Computer Restarting - Help

[Capital]

I am having some computer issues that I thought a few of you may be able to shed some ideas. My computer is restarting (screen goes black and then begins restarting process) within 10 seconds of launching some games. One may be more graphics intensive - Guild Wars 2 - but the other is not all - King's Bounty.

It's not every time - maybe 30% of the time the restart happens. If I can get by the initial 10 seconds of gameplay - the game will play "forever" without a restart.

I'm running Windows 7 with plenty of RAM and nvidia 285 GTX video card so that shouldn't be problem. I just fomatted my hard drive this weekend and reinstalled Windows 7. I was able to launch these games 3 out of 4 times (1 restart).

I likely will take the machine into a shop and see if they have any ideas but looking for any ideas here before I do that.

Any ideas on what may be causing these restarts - crashing Windows 7 1 out of 3 attempts is not good.

[gstelmack]

Heat, likely the graphics card is overheating, maybe the CPU. Start by blowing all the dust out of the case.

[Capital]

The last time I had the case open, which was about 6 months ago, there was not a lot of dust. That being said, I guess its possible so I'll check the dust later today.

[Blackadar]

Heat, likely the graphics card is overheating, maybe the CPU. Start by blowing all the dust out of the case.

I agree that this is symptomatic of a heat issue, but it could be a few other things. Have you checked your C:\WINDOWS\Minidump files? Look to see if one of your device drivers like stdriver32.sys is a problem. Also, check your RAM with memtest.

[MizzouRah]

I suspect video card 1st, then power supply.

[sterlingice]

I'm thinking graphics card, too- tho maybe eliminate the driver before trying to go after actual card flaw (such as bad memory or overheating). Try to drag the settings down to the lowest level and see if you still have problems.

SI

[Capital]

Well, very minor dust inside the PC and blew out remaining dust I could see. After I did that, I hoped on the internet to check out this site and as soon as this page loaded, windows crashed...automatic restart.

I'm now thinking my power supply is breaking down. I could understand needing more power to run games through the video card, but just running a browser...no warning...just crash...

Was going to try Blackadar's suggestion on device drivers, but I'm not great with a C prompt...

[MizzouRah]

That could still be video. Will it work in safe mode?

[Capital]

Well...I ended up taking the machine to a repair shop and they ran some diagnostic tools. It ended up that my power supply was periodically surging causing the computer to shut down. So, they replaced it.

Also, even though I blew out the dust from the machine, the inside of the graphics card case had about 40% dust. Not enough to cause instant crashes like I was seeing but certainly could cause some issues down the road.

Thanks for all of your input.