Issue with online games crashing

[Atlasion]

My PC crashes often when playing both Modern Warfare 2 and Left 4 Dead online. I'm not sure if its the same problem for both. Basically, after a certain amount of time, maybe about 20 minutes, the game just exits to desktop. Sometimes with modern warfare 2 it bluescreens then restarts my computer. However, it doesn't stay on bluescreen long enough for me to screenshot or note down the error number (is there a way to do this?). With Left 4 Dead it just exits straight to desktop. I've also never experienced these issues playing these games offline or whilst playing FFXI on this computer.

Can you guys help?

Computer specs:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 6400+, 3.21GHz
3 GB RAM
Nvidia Geforce 8500 GT (updated drivers recently, made no difference)
Using Windows XP SP3. I think its 32 bit

[xerodok]

If it's exiting straight to your desktop, without a crash, it's definitely one of two things: your graphics card or your RAM.

If you can't read the error message, right click on My Computer > Properties > Advanced tab. Click on Settings under Startup and Recovery and disable 'Automatically restart'. Next time your restart your PC the bluescreen won't disappear.

Do the following steps and post the stop code for me.

[Atlasion]

Ok, did that. I'm not too sure what any of that information means, or what exactly it is you're looking for, but heres the codes that came up:

STOP: 0x0000008E (0xC000001D, 0xBF801106, 0xB364FCD8, 0x00000000)

Win324.sys - Address BF801106 base at BF800000. Datestamp 4c220f9a

This is the error code that comes up after Modern Warfare 2 crashes. Left 4 Dead just exits straight to the desktop without any error codes.

Thanks!

[xerodok]

What error message does it have?

For example:
KERNEL_MODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED
DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

[Atlasion]

That's supposed to appear under "A Problem has been detected and windows has been shut down top prevent damage to your computer"? I didn't see any error message there. It just went straight on to say "If this is the first time you've seen this error screen...".

I can check again later (I'm at work now), but I'm almost 100% sure no error message like that appears. Does that help?

[xerodok]

Check again.

[Cheerios]

My first guess is that it could be something wrong with the ram. I've had the same issue with BSOD and crashing to desktop until I found my faulty stick. You can still play the games to test comfortably using 2 GB of ram, so assuming you have 3x 1GB sticks of ram, remove one and try to play. If it crashes, try to put that one back in and remove the next, and repeat for the third. If it crashes in all cases (using 2GB instead of 1 GB), you can try to run memtest86 using a bootable CD-ROM, Flash Drive, or Floppy to see if any errors occur.

Some games and applications are more memory intensive than others, and if it's a memory issue, that could explain why you might not have seen it using other apps.

[xerodok]

I had the same problem, stick of RAM went bad, got BSOD daily until I found it. I'm just hoping to get his error message to diagnose that as the problem.

[Atlasion]

Checked again. There is no error message.

[Atlasion]

I'm getting a similar problem with FFXIV now too. This is a screenshot of the error: http://img831.imageshack.us/img831/6066/ffxiverror.jpg

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

A similar one happened during the benchmark, except with error code 0xc0000005.

The BDoS from Modern Warfare 2 said something about win32k.sys. I googled it and followed instructions to fix it if it was corrupt. I've also downloaded the latest driver for my chipset.

Is this likely to be a hardware problem? I've run the RAM diagnostic checkm Memtest86, but it didn't pick anything up. I'm currently going through the process of removing a stick of RAM and seeing if the problem persists.

Thanks for your help!