Windows Vista Crash Problems

Hey, this is my first time posting on this site and I could use everyone's and anyone's help or suggestions. I have a little problem which has started to occur more frequently recently. The problem is my computer crashes or just freezes while playing games. These are not blue screen crashes, the screen just goes black or some random color. It even goes black with lines running down the screen sometimes that are extremely thin and are usually a random color as well. I have a few ideas what the problem might be but I'm not a computer expert so I don't want to do anything without asking for someone's help. Firstly, it could be a video card problem but I am hesitant to think so since about a month and a half ago my old nVidia GeForce 9800GX2 died on me. I have since replaced it with a ATI Radeon HD 5750 video card. Thus the card is relatively new and I don't think it could already be broken. Furthermore these crashes only occur while I'm playing games. They never occur while I am surfing the web or using any application other than a game. Secondly I read that it could be a power supply issue but when I was buying my card from Dell the technician told me that my power supply unit had enough energy to run my new video card. Now there is the possibility that they mixed something up and gave me a card that drains to much power but again it is highly unlikely I would think. Another thing I read about was overheating. It is possible that my system is overheating but whenever I think about this it doesn't make sense to me. My old video card ran fine for 2 year at temperature of 70-80 degrees Celsius. However, my new card runs at around 45-50 degrees Celsius. This is why i don't think there could possibly be an overheating problem with my computer since it ran fine for almsot 2 years at 70-80 degrees Celsius and is now running 20-30 degrees cooler. These are some ideas I have come up with but really I have no idea why it keeps happening. I have only encountered the crash while playing Starcraft 2 and World of Warcraft. However I have only experienced the World of Warcraft crash once or twice I believe and it was way back when I first got this card. Where as the Starcraft 2 crashes started off randomly as well but became more frequent. They have become so frequent that in the last 3 days I have experienced more than 6 crashes while trying to play the game. Now the crashes occurred while playing a specific game in starcraft 2(custom game), I'm not sure if any of this helps but it would be great if anyone could help me figure this out I really don't know what to do and need someone's help. Please help me out if you can, even if it's just a little. Thx

Since it is only on a few games, it sounds like these games are either power hungry or need a good graphics card.

Go to the device manager and look for any yellow warning posters, indicating that a driver or the card is defective. Then make sure that you have the most up to date driver.

Also take the windows memory diagnostic test, although not the most accurate, I do not think that memtest86 is warranted at this point.

Hey thx for the reply, firstly my graphics card is ATI Radeon HD 5750 with 1024MB. Starcraft 2 requires a minimum graphics card of 128MB PCIe NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT and a recommended card with 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX. So I think I'm good on the graphics card front but if I'm not please let me know. But also when I first got Starcraft 2 I was playing on the very highest settings and it was fine, only after some online games did I turn down the video settings so that I would have less lag. And now I play on the very lowest settings which require at least 128MB of video card space. Also I have 4GB of RAMM installed not sure if that helps. But generally my computer is okay with playing games at their fullest graphics since it's a gaming computer. Which is why I'm kinda confused why Starcraft 2 is crashing on me when i have everything set to lthe very lowest possible on the video settings in game. Thx for your reply again.

Your card is fine for the game (and here comes the big but) but
could be defective
could need to be reseated
could be the driver to the card

and then again
The problem could be not related to the card at all. I can only go by what you tell me.
All I really know is the problem that can have 100 causes
Game makes computer overheat
memory
defective game
It has to trial and error.
So lets start with the card as that is what you mentioned and you know more about your situation than me.

Check the driver and check for those yellow posters.

Try this next time the game crashes, go to bottom task bar, right click and bring up task manager
Then under the process tab find the game, right click and then dump report, If there is one, you can post it and we will have a lot of information.

Alright so first off I did the memory test you suggested earlier and the results are that I have no memory problems. Secondly I checked for driver updates and I actually had one. I thought I didn't have any but I missed this one or confused it for an older version. I have installed the update and it might very well be the source of all this since I know Starcraft 2 is very driver picky. When I first installed the game my drivers were not up to date and it crashed because of that so hopefully this fixes that. Also I checked my device manager and there were no yellow posters anywhere.

I'm not sure if the driver update will fix things but I will have to play the game for a bit to see. The game usually crashed after about an hour of game play so I will test to see if it works now. If not than I guess we keep going with the trouble shooting. And thank you again richc46 if it wasn't for your reminders I wouldn't have remembered my driver update. So lets hope everything works out.

My fingers are crossed, too.

If it works fine. If not get the new driver using this procedure. Windows update does not always give you the best or most current. They give you one fits all.

How to Find Drivers
search Google for the name of the driver
- compare the Google results with what's installed on your system to figure out which device/program it belongs to
- visit the web site of the manufacturer of the hardware/program to get the latest drivers (DON'T use Windows Update or the Update driver function of Device Manager).
- if there are difficulties in locating them, post back with questions and someone - will help you search Google for the name of the driver
- compare the Google results with what's installed on your system to figure out which device/program it belongs to
- - if there are difficulties in locating them, post back with questions and someone will try and help you locate the appropriate program.
- - The most common drivers are listed on this page: Driver Reference
- - Driver manufacturer links are on this page: Drivers and Downloads
To remove any left over driver remnants, especially from graphics cards, use driver sweeper Guru3D - Driver Sweeper

Alright sorry about the delay but I recently got to test if the new drivers worked. First off I thought they worked since I was able to play starcraft 2 without any crashing problems. But than today I actually got to play for a little while and in the middle of a game my screen just went orange with lines running down it. Forcing me to hold the power button like usual to shut it down and start it back up.

I think the new drivers helped but I'm still getting this crash problem. At this point I am really lost as to what I should or can do to resolve this issue.

Also I'm not sure how to create a dump file for this game since when the crash happens I have to shut down my computer and restart it to have it working functionally. The problem is after the restart the game is no longer in the task manager since it is not running. I'm not sure if I should start the game up and than start up task manager to create a dump file or is it just impossible to create a dump file for this situation?

Lets try this:
Start the game then ask for dump file. When you are notified or after the next problem. Check to see if one was created.

Alright so i created a dump file but I'm a little confused as to how this works. Is the dump file there so that when the next crash happens it dumps the information about the dump into the specific file that it created so I can review it later? Or should there already be something in the dump file? I ask because I tried to open the dump file but could not open it right now or i might have been opening it wrong.

The dump file is just that, should be the cause of the last problem.

If you received a notice, it is ready to be removed.

Alright so when i created the dump file the task manager gave me a location where the dump file would be saved. I am having trouble opening the file though. Everytime I type in the location in the computer tab of the start menu it says "Windows cannot open this file:
file: SC2.DMP" and than asks me to search for a program to open it with. Any solutions on how to get this file over to you so you can see it?

Its like a James Bond message, you cant read it without special software installed. Zip it up to us we can read it together.

Alright i created a zip folder with the file inside, im just a little confused on how to send it to you.

Thse are the instructions for BSOD. It should be the same for you, except the location of the dumps.

Everything that I see I will show you in a post. If I can help solve it, remains to be seen.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/83172-dump-files-upload-seven-forums.html

Upload to Vista. LOL

Alright so I checked how to upload it but from what I'm seeing here my file size is 138MB so I will have to upload it to rapidshare or megaupload.

zip it

Alright so I have finished uploading the file to rapishare. Sorry for the wait took a while to upload. Quick question tho do I export the file to this site or just leave it on rapidshare? Sorry I have never done this before so it's new for me.

The best way to post it is to just use zip. It is compressed and all members are familiar with it. Dont need rapidshare, put in a zip file.

This tells you how
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/83172-dump-files-upload-seven-forums.html

I see what your saying but I already zipped the file and it is still 138MB. The upload limit for zipped files is 10MB for this site so I thought I had to use rapidshare or megaupload. I'm not sure though maybe I did something wrong.