Black screen crashes, no BSOD

[MasterBlaster76]

I first noticed this with Shogun II demo - it would black screen a short while into the session and then make a muted buzzing sound - on the campaign map, it never happened in the battles! Now, it's also happened with Call of Duty World At War and Empire Total War and it's happened with CoD on a very regular basis.

The weird thing is, I had a long session on Medieval II's Lord of the Rings mod and it was fine - no problems at all. Rome Total War with Roma Surrectum II was also fine. That had me thinking maybe some of the more modern games are stressing the GPU past its breaking point.

Then I tried out F1 2010 - which is the most system intensive game I own - the fans are at their loudest during that game at any rate. Guess what? No problems at all and I played for around two hours (the problem games are generally falling over within 15 - 30 minutes in. I have updated all sound and GPU drivers and all the games mentioned are patched up to date. Any idea what could be causing this? As I said, I don't think it's a hardware issue otherwise surely F1 2010 would bring it to its knees sooner than Shogun II's demo's sodding campaign map!!

I checked the event viewer and there are a whole load of Kernel-Power 41 events in the Critical section, if that's any help.

Edit: Someone suggested a problem with ATI Audio devices conflicting with the Audigy 4 sound card - so I uninstalled the ATI audio stuff and the Microsoft High Definition device, but the latter keeps reinstalling itself. I tried disabling it, but that doesn't seem to have solved the problem.

 

[Chewie]

I think I had something similar happen to my codwaw as well, I think I just left it for a bit and it went normal

 

[Abhas]

Is the system overheating?

I checked online, and I think the Kernel 41 error just indicates that windows was not properly shut down.
What exactly happens after the black screen, and the buzzing sound? Does the system restart, or it stays that way and you have to hard-reset it?

Check the event viewer again, and look at the events just prior to the Kernel-41 event. Maybe you get a clue what might be causing the problem.

Also have a look at this article, and try to follow its steps. I recommend Method 7.
Game crashes or closes unexpectedly

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I also came across some-one claiming this problem was fixed with a Seagate firmware upgrade. Not sure it's the case with you, but it does seem similar. (I don't even know if you have a seagate HDD)
Here is the link for the Seagate firmware website. Firmware Updates for Seagate Products

Have a look, and check if your drive needs an upgrade.

 

[MasterBlaster76]

Is the system overheating?

I checked online, and I think the Kernel 41 error just indicates that windows was not properly shut down.
What exactly happens after the black screen, and the buzzing sound? Does the system restart, or it stays that way and you have to hard-reset it?

Check the event viewer again, and look at the events just prior to the Kernel-41 event. Maybe you get a clue what might be causing the problem.

Also have a look at this article, and try to follow its steps. I recommend Method 7.
Game crashes or closes unexpectedly

----------

I also came across some-one claiming this problem was fixed with a Seagate firmware upgrade. Not sure it's the case with you, but it does seem similar. (I don't even know if you have a seagate HDD)
Here is the link for the Seagate firmware website. Firmware Updates for Seagate Products

Have a look, and check if your drive needs an upgrade.

I believe my HDD is a Maxtor - maybe I'll check the Maxtor site.

When the system black screens, it stays that way - I have to hard-reset it. It also happened with Mafia II that I got yesterday for ?5 from Steam.

I don't think the system is overheating because as I said, F1 2010 runs flawlessly and I'm sure that puts my system under the most pressure. To verify whether it's overheating or not though, can you suggest a good CPU temperature measure software (freeware)? I checked the Event viewer again and there are a lot of different 'Errors', but only one 'Critical'. Is there a file I can save in there and upload here to shed more light on the issue?

Edit: Do you know how I can stop the Microsoft High Definition audio device installing itself? I want to leave the sound to my Audigy card - and last time I had two devices doing the same job (GPU), it caused all kinds of issues.

Method 7 on that link you gave me seems to be only for Win XP.

 

[Chewie]

speedfan is what I use to measure my computer's temperature

 

[MasterBlaster76]

Someone suggested using MSI Afterburner and taking a few Mhz off the Core and Memory clocks - after a bit of tweaking, I got Mafia II to run for two hours - it ended when I wanted it to. So hopefully, that's sorted the problem out!