I'm having a problem with games exiting back out to the desktop after 20 minutes or so of play. Everything is running fine during the short time before it closes, and i'm only having the issue on games. All other programs i have installed are running very smoothly.....even ones that require a little cpu horsepower. Does anyone know what could be causing this problem??

sounds to me like....temp issues....whats the spec of your machine

Do you have any records in the Event Log Viewer relating to the problem? It could be RAM, video card, bad/corrupt drivers. Your card could be overheating, but you'd notice artifacts or reduced frame rate if that was the case. What are your temperatures? Test your RAM with Memtest to rule it out and reinstall / update your chipset and video drivers.

I checked the event log, and the majority of the crashes weren't in there. Most of the time, an error message doesn't even appear. I'm running an AMD Athlon 2700+, 1GB DDR RAM, Radeon 9250 128MB Video Card, Sound Blaster Audigy SE....i don't really think overheating is the problem, the programs run fine up until the exit. I'm at a loss on this one. I re-installed the OS (windows xp pro service pack 2) and updated the drivers....still same problem.

Did you try reinstalling or updating your DirectX?

If the problem persists, its probably got to do with your video card. Or see if there is any software conflicting with it, like your anti virus or whatever.

ok do this, search the internet for a program called end it all, run the software and play a game, and time how long it takes for it to drop out. because im certain it is a overheating problem my ati 9000 had that problem i could play solitare all day, as soon as i loaded NFS played for about 20 mins to half and hour, it would come out!!

End-It-All is just a 3rd party process manager. I doubt the processes running in the background are his problem because Windows warns you if you're low on virtual memory before the game crashes. He's have to either have a small page file or play a game like Battlefield 2 which eats 1GB easily.
ratiug, make sure you don't have anything else open while the game is running (for troubleshooting purposes). If you want to control the background processes, just use Task Manager (CTRL+SHIFT+ESC) and Start > Run > msconfig > StartUp.

This would occur with the SIMS2 sometimes and other times would be where there is something missing or not installed correctly.

About other programs I suggest stopping any unwanted process that starts up on the computer.


it might be memory problem.

I'm starting to think it must be an overheating problem. I've tried pretty much everything else mentioned as far as updates and reinstalls...with no luck. So would getting a new video card (not like i don't need one anyways) solve the problem?

Did you test your RAM like I recommended in the first post?
How about checking your temperatures with SpeedFan?
Let's not jump the gun here...

do all that jeremy said.

your video card does suck... that may be a problem but i really think its overheating too.

Where are memtest and speedfan?

well for temps use this
http://www.majorgeeks.com/NextSensor_d4988.html

its a nice standalone program, you may have to set ur mobo on the control tab

Are you incapable of using Google? C'mon now... if they were hard to find I would provide the links, but I suppose I need to anyway...
Download Ultimate BootCD v3.4 which contains MemTest. Burn it to a CD and boot to it. Either make sure your boot priority has CD/DVD-ROM set before Hard Disk or press F8 to get into the advanced boot options. Let MemTest run a full pass, or just run it overnight to allow multiple passes. If you have even 1 error, you'll need new RAM. If this happens and you're using two sticks of RAM, take one out and scan again to see which stick is bad. If your PC is under warranty, you should be able to get a free RAM replacement. If not, it won't be that expensive.

SpeedFan. Just choose a mirror. Just take a screenshot of the window once it displays your temperatures and provide us with it. One thing though, hold down on the ALT key before you press the Print Screen button to capture only SpeedFan while it's the active window. Save it as .PNG in Paint or whatever image viewer/editor you use.

Edit - Just to let you know ahead of time, higher temperatures are common with video cards in particular. While SpeedFan may not be totally accurate, if your card is 65C or more, then it's time to think about getting a compatible Silencer for it. If it has passive cooling (only a heatsink and no fan) then you should get a Silencer which is designed to both cool the GPU and blow the warm air out the rear of the case. If it does have a fan on it, it may be clogged with dust. If so, then your entire inside-case may need a thorough cleaning. Get a can of compressed air (do not use a vacuum cleaner!), take it outside, and spray the holy bejesus out of it. Take off the front panel and get in there also. Depending on the case, lots of dust can get clogged everywhere in there. I've seen some nasty looking nests in some PCs in the past. It would be best to provide pictures of your case and inside of it. If you can, that would be great.

ya jeremy is right again. even with fan filters on my case, my video card heatsink still gets clogged with dust, so every now and then i take it out of the case and spray it to hell.