Cpu freezing Up from nothing

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TF2, CS:S, Audiosurf all have been freezing up for me within a few minutesd in-game. I have defragmented my drives, cleaned the disks, deleted excess files, checked all my connections in my computer, and I unistalled/reinstalled tf2, cs:s audiosurf, and then steam and the games still froze up so I was wondering if anybody had any ideas on how to solve this.
My specs are:
Geforce 5200
512 RAM
AMD 3200+ processor(2.1 GHz)
350 watt cooler master psu
250 gig hard drive

that's pretty much it, either way I am upgrading but if I can't find a fix then I won't be able to play for about a month :(
 
Define 'freezing up'.

Blue screen? Frozen video with skipping audio? Eh?
 
I mean can't move my mouse, keyboard doesn't do anything, and the image is still on whatever it was I was doing (i.e screensaver going up or jumping in tf2) and as to if it is running hot, I don't think so I have my side panel open for that reason because my 120 mm fan works on n off and i have a house fan usually blowing on everything inside the case so yeah...
 
Actually, opening the case in most situation hurts circulation more than it helps, but check to be sure. Go pick up SpeedFan and lemme know the temperatures. Also, has anything changed in your system? Added anything new?

The next time this happens, check the event viewer. (Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer) and look for any errors or warnings that coincide with the time the freeze occured. Particularly in the System section.
 
It's also a good idea to disable (for troubleshooting purposes) anything in the background that may be running. Start -> Run -> type "msconfig" and hit Enter. You can turn everything off there for diagnostic purposes, then see if things run better.

Also, I used to have freezes in HL2 (grrrrrr) when my drivers were out of date. It's not happened since I switched to an NVIDIA card (used to have an ATI), but it's always a good idea to make sure that your drivers and DirectX are up-to-date.
 
Alright I'll try those things out thanks guys ^^
and no lafin i haven't added anything new for about...4 years lol
ok temp is 41 degrees...with the side panel on...with the two fans i have at 70%
it is running a bit hot...i may put the fans up to a higher speed later in the day and ill check out the event log when i get home after school
 
Is that 41 idling? And is that your CPU? Do you happen to have a means to measure room temperature? 41 isn't terribly high for idle, but it's high enough to look into.
 
It's idle, room temp is usually around...28-30 degrees, I'll turn up the speeds to 100% and see the difference because I turned it up to 100% for about....3 seconds and it dropped to 39 so when I'm playing I'll put the fans on 100% and see if that does it.
 
Well...it turned out that it is temperature...but that my computer on it's own is just barely hotter than what my cpu cana dequately run on hehe so yeah thanks all you guys ^^
 
Might I suggest a Zalman heatsink? They're a bit pricey, but very effective. I've got one in my machine and only gained 4C/10C idle/heavy when overclocking from 2.4 to 3.0.

No matter what you decide, make sure to measure the space in your case. After market heatsinks are generally significantly larger than their stock counter-parts. I had to mod my case a bit to fit mine in.
 
How hot does your GPU get? That would also cause the game to freeze if that gave out.
 
Distinctly possible as well. Though, it is likely you'd have seen some artifacts and visual distortions directly before the freeze if it was the graphics card.

It's always a good idea to occasionally pop your case and check your fans and intake/exhaust. CPU, NB if it has it, graphics card, case, PSU. Assuming these don't have integrated censors, which many don't.
 
yeah they don't and well i only popped open the side panel because my friend was saying i should do that but thanks a lot lafin and ill check up on those things more often ^^
 
Also remember there could be acummulated dust and other nasty stuff over and in your heatsinks. I have 3 cats and I had to open my graphics card and phsyically remove a thin layer of cat hair and dust before my GPU would stop, shutdown, it was idiling at 69Celcius, wich is very hot to say the least. In game temps must have sky rocketed. After I cleaned by hand it now idles at 40Celcius, however I only did this cleaning by hand because I was unable to get the stuff out using an air blower (air in a can). Good luck with everything
 
I would monitor to see if you weren't filling up memory. With 512mb there is a a definite possibility that you are filling up the memory.
 
Well, gettin' in the thread late, I'd definitely follow up on RockerGamer and say close EVERYTHING before playing games, especially TF2. 512 MB is barely enough to hold TF2 itself in memory on lower settings, and if you have an inflated browser (Firefox) running in the background, or any other horribly laggy programs (Skype, MSN), close them. If your HD light (red light on most computers) comes on and stays on when the game freezes, it's likely because your computer is trying to move everything around between RAM and your page file on your hard drive, and can't allocate everything properly, which could easily cause a freeze or crash.

About the temperature issue. Turn on air conditioning if you can, it actually makes a HUGE difference to have a cold or cool room around your computer. If your fans are wearing out, I'd suggest getting new ones, and though I saw someone recommend a Zalman CPU cooler, I'd say go with Arctic Cooling. They're way cheaper, and in my experience, perform about 5-10°C cooler than Zalman, especially when using Arctic Cooling's thermal compund, which again works even better than Arctic Silver by 2-5°C. Mine runs an overclocked 3500 at about 28°C.
 
[quote1204123651=Lafinass]
Is that 41 idling? And is that your CPU? Do you happen to have a means to measure room temperature? 41 isn't terribly high for idle, but it's high enough to look into.
[/quote1204123651]

My P4 540 Preshot idles at 45C normally. :D

Nothing I can do about it, don't have the money to get a useful CPU or some sort of cooling solution.
 
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