[tinaqin123]

First of all, thanks in advance for any advice you may or may not be able to give! I appologise if this is in the wrong section, however my crash only occurs during games, and i am unsure as to what is wrong.

I have recently installed a new hard disk on my computer (a Medion 8080XL) after the original disk became too noisy under general use. Since installing XP SP3 and my drivers, windows updates etc, the computer has been behaving smoothly.

However, having installed a few games; Left 4 Dead, Star Wars Republic Commando, Battlefield 2 and Mass Effect, I quickly found that all of the games were crashing instantly after loading a level. The crash is an instant Black Screen where the monitor looses the input from the computer, and it becomes unresponsive to the keyboard. I then have to hold the power button in to turn it off before restarting it again. The PC is fine in general use however, and was running games at 1280x1024 before installing the new hard disk.

System Specification;
- Pentium 4 3Ghz
- Nvidia 7600GT 256mb
- Western Digital 160GB IDE HDD
- 2GB RAM DDR (don't know anything about timings etc)
- 350W PSU
- On-board AC97 audio
- Stock Cooler, etc (ask if you'd like to know more)

Steps taken to resolve problem so far;
- Used SpeedFan to monitor temperatures, all seemed fine except a slightly high CPU temperature
- Reduced CPU temp by re-covering it with Thermal Paste, it now operates at 50 degrees idle, about 65 under load (still high i know, but 'safe' temperature is 70 degrees i believe).
- @640x480 resolution with low settings; L4D runs for 30 minutes before cut off.
- @800x600 resolution with low settings; L4D runs for 5 minutes before cut off.
- All other resolutions, instant cut out on starting a level.
- PSU figures all look normal from SpeedFan.

If you need any other information then please just ask me :D!

[mctw]

tried reinstalling your graphics card drivers?