Allright, I need the services of one of you computer nerds...

amulford

I have this POS Dell. I am running Windows Vista, not sure of the version.

Anywho, I play this online game, but this POS keeps crashing. It's only with the game. I have pared down the services as much as I dare to conserve resources, but it keeps crashing.

I've found out that Windows Media Player keeps starting up in the background and using MASSIVE amounts of resources. I have it shut down, or so I thought. WTF do I do now?

I am going to build a new rig VERY soon. Come to find out, this one (which was supposed to be bad ****) is just barely mediocre with some really crappy parts. (F#CK DELL...) I am going to do a bad **** gaming rig, but I have to use this one for the time being.

Any help would be GREATLY APPRECIATED. Please use hairy knuckle terms, I ain't THAT saavy, ya know???

cokewithvanilla

It might help to have a crash dump, or at least an error message. What's the process called that keeps running by itself?

edit: i guess I should have asked what you mean by crash... like Error: APPCRASH (game shutting down) or like blue screen?

bobman1235

Does Windows Media Player start up automatically when you fire up the game? That's odd.

Really, the system shouldn't blue screen just because something is using a lot of resources. Windows should be smart enough to deal with that (it would run ridiculously slow, but not crash). Crashing like that is USUALLY a bad piece of hardware or a bad driver. In your case, since this is the ONLY thing that crashes, I'd guess it's something to do with the video card. Big fancy games often use properties of your video card taht aren't used in day-to-day operation, which would be why ONLy this game crashes.

So the things taht are easy that I would try first :
1. Uninstall and reinstall the driver for the video card.
2. Uninstall and reinstall DirectX or OpenGL, and make sure you're using the most recent version.

AudioGenics

what is the Online Game ?

exalted512

AudioGenics wrote: »

what is the Online Game ?

Sounds to me like its not an 'online game'...Windows Media Player...massive amount of resources...sounds like he has too many **** windows open at once
-Cody

MacLeod

What kind if video card do you have or do you even have one? How much RAM and what CPU?

Having your compy crash only when playing a game is making me think you're just overwhelming your rig. Either the video card is getting choked up or you don't have enough RAM to hold a game. If you only have 2GB or RAM or if you're using an Intel Pentium 2, you're gonna need to upgrade.

ryanjoachim

exalted512 wrote: »

Sounds to me like its not an 'online game'...Windows Media Player...massive amount of resources...sounds like he has too many **** windows open at once
-Cody

If WMP continues to open whenever he starts the game, chances are it's not a legit game (meaning the game itself is screwy). No game should be executing commands outside of its programming, and it certainly shouldn't be starting programs all by itself.

My guess is that the game was badly programmed and is causing issues with memory or your registry.

ryanjoachim

MacLeod wrote: »

What kind if video card do you have or do you even have one? How much RAM and what CPU?

Having your compy crash only when playing a game is making me think you're just overwhelming your rig. Either the video card is getting choked up or you don't have enough RAM to hold a game. If you only have 2GB or RAM or if you're using an Intel Pentium 2, you're gonna need to upgrade.

Running out of memory (video or otherwise) shouldn't cause his computer to reboot. Microsoft is using virtual memory for that exact reason. The computer would slow way down, but should otherwise be fine.

Now, if the program is over-taxing his video card or CPU, I could see heat becoming an issue. If the video card or CPU overheats, then you'll definitely start seeing some BSODs or random reboots.

amulford

No, WMP starts whether the game is on or not. Regardless... I'm not home now, but when I get home, I will check out what Task Manager says. I bet it's some ridiculous amount.

Besides, I have it disabled in my administrative tools.

The game is called Aces High, and it is a WWII combat flight MMO sim. It can get resource intensive, too, which is why I tried to trim down the unecessary services Vista turns on.

As far as CPU and video card, here is an excerpt from my DXDiag file:

System Information

---

Time of this report: 3/17/2011, 17:19:59
Machine name: ANTHONYRMULF-PC
Operating System: Windows Vista? Home Premium (6.0, Build 6002) Service Pack 2 (6002.vistasp2_gdr.101014-0432)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: Dell Inc.
System Model: MXP061
BIOS: Phoenix ROM BIOS PLUS Version 1.10 A06
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU T5600 @ 1.83GHz (2 CPUs), ~1.8GHz
Memory: 3326MB RAM
Page File: 861MB used, 5428MB available
Windows Dir: C:\Windows
DirectX Version: DirectX 11
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 7.00.6002.18107 32bit Unicode

And for the Video Card:

---

Display Devices

---

Card name: ATI MOBILITY RADEON X1800
Manufacturer: ATI Technologies Inc.
Chip type: ATI Radeon Graphics Processor (0x7102)
DAC type: Internal DAC(400MHz)
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_7102&SUBSYS_200A1028&REV_00
Display Memory: 1278 MB
Dedicated Memory: 254 MB
Shared Memory: 1023 MB
Current Mode: 1680 x 1050 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Monitor: Generic PnP Monitor
Driver Name: atiumdag.dll,atiumdva.dat,atitmmxx.dll
Driver Version: 7.14.0010.0489 (English)
DDI Version: 9Ex
BGRA Supported: Yes
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Driver Date/Size: 3/14/2007 18:42:50, 2759168 bytes
WHQL Logo'd: Yes
WHQL Date Stamp:
Device Identifier: {D7B71EE2-3242-11CF-7172-0000A1C2CA35}
Vendor ID: 0x1002
Device ID: 0x7102
SubSys ID: 0x200A1028
Revision ID: 0x0000
Revision ID: 0x0000
Video Accel: ModeMPEG2_A ModeMPEG2_C

I know it ain't much. But that's Dell for you. Trust me, I will NEVER buy another effin Dell...

ryanjoachim

Don't know why you're ripping on your dell. The specs are actually decent. Core2Duo is a decent processor, and 1GB of ram on your vid card is good, even by today's standards.

Looking at the dxdiag, it looks like you're using a 32-bit OS with 4GB of ram. If that's the case, you're missing out on the other 1GB of ram because the OS is only seeing 3GB of it.
That doesn't really mean anything for the issue you're having, but if resources are getting scarce, the extra 1GB you're missing could be a life-saver.

bobman1235

I stand behind me "reinstall the video driver, reinstall DirectX" solution.

cokewithvanilla

Mobility radeon? this a laptop?

What exactly do you mean by "crash" it would help to know. If it's a BSOD, you will have a general error which will quickly point you in the direction of the problem. As bobman mentioned, BSODs are generally hardware or driver related.

BlueFox

amulford wrote: »

Anywho, I play this online game, but this POS keeps crashing. It's only with the game.

Patient: Doctor, it hurts when I do this.

Doctor: Well, don't do that.

ryanjoachim

If WMP starts up randomly all the time, chances are you've got something in the background that is starting it. Could be a rogue program, malware, virus, etc, etc. I'd download Malwarebytes, Adaware, and a good AV program (Microsoft Security Essentials is a great one).

After you get through all those, download CCleaner and run both the "crap" cleaner portion and the registry cleaner portion. The last one is optional, but if you've never done it before chances are you've got a lot of dead and useless entries sitting there doing nothing.

cokewithvanilla

Be careful with CCleaner. Often times, it does more harm than good.

MacLeod

1680x1050 is the sweet spot for GPU and CPU usage. Lower than that and your CPU is used a lot more and can limit performance easier. Over that and it pulls more from the GPU and its easier to become GPU limited So a 1.8 GHz processor with that video card at is gonna run out of gas pretty quick at 1680x1050 so I'm gonna stand by my first thought that you're rig is simply too underpowered. Try dropping the resolution down to something like 1024x768 and set the graphics settings to their lowest settings. If it runs fine, you know you need more muscle under the hood.

One thing tho, are you using an external monitor? I don't know laptops that well but I didn't think their monitors went that high as that's a 22" screen.

Overheating would be my 2nd guess.

ryanjoachim

cokewithvanilla wrote: »

Be careful with CCleaner. Often times, it does more harm than good.

I've never seen nor heard of CCleaner doing any harm with the default settings. Not saying it hasn't happened...just that I've never had an issue, or had an issue when using it on other people's computers. CCleaner also does a really good job of uninstalling software completely, without leaving bits and pieces behind like programs tend to do.

On3s&Z3r0s

ryanjoachim wrote: »

Don't know why you're ripping on your dell. The specs are actually decent. Core2Duo is a decent processor, and 1GB of ram on your vid card is good, even by today's standards.

Looking at the dxdiag, it looks like you're using a 32-bit OS with 4GB of ram. If that's the case, you're missing out on the other 1GB of ram because the OS is only seeing 3GB of it.
That doesn't really mean anything for the issue you're having, but if resources are getting scarce, the extra 1GB you're missing could be a life-saver.

I don't think the video card has 1GB of ram. The card has 256MB and is borrowing another gig of system ram as "Shared Memory". The 32Bit OS could sees the whole 4gigs, it's just using some of it for video processing. I agree that Dell doesn't make great gaming/multimedia laptops. I've had a couple, and if they don't have mechanical problems they are sluggish and glitchy cause Dell uses cheap video cards. The Alienware brand is a different story. Anyway, this does sound like a driver problem. The WMP problem is weird but probably unrelated.

ryanjoachim

MacLeod wrote: »

1680x1050 is the sweet spot for GPU and CPU usage. Lower than that and your CPU is used a lot more and can limit performance easier. Over that and it pulls more from the GPU and its easier to become GPU limited So a 1.8 GHz processor with that video card at is gonna run out of gas pretty quick at 1680x1050 so I'm gonna stand by my first thought that you're rig is simply too underpowered. Try dropping the resolution down to something like 1024x768 and set the graphics settings to their lowest settings. If it runs fine, you know you need more muscle under the hood. Overheating would be my 2nd guess.

A single-core 1.8GHz cpu would have trouble at that resolution, but a dual-core cpu shouldn't have any issue at that resolution in day-to-day operation. Now in the game he's talking about, he could definitely get better performance by lowering the resolution, as flight sims are notorious for being as resource-heavy as Crysis was/is.

cokewithvanilla

ryanjoachim wrote: »

I've never seen nor heard of CCleaner doing any harm with the default settings. Not saying it hasn't happened...just that I've never had an issue, or had an issue when using it on other people's computers. CCleaner also does a really good job of uninstalling software completely, without leaving bits and pieces behind like programs tend to do.

I've had more bad experiences than good with it. I've also read a lot of horror stories. Generally, when I try something like that, I use a old install or unimportant computer. I used it about 5-7 times before I totally got rid of it. Most of those times, tons of random application and windows errors occurred directly after use... applications and system functions were unusable following use. I never really looked into the problem, I can guess that it is probably the registry 'cleaner' that causes the issue... i never actually loaded a backup to find out if that is true.... I just learned not to touch the program.

I've never used it to uninstall things... but its other features offer very minor, if any, benefits and a lot of risk. I choose to avoid it.

MacLeod

Dual core or not, 1.8 gig is painfully slow and 1680x1050 is hard on CPU's especially in graphic intensive games so that paired with a slow GPU and you can easily freeze a compy up. Either that or its overheating like you mentioned from 100% max usage. Either way, I'm pretty sure its a hardware issue.

bobman1235

cokewithvanilla wrote: »

I've had more bad experiences than good with it. I've also read a lot of horror stories..... I never really looked into the problem

Ohhh, I could probably take a guess. Probalby some sort of PEBKAC problem.

cokewithvanilla

bobman1235 wrote: »

Ohhh, I could probably take a guess. Probalby some sort of PEBKAC problem.

it's possible.. but CCleaner isn't exactly a difficult to use program... as i recall, it's a click the big button affair... and I am not really a 'novice' user... but hey, you never know.

bobman1235

Well, I've just never heard of anyone having issues with that program, and have used it on a dozen different systems myself with nary a problem, so there's only one common denominator.

renowilliams

+1 on dowloading Malwarebytes and doing a scan. If your going to upgrade,I would advise building your own or have it built. Put Windows 7 in the new build and you will be happier. I just put a system together a year ago with an i7 quad core, raided intel SSD's and 2 TB of storage. I used this as a multimedia server. Recently I put a NVIDIA GTX 460 OC video card, which should hadle most games. If you need help chosing parts for a build. Just state a budget and we should be able to assist.

ryanjoachim

renowilliams wrote: »

+1 on dowloading Malwarebytes and doing a scan. If your going to upgrade,I would advise building your own or have it built. Put Windows 7 in the new build and you will be happier. I just put a system together a year ago with an i7 quad core, raided intel SSD's and 2 TB of storage. I used this as a multimedia server. Recently I put a NVIDIA GTX 460 OC video card, which should hadle most games. If you need help chosing parts for a build. Just state a budget and we should be able to assist.

Heck, putting Windows 7 onto your current machine could do you some good. I've found that it's quite a bit faster on older machines than Vista or even XP. And yeah, when you go to make your new machine, SSD is the way to go for your boot drive.

cokewithvanilla

bobman1235 wrote: »

Well, I've just never heard of anyone having issues with that program, and have used it on a dozen different systems myself with nary a problem, so there's only one common denominator.

I'm not even gonna bother arguing.. but that's some real scientific evidence right there "I use it and it works, you must be doing it wrong"... if we were the only two people in the world, maybe.

I know I am not the only one who stays away from it. I've talked to a few techs who have had similar experiences. A lot of people use it, and a lot of people don't seem to have problems from it, I admit that... then again, a lot of people come to me with computer problems and have software like ccleaner installed. I don't see a great enough benefit in using the software to take the risk, even if somehow I manged to screw it up on the occasions that I tested it. Besides, why would I want software with default settings (because I never bothered flipping through them) that could possibly cause problems? It would have to have a great benefit... and I really don't see one in ccleaner. But hey, it could work just fine and I am retarded.. that's definitely possible.

---

I just downloaded it to check some things out. I hit "analyze" and it claims it can get rid of about 1 gig of stuff. So I ran Disk Cleanup (windows system utility) and removed 2.11 gigs of stuff. I ran ccleaner again and it says it can remove 29 files at 415kb... now, I am fairly certain that that 415kb isn't important...but really, why risk it for 415kb? CCleaner also didn't seem to find as much stuff as the windows system utility (service pack junk)........

edit: now, I admit, ccleaner seems to have the option to clean stuff from applications that the windows utility does not. However, after checking the boxes on all my applications, ccleaner can get rid of nearly 1mb of stuff.... I don't think I'm gonna trust ccleaner with all my applications over 600kb... call me paranoid, but I see no benefit, therefore I take no risk

amulford

Don't know why you're ripping on your dell.

Because, although it seems like a nice machine, in reality it's a POS. It's a Dell XPS M2010. I originally planned to use it as a mobile entertainment system when traveling for work. But I made a career change and didn't ever need it for that. After I spent over $2K for it.

I have had to have three modules replace. Two bluetooth (within the one year warranty), one the video card (at 15 months, which cost me $500); three bluetooth keyboards (i gave up on that one and just use a usb)

Now the DVD drive is broken and this crap with the crashing. Yeah, it four years old. But i'm not using it to compile Aegis system software, for crying out loud...Nah, I'm done with them.

ryanjoachim

amulford wrote: »

Because, although it seems like a nice machine, in reality it's a POS. It's a Dell XPS M2010. I originally planned to use it as a mobile entertainment system when traveling for work. But I made a career change and didn't ever need it for that. After I spent over $2K for it.

I have had to have three modules replace. Two bluetooth (within the one year warranty), one the video card (at 15 months, which cost me $500); three bluetooth keyboards (i gave up on that one and just use a usb)

Now the DVD drive is broken and this crap with the crashing. Yeah, it four years old. But i'm not using it to compile Aegis system software, for crying out loud...Nah, I'm done with them.

Ok, I worded that wrong. I should have said "spec-wise, your dell is a decent machine".

Oh, and MacLeod is right about your gpu. For some reason my brain didn't register the "dedicated" and "shared" portion of the video card diag. It's a decent gpu for everyday stuff and low-impact games, but you're going to be putting a lot of stress on your system by running the flight sim game(s).

Not just your CPU and GPU as we've mentioned, but also some extra load on your memory. With a game that intensive, you'll end up using all 1GB of shared memory for the video card. System memory is a lot slower than typical gpu memory, and therefor would be taxed harder and will then generate more heat.

cokewithvanilla

amulford wrote: »

Because, although it seems like a nice machine, in reality it's a POS. It's a Dell XPS M2010. I originally planned to use it as a mobile entertainment system when traveling for work. But I made a career change and didn't ever need it for that. After I spent over $2K for it.

I have had to have three modules replace. Two bluetooth (within the one year warranty), one the video card (at 15 months, which cost me $500); three bluetooth keyboards (i gave up on that one and just use a usb)

Now the DVD drive is broken and this crap with the crashing. Yeah, it four years old. But i'm not using it to compile Aegis system software, for crying out loud...Nah, I'm done with them.

That computer you have is pretty well spec'd for its year... 2006-7? Dell specs pretty well for the price, especially if you buy from the outlet.

According to most techs I speak to, Dell computers need servicing the most out of all the major manufacturers by a significant percent. They also have the highest market share, so I don't know how that plays in. In general, I've avoided dell for this reason. I've run into a lot of bad motherboards with dell.

My current laptop is a Dell E6510... I got a great deal on it and it has dells next business day warranty for three more years. So far, I've had to replace the touchpad, LCD, speakers, and the hinges. When I've requested these parts, I've received an LCD, two lcd back covers, microphone, lcd bezel, keyboard, and speakers. I get the parts in one business day. This is the only way I think buying a dell is worth it. The warranty is excellent, simply request a part and they send it (and everything else you could possibly need), no questions asked. I don't expect to be using the computer 3 years from now when it expires.

edit: oh, I should mention that dell has tons of customers, and many who don't ever have problems.

On3s&Z3r0s

cokewithvanilla wrote: »

My current laptop is a Dell E6510... I got a great deal on it and it has dells next business day warranty for three more years. So far, I've had to replace the touchpad, LCD, speakers, and the hinges. When I've requested these parts, I've received an LCD, two lcd back covers, microphone, lcd bezel, keyboard, and speakers. I get the parts in one business day. This is the only way I think buying a dell is worth it. The warranty is excellent, simply request a part and they send it (and everything else you could possibly need), no questions asked. I don't expect to be using the computer 3 years from now when it expires.

It's nice that they get the stuff to you fast under warranty, but that still leaves you to actually make the fixes yourself, right? Most people don't want to go mucking around in the guts of their laptops. My wife has a 1318 with a touchpad key that doesn't work anymore. It's out of warranty so I had to buy a new palmrest on the used market (since Dell gouges the hell out of you for parts if you aren't still under warranty) and I'm sure replacing it will be a pain. I've had bad luck with another Dell lappy and a desktop (bad mobo as you said). Except for a video card that's gone bad here or there on me every other PC/Lappy I've every owned has chugged through four or five years of service with no issues. No more Dell for me, neither.