Random Restart

[Tres]

Hi everyone. I'm just having this frequent problem of my computer restarting while I'm in the middle of playing FFXI. I'm running on pretty much bare minimum specs and I'm guessing that is why the problem is occuring.

Processor: 1.5 GHz
Memory: 256 MB RAM
Video Card: ATI Radeon 7200 64 MB
OS: Windows XP Professional

[drizzt827]

You might want to jack up your RAM...that's the only problem I see as far as specs. I've got a 1.0 GHz Dell 8100 laptop with 32 MB Vid, and 512MB of RAM. And it's working just fine.

You might also want to close/quit any background running programs on your computer to minimize memory usage on your system so it can be better spent on running the game.

[mysqueek]

I have the same problem and my computer has very high specs;
GHz:3.0
RAM: 736MB
HD: 160GB
OS: WinXP Home

its not the specs, i think it is the newest update.

[Medalink]

Run Antivirus Software and Spyware Removers. Its either a BIOS problem from a recent update (Like a 1% chance...) or a virus (99% chance).

Medalink

P.s The whole BIOS thing was to give people hope that its not a virus.

[sevenpointflaw]

Random reboots can also occure from a power supply going bad, a surge protector that has had its fuse blown, video card problems (more of an nVidia thing than a ATI thing though), and of course from windows just being windows.

Double check you have all the latest driver versions for your network, sound, and video cards. Sometimes that helps.

[ryuno]

The computer restarting means that there was a fatal error (or stop error). Windows restarts the pc automatically by default on any such error.

To stop this (and this wont damage your pc dont worry).

Right click My Computer. Goto Advanced, and theres a button there which is something like Startup and Recovery. Go into there, and you should see some stuff about boot, and critical failiures and stuff.

What you are looking for is the tick box that says Auto restart on system failure. UNTICK that box, and restart your pc.

Now the next time you get an error, you should see a blue screen instead of the pc restarting. There will be aload of uselss crap, but there will be 1 or 2 lines there which should display an error, and most likely something like the name of a dll file or something. This can usually help track down your problem. I say usually, as sometimes it doesn't really help at all.

If your pc still restarts after unticking that box, then that means its a hardware problem. Most likely your power supply or maybe your motherboard. If this is the problem, then unfortunatly its gona be a bit harder to track down the problem.

Good Luck!

[mysqueek]

I'll give that a try tonight and let you know what happens, thanks for the advice Ryuno

[Eelian]

also might want to check for over heating mine used to do it all the time while playing SWG and i had to take side off comp and put a big fan there blowing on the cpu

[mysqueek]

I mananged to fix the problem, it was infact the settings for the textures were too powerful for my graphics card to handle, just change the settings and it works like a charm!