I need advice, My computer is restarting on me during gaming... (more info inside, please help!)

[CharrHearted]

Ok, I'm not a very tech intelligent guy, a tiny bit, but not a lot. I've had my gaming setup for about 4-5 years, no problems until October last year.

I had been experiencing a certain problem. When playing games my computer would suddenly restart itself after a few minutes depending on the product. I assumed this was a power source problem and got help to install a brand new power cable/box/thing. This solved my problems for about a month or so perhaps before december when the problems kicked in once again.

Only now, My computer freezes when I get to my desktop, and the only way I have functionality of my lifesupport child computer here is by F8'ing on startup and starting it up in recovery mode and safe.

When I go to play games, I get in about a few minutes before my computer restarts itself once again.

Something tells me it's my computers time to die, I need you guys to help me with this and what setup you could recommend thats both cheap and built to last.

My computer isn't that good, it's got a very great graphics card but as far as i'm concerned everything else is probably less than subpar.

It's a crappy vista
32 bit operating system
4 GB ram
Intel core 2 quad. CPU Q8200
2.33 GHz 2.34 GHz
A rating of 4.1

I hope you can help.

 

[SnowyGamester]

No need to take it out the back and put a bullet in it yet, chances are the problem is a single faulty component. When you say it restarts, does it immediately cut out and reboot, or do you get a blue screen? Is the replacement power supply powerful enough to adequately support the graphics card? Without much information it's hard to give anything close to a definitive answer to the problem...could be a driver related issue, perhaps an overheating GPU (considering the circumstances this seems a likely candidate). Perhaps take out or disable your graphics card and try the onboard graphics if there is any. If your graphics card is fairly new and it has faulted you may be able to claim warranty if that's the problem.

 

[AWAR]

got help to install a brand new power cable/box/thing. This solved my problems for about a month or so perhaps before december when the problems kicked in once again.

You mean one of

Spoiler: these

or

Spoiler: this

Random restarts are most likely caused by broken PSUs. I need more information about the freezes though. Could be the temperatures, the gpu or a different issue altogether.

Check your temperatures with this.

 

[TheColdHeart]

May not be the same but I had a slightly similar issue with an old pc. During gameplay my pc would suddenly die then restart. I thought it might have been the power but it turned out the graphics card fan had stopped spinning and the card was overheating and causing the whole thing to crash.

 

[wurrble182]

how dusty is the inside of your computer? if it's lined with crud your comp could simply be constantly overheating. this happens to me all the time and does the same things you describe, randomly restarting, especially after a short time gaming. clean the living crap out of its innards, espec the heat sinks, use a can of compressed air if need-be. it seems like such a minor thing to overlook but a simple spring-cleaning every now and then extends the life of all the components in there immeasurably.

 

[Total LOLige]

It could be a bios issue it can't hurt to try(unless you do it wrong), try updating and see if that fixes it. I had/have a similar problem to you, mine would just black screen and hard hang. Uninstalling my GPU drivers and using the generic windows ones stopped it for a while, until it broke again. Then I tried installing a different OS(Windows 8) that worked for abit then stopped, weird though because it only does it on Football Manager games which aren't exactly demanding. As said above it might be GPU related so "clean the crap out of it" if that fails replace it.

 

[Savo]

Nobody's mentioned this yet, so I might as well. Have you checked your memory? I had problems with my comp resetting during games until it finally got to where I couldn't even use the computer anymore. I took out one of my sticks of ram and it turned out it was busted. After I took out the offending piece of RAM, I never had another problem again.