probably hard drive :D

[kirems]

Hi guys. I have been dealing with a problem lately.
When i start some game lets say world of warcraft or resident evil 5 after some time playing, pc blocks.
It does nothing, even the music from background stops. Can't open task manager or minimize.. absolutely nothing.
Sometimes it stops for like 60 secs , and sometimes a have to do a hard restart.
I am using windows 7 64bit. Thought it was an operating system error and reinstaled it 2-3 times and still the same. I even tried windwos xp, and still the same. Fully formated the hard drive but still the same.
My opinion is that my hard drive is probably dying but still i like to hear some other opinions for other possible problems.

PC:
motherboard: asus m2n 430mcp
Amd Athlon x2 4400+
4gb ddr2 ram 667mhz,
ge force 8600gt-512mb
wester digital 250gb.


Thank you.

[peterb]

I'd run memtest first to make sure that your memory isn't playing up, then I'd look at cooling and the PSU. Finally I'd look at the hard drive, unless you have any other reason for suspecting that item. If you have, get the manufacturer's diagnstic tools and run those. But the fact that it only happens with games (is that true - you didn't mention other apps) suggests to me that it isn't a hard drive issue.

[this_is_gav]

I'd wager on the graphics card overheating or the PSU struggling, even if WoW apparently isn't the most demanding of games.

You wouldn't expect a hard drive to cause this problem - not when gaming. It would be more random, and if it wasn't random (it was a particularly block of sectors for instance), they would be marked as faulty when you reformatted the drive, and when you reinstalled the OS, different files would be placed at different points on the hard drive.

[watforddude]

I had the same problem this was becuase i accidently turned the GPU fan to 0% and i (it had time to cool down) caught the temp at 102c, turned the fan back up to 55% and it has not happened since - so maybe like over people have said it indeed is a overheating issue.