Game Crashing to Blue Screen

I've read a fair few posts about this, but no real explanation/fix/reason for why it's happening. My PC's crashing to a blue screen and reboot, at random whilst playing the game.

A bit of a back story; 6 months ago this same PC destroyed a graphics card playing CSS (probably overheating) to the extent where it had to be replaced. That graphics card was 3 years old, this new one is a 2009 model and 6 months old, and with all the spec turned down to the lowest it is still crashing and going to the blue screen (not always in a match) which then rolls into a reboot. The only thing I've noticed happens before freezing is the processing capacity (Dual core 3.2ghz each) is going to 100% (both in the Windows Task Manager and the display on game status in FM10) with nothing else operating in the background other than the bare essentials. This can't be right? The games I have for this computer at the moment; Counter Strike: Source, Age of Empires 3, F1 2002, Doom 3 - they all run absolutely fine at top spec and online, which is a lot more than this game should be demanding. Ok, so these games are going back a few years but the minimum spec for them is higher apart from RAM because of the extra required to run Vista and the fact new games have to account for that. The spec of the PC (2 GB Ram, 2 x 3.2ghz processors, 320gb hdd and ATI Radeon HD 4350 GFX). Start up programs are closed, anti-virus and firewalls are off.

Now, every other post I've seen relating to any kind of crash has been moaning about a refund or how bad the game is. I'm not doing that. The game's fantastic and despite the problems I'm back into the Premiership with Newcastle after 4 days, having to rolling save. All I'm asking is does anybody know what's causing the problem and how I can stop it from happening? Is it something conflicting with the game?

Any help appreciated

- Tom

sounds like incompatible or dodgy drivers for the card

Sorry, I realised I post this in the wrong forum :/

sounds like incompatible or dodgy drivers for the card

The card's up to date with drivers.

What I've read from other people suggests it's to do with it overloading the processor. Mainly occuring on Windows Vista/7.

I have in the past had several Blue Screens of Death. With me, they have all been as a result of faulty sticks of Ram. It might be worth doing a test on your memory.

Another possibility is that your old graphics card might have damaged the mother board when it packed up.

I have in the past had several Blue Screens of Death. With me, they have all been as a result of faulty sticks of Ram. It might be worth doing a test on your memory.

Another possibility is that your old graphics card might have damaged the mother board when it packed up.

Test the memory at the time of it went down initially and both were fine. I'm not being totally ignorant to the fact that the motherboard could be damaged, but there's no way of me testing it and nothing I can do if it is.

The thing is this has only happened on FM10. Other games I have (AoE3, F1 2002, CSS, Doom 3, Battlefield 2, GTA:SA, GTA:VC, WoW, FM09, Rome Total War, TF2)... Ok, not the highest spec, but online at the highest quality have given me no grief. It does coincide with the computer simply hitting 100% on the usage which would be enough to cause a crash, I just don't understand how a relatively low spec game could require so much processing power?

Motherboards can be relatively cheap and are easy to fit (a total system re-install is needed though). Problem is that if it is not this then it's a waste of money.

If it does not crash with others then it cant be that. Strange that it doesnt crash with the others because you have listed some pretty 3d meaty games there. If it were a 3d issue then it would crash with the others too.

It might be purely the game and your system. Might be worth posting in the bug forum to see if you have a known issue or even an issue that needs to be known.

Sometimes blue screen of death is,

1.Vaulty Ram

2.Hardware issues on motherboard

3.Corrupted software

4.Out of date drivers

5.Corrupted registry files

6.OP system corrupted

Would try and work on the ones you can do and test and the last one would be the motherboard and if you end up on that as the last test i would write the motherboard off.

You said bf2 and the rest dont do it and yet bf2 i get the blue screen of death since the update patch came out, so maybe like one of my suggestions is the software issue of the game, try and run the game without the patch and see how you get on.

I've read a fair few posts about this, but no real explanation/fix/reason for why it's happening. My PC's crashing to a blue screen and reboot, at random whilst playing the game.

A bit of a back story; 6 months ago this same PC destroyed a graphics card playing CSS (probably overheating) to the extent where it had to be replaced. That graphics card was 3 years old, this new one is a 2009 model and 6 months old, and with all the spec turned down to the lowest it is still crashing and going to the blue screen (not always in a match) which then rolls into a reboot. The only thing I've noticed happens before freezing is the processing capacity (Dual core 3.2ghz each) is going to 100% (both in the Windows Task Manager and the display on game status in FM10) with nothing else operating in the background other than the bare essentials. This can't be right? The games I have for this computer at the moment; Counter Strike: Source, Age of Empires 3, F1 2002, Doom 3 - they all run absolutely fine at top spec and online, which is a lot more than this game should be demanding. Ok, so these games are going back a few years but the minimum spec for them is higher apart from RAM because of the extra required to run Vista and the fact new games have to account for that. The spec of the PC (2 GB Ram, 2 x 3.2ghz processors, 320gb hdd and ATI Radeon HD 4350 GFX). Start up programs are closed, anti-virus and firewalls are off.

Now, every other post I've seen relating to any kind of crash has been moaning about a refund or how bad the game is. I'm not doing that. The game's fantastic and despite the problems I'm back into the Premiership with Newcastle after 4 days, having to rolling save. All I'm asking is does anybody know what's causing the problem and how I can stop it from happening? Is it something conflicting with the game?

Any help appreciated

- Tom

I think it's your cpu not being able to process the information correctly and it's constantly crunching the data before it passing through (hence the 100% memory used before crash).

From the sounds, it's a hardware problem. I've used to have several crashes in fm 09, but i got a virus 2 months ago and decied to reformat after 4 years, now the pc runs faster, never crashes these days and the whole system is a alot better. My advice is a clean of your pc.

Sometimes blue screen of death is,

1.Vaulty Ram

2.Hardware issues on motherboard

3.Corrupted software

4.Out of date drivers

5.Corrupted registry files

6.OP system corrupted

Would try and work on the ones you can do and test and the last one would be the motherboard and if you end up on that as the last test i would write the motherboard off.

You said bf2 and the rest dont do it and yet bf2 i get the blue screen of death since the update patch came out, so maybe like one of my suggestions is the software issue of the game, try and run the game without the patch and see how you get on.

I'm still playing the other games. F1 2002 is absolutely merciless to the processors because it's a high(er) spec game, don't let the date fool you, and it requires drivers for the Xbox 360 controller to play in the background; neither of which are 100% happy with Vista. Yet it has been strictly FM10 since this PC was up and running again.

The habbit I have with most games is to run Media Player in the background, and another program (MSN/Steam/Xfire), then minimize from time to time to change song or whatever. This is the kind of thing that makes the game and PC completely lag out, but doesn't take it to the blue screen. FM10 I run in window mode so I tend to have MSN in the background and the first crash (not in match, had internet explorer and media player running as well), so it seems to make sense that there's something about the software, maybe compatability with something else? Bullguard Antivirus has given me grief with other games before, even though it's switched off. That said FM10 does have general issues with Vista, such as durin a long load it will go to 'Not Responding' constantly.

The crashes happened before I patched the game (It's a retail version and I'm not a huge fan of Steam forcing updates on us) but I manually installed the patch yesterday and I haven't (touch wood) had a crash since then, but I've also been careful with the background programs I'm running.

I think it's your cpu not being able to process the information correctly and it's constantly crunching the data before it passing through (hence the 100% memory used before crash).

From the sounds, it's a hardware problem. I've used to have several crashes in fm 09, but i got a virus 2 months ago and decied to reformat after 4 years, now the pc runs faster, never crashes these days and the whole system is a alot better. My advice is a clean of your pc.

Hmm, that's a good idea. If/when it crashes again I'll get onto finding the name of the drivers I need as they're not in the original system files and do a fresh install.

Thanks for your help guys