PC freezes and monitors go blank

[DeadPoolX]

Okay, here's the deal: I bought Bejeweled 3 on Steam last night. It played normally for about 10 minutes or so and then froze.

The game itself didn't just freeze, but it also froze my entire PC. My monitors went blank (as if the video cables had been disconnected), but my PC didn't shut itself down. It was on, but just sitting there.

I tried ALT+CTRL+DEL, ALT+F4 and even pressed the "standby" button to see if that helped. None of those did anything, probably because my keyboard locked up when my PC froze.

The only way I "fixed" this issue was to shut down my PC (I had to press and hold the power button to do it) and then turn it back on again. After my machine rebooted, the OS was responsive again.

I have NO idea why this is happening. The only other game this same issue has occurred in is Borderlands. Both games freeze at random intervals. Sometimes they'll freeze after playing for as little as five minutes or for long as two hours. There's no way to know ahead of time.

I want to stress that, with the exception of Bejeweled 3 and Borderlands, NO other game I own has had this problem. I've played TONS of games that are more graphically and CPU intensive than Bejeweled 3 (or even Borderlands) and those games have ran perfectly.

What's really weird is that Bejeweled 3 and Borderlands are NOTHING alike. If both were from the same genre or even used the same engine or graphical style, I might be able to figure something out.

Because of this issue, I've had to stop playing Borderlands (which Maia is not happy about since it's an excellent co-op Action-RPG) and it looks like I might have to do the same with Bejeweled 3.

I've already emailed PopCap about this and they'll supposedly respond in three business days, but I won't hold my breath. I've also checked online and come up empty handed. There was ONE thread on Steam's Bejeweled 3 message boards that handled a similar problem, but not mine.

[Tawmis]

So - it could either be something with the video... but I bet it's the something with the sound drivers/configuration... For example, when I played Lord of the Rings Online, it would at times - randomly blue screen. Most often when I was in an instance. But on a rare time, sometimes during normal game play. I did EVERYTHING that had to do with video drivers - from rolling them back, updating them, tried different versions... and finally discovered, it had to do with the sound settings.

Without the game myself, I have no idea how to poke and troubleshoot it.

(As a side note, in the whole PC vs Console gaming... this is why I prefer console gaming... no freezes... no crashing... no configurations you need to worry about... no drivers...)

[DeadPoolX]

Never considered the audio drivers or config. I'll have to look at that.

As for "PC vs Console" I'll readily admit that console are much easier to game on when it comes to configurations. More often than not, it's simply a matter of sticking the disc in the drive.

Although it's funny that as consoles become more like computers they're experiencing similar problems. I seem remember the Xbox suffering from blue screens. It wasn't common, but it did happen.

[gumby]

Just a suggestion, but you might try running a memory check. Bad memory can do some pretty strange stuff.

[Collector]

Just a suggestion, but you might try running a memory check. Bad memory can do some pretty strange stuff.

Agreed. I've seen memory errors that only surfaced with certain applications. Perhaps because they addressed certain memory addresses that most applications did not.

[DeadPoolX]

I feel like such a moron asking these questions. Usually I'm the one helping other people or I can figure it out by myself.

1. What's the best way to perform a memory test? I've seen a number of programs online, but I don't know which one is the best and most reliable.

With all of them I've seen instructions to make a bootable CD or floppy. Given that I have a floppy drive and two diskettes available, I'd do that rather than waste a full CD.

Of course, I'd prefer not having to make a boot disk at all. Is there a way to do that without needing to boot from something else?

Oh and I thought the POST process checked memory anyway. Does it or is the check not thorough enough? Is there a way to check the memory from the BIOS?

2. I have a dual-screen monitor setup. In most games, only ONE monitor is used, although I can make use of it when playing a game in windowed mode. If I click outside the game window, the game pauses, but I don't see how clicking on the second monitor is any different from clicking somewhere outside the window on one monitor. In both cases, I'm leaving the game window.

The second monitor CAN screw things up if I accidentally click on it while playing a game in full screen. I imagine the game thinks I'm hitting ALT+TAB (which usually messes things up for me, even when I had only one monitor) since the computer SHOULD see both monitors as ONE desktop.

3. I usually play PopCap games (like Bejeweled 3) in windowed mode so I can run WinAMP at the same time on the second monitor. Do you think that's causing a problem somehow? It hasn't before with other games run in windowed mode.

[Collector]

Win7 has a memory diagnostic option in the boot startup menu, but I am assuming that you are talking about your old P4 machine with what probably has XP. Try http://www.memtest.org/

[DeadPoolX]

Win7 has a memory diagnostic option in the boot startup menu, but I am assuming that you are talking about your old P4 machine with what probably has XP. Try http://www.memtest.org/

Okay, but I'd like to do a memory test without making a bootable CD/floppy/USB key. Just run it from Windows or the command prompt.

[gumby]

I don't think that you can: some of the memory would be 'in use' by the OS and can't be checked.

I personally use Memtest86 - it's been around a long while, and has been integrated into several LiveCDs, but I think it probably can still be downloaded & put on a bootable floppy. Fair warning, it can take some time to find a memory problem - but in my experience if Memtest doesn't find it in the first 5 or 10 minutes, it isn't there (or it's a very, very latent memory problem).

EDIT: Ah, I see that Collector already recommended Memtest

[Collector]

Gumby's is right. You can't do it while the OS is loaded. It needs to have full access and control of the entire memory range. Windows doesn't allow that. Much of the memory handling is done by the OS. No memory program is going to work in Windows.

[DeadPoolX]

I'll give it a whirl. Thanks!

[Collector]

Be sure to let it do more than just a few passes. Some memory errors do not show up right away. I've seen memory that didn't show errors until after a dozen passes. If you have bad RAM, it most likely will not show right away, either, since there are only a couple of situations that you get the crashes.

[DeadPoolX]

I let my computer run Memtest over night and did 11 passes -- no memory problems. So I'll have to rule out memory as the cause.

[DeadPoolX]

PopCap's customer support emailed back and gave me a registration code to use on a non-Steam downloaded version of Bejeweled 3. I don't know if this will work (I don't see why it would since I can play tons of games on Steam without any problems, so I think it's the actual game), but I'll definitely give it a try.

At the very least, I got a second copy free. I'm sure I could give it to someone if it doesn't work for me.

[Collector]

It doesn't seem likely that Steam's DRM could cause it. It is not like Star Force where it installs a flaky ring 0 driver.