Black Screen of Death

[Medura]

I have a fan underneath and the card havent overheated in ages. It happened a lot when i played oblivion and fallout 3 at the same time earlier, but i easily fixed it that time :P No, it happens sometimes at once when i start the game, and sometimes it wont happen in a week. Normally when it has happened once it will happen many more times that same day.

ah, btw, it happened more often after i changed from windows vista to windows 7, might it be that my computer aint compatible with 64 bit? should i format to 32 bit instead? (got all windows versions legally from 2000 to windows 7, profesional version)

(can the computer shut down because of dust without overheating? and if so, whats best way of getting rid of dust? ive tried pretty many things, and blowing out dust seems to have been the one working the best so far)

[Grit]

To check if your card is overheating, run MSI afterburner (or something similar) in the background and see where the temperature peaks.. before you "black screen"

You still haven't described your issue properly. I asked if your computer is restarting, or shutting down completely, or giving you an actual error screen before rebooting. It may only take a few minutes for a card to overheat.

Your computer is compatible with 64-bit, but that doesn't necessarily mean that downgrading won't help. You should also try turning off sleep mode, as someone else recommended.

[Alexios]

If there is a lot of dust, then it surely will overheat. And if it overheated with Oblivion and Fallout 3, it will even more with this game. If it is very old, and you played a lot on it, it may actually be a hardware wear already. I remember I had to buy a new graphics card for my old computer after playing Oblivion for a year, because my old card started to overheat too much even with those games where it never overheated before, and I started to get freezes and blue screen because of it.
If your computer wasn't compatible with 64-bit systems, you wouldn't be able to install one. It is recommended to use a 64-bit system when you have 4 GB RAM or more. With 2 GB there is no point in installing 64-bit system, as some underdeveloped 32-bit applications tend to be more glitchy in 64-bit systems. But those are more rare with each year. Many viruses still can only infect 32-bit systems, like most porn-banners, which block your system trying to extort money for unblocking. But they are easily removed by any good computer technician most of the time.
By the way, I use 64-bit Windows 7 myself. FFXIV is the only game that makes my GTX570 to heat to 60 C degrees even when I set fans speed to 80%. With any other game it barely heats to 50 C with fans speed below 50%. For comparison, my old GTX260 heated to 60 C and more with most modern games even with fans speed set to 100%.

[Medura]

Hmm, computer was bought august last year, so i dont think of it as that old yet :P I have been thinking about buying/building a stationary computer to, but havent gotten to it, and wont in at least a year i think. Might be the hardwear started to wear after oblivion, yes, as the overheating and suches didnt start before i had played it for a while either. The computer is an acer aspire 7738g.

But the actual problem is that this isnt a overheat, as the computer dont need to be hot at all for it to happen, and also, overheating shows up in error logs, but i havent had any overheats in a months time, last one was when i played ffxiv in bed. And another diferense is, it goes to sleep mode with the problerm i got, overheat shuts it down completely.

hrmf, hard to explain it, but i can say for 90% certanity that its not a overheat. But that also mean im not completely sure, it might be that some component in the computer gets overheated.. any way i can show what the error messages is with some software or anything of when it happens would be great to, maybe you would understand it better to ^^ Also, if i could tweak the computer in some way or enhance it, anything, it would be nice, im willing to try pretty much everything to get completely rid of the screen going black.

Should i try to open the desktop and clean it? I dont know much about opening them, so to be on the safe side, is there any special things i must remember / do? also, thanks for all the help till now, I see we got a great community over here, just wish all were on rabanastre :P


edit:
The computer ain't restarting or shutting down, it just goes to sleep mode, meaning i can look at the error message of the program without even lost internet, about 15 seconds after the error happening. On the other hand, when my computer overheats, i must wait 10 minutes to turn it back on again.

[Elkwood]

Well my GTX 470 cranks upto 80C when playing this game with a fanspeed of 60%, I am thinking I may water cool when I sli because this game is such a strain on the system. I have found ways to drop the heat some but I will nae mention them on this forum.

[Elkwood]

Hmm, computer was bought august last year, so i dont think of it as that old yet :P I have been thinking about buying/building a stationary computer to, but havent gotten to it, and wont in at least a year i think. Might be the hardwear started to wear after oblivion, yes, as the overheating and suches didnt start before i had played it for a while either. The computer is an acer aspire 7738g.

But the actual problem is that this isnt a overheat, as the computer dont need to be hot at all for it to happen, and also, overheating shows up in error logs, but i havent had any overheats in a months time, last one was when i played ffxiv in bed. And another diferense is, it goes to sleep mode with the problerm i got, overheat shuts it down completely.

hrmf, hard to explain it, but i can say for 90% certanity that its not a overheat. But that also mean im not completely sure, it might be that some component in the computer gets overheated.. any way i can show what the error messages is with some software or anything of when it happens would be great to, maybe you would understand it better to ^^ Also, if i could tweak the computer in some way or enhance it, anything, it would be nice, im willing to try pretty much everything to get completely rid of the screen going black.

Should i try to open the desktop and clean it? I dont know much about opening them, so to be on the safe side, is there any special things i must remember / do? also, thanks for all the help till now, I see we got a great community over here, just wish all were on rabanastre :P


edit:
The computer ain't restarting or shutting down, it just goes to sleep mode, meaning i can look at the error message of the program without even lost internet, about 15 seconds after the error happening. On the other hand, when my computer overheats, i must wait 10 minutes to turn it back on again.

well its a computer they attract a lot of dust naturally, if its a store bought computer then the thermal paste on it is crap and needs to be replaced anyways. Get some compressed air and at least blow it out. Also make sure the case has good airflow you should feel the air moving in 1 way up the case then out an exit vent

[Grit]

Go into control panel - power options

Set your laptop to never hibernate or sleep

Test

[Neko_Yanagi]

Go into control panel - power options

Set your laptop to never hibernate or sleep

Test

I have to agree here, often times I had a similar problem. For whatever reason, if you use a gamepad, windows will see you as "away from the computer" until you hit a key on the keyboard. Even if you do not use a gamepad, I would still give this a try. The simplest solutions are often the ones that work

[Medura]

ok, found out that i had to use admin rights to turn of sleep completely, only had hibernate off. Now i wonder what will happen next time, if one comes :P Cant check atm though, as im at work, but later when i home and back from school etc tommorow il do my best to play a long session to check if error comes up. Meanwhile i might try to get out some dust ^^ (is vaccum cleaner dangerous for computers?)

[Grit]

Depends on the vacuum cleaner. A lot of them can produce a fair amount of static electricity, especially if they have bristles at the end.

I've never found a vacuum cleaner (plus attachment) that has enough suction power to get all of the dust out of my PC. Components are too tightly packed together to get the hose in there. But they do exist I'm sure.

And there are small hand-held vacuums that are intended for cleaning electronics. Most of them just suck.