the error is outside the grasp of windows, and is more likely BIOS/hardware related.

Edit: i'd say 60C at idle is pretty hot, my celeron runs at 3,04GHz, ~40C idle, ~55C at 100%.

My CPU ran even hotter with the standard cooler so I don't think this is the issue. I'll have to do the mprime+fanspeed test though. The RAM initially seems to be ok, ran through a full memtest86 and no errors. Should leave it running for a couple of hours perhaps.

I get minidumps when the game crashes, so hopefully it's a windows-error.

*

Edit: I am running Prime95 torture right now, seems like the CPU temp is a steady 63 (occasional dip to 62). I'll keep running this test during the night and see if any problems occur. Thanks again guys

Since you're getting minidumps on lfs crashing, your problem will (most probably) be pointed out in the minidump, no need to run prime95 etc.

I got a new crash, which lead to a bluescreen that said multiple_irp_complete_request. I guess this is driver-related, but I have all the recent drivers for my DFP so I don't really know what's wrong. I guess reinstalling the drivers again is the first thing to test. And see if I can find anything in the dump-file.

bluescreens are mostly a read/write error in the memory or on the hard drive

I removed all of my gamingdrivers and ran an utility to clear out the registry, then I removed the BUSdrivers and reinstalled the wingman 4.60-drivers and everything seems to be working now. Thanks for the help guys!

Quote from ORION :

bluescreens are mostly a read/write error in the memory or on the hard drive

No.

Quote :

A blue screen of death occurs when the kernel or a driver running in kernel mode, encounters an error from which it cannot recover.

With the cause/solution often being only a few google's away, using the information from the bluescreen message.

Quote from filur :

No.

True, but I have never experienced any other ones (in WinXP) than errors caused by faulty ram/drives. Thus I wrote "mostly". mostly != always

But you are right, the bluescreen isnt caused by the error itself, the error is the reason why a driver will crash. Or rather, why the system will reboot in order to prevent big mess

Of course there are many other reasons why a driver can cause an error, but they happen by far not as often as ram problems. When the system cant find the partition where it's supposed to be installed, you can also get a bluescreens afaik (I only had some plain white-on-black messages complaining a bout missing files so far). In Windows9x this can for example be caused by dlls.