need help troubleshooting to determine which of my component is faulty...

hi all,

ok here's the situation with my computer at home...

when i run guildwars (some other 3d games as well) it hangs after a while
most of the time it just freezes and i gotta reset the cpu
other times it auto-reboots itself

usually after reboot, my files get corrupt and i gotta "repair" guildwars and downloads new files. sometimes it only redownloads a few (5 or 6) files to repair. occasionally after restart the corruption is so bad that the files i have to download are 1100++ files (whole directory corrupted?) and i just reinstall
sometimes, the repair doesn't work very well and certain classed turn into white coloured cubes running around...

when i run other programs (word/photoshop) etc everything runs well and i dun get crashes. mainly games will hang on my com after maybe 30mins or 1 hour of playing... also when i download BIG files off the net (100+ megabytes and above) these files always give me CRC errors...

SOOOOO... i'm trying to figure out which of my hardware is giving the problems...
i've concluded its either:
1. hard disk drive - corrupted
2. video card - something wrong (no idea what though overheating? or drivers? i've installed latest drivers and it doesnt help)
3. cable connecting HDD to MOBO... faulty?

can anyone help me suggest what to do? i'm inclined towards that my HDD is corrupted and in turn its screwing up the driver files and corrupting the game files and thats why everything starts crashing...

i need some help regarding the heatsinks on the video card as well... what r the heatsinks and what do they loook like? cos my vid card seems to be @ like burning temps when it runs guildwars

any help would be appreciated! thanks!

Definitely sounds to me like bad sectors on the hard disk drive. I suggest you run a scandisk and see what it tells you, you may find that the hard disk requires reformatting.

First thing I'd check, however, is that the "ribbon" type IDE cables connecting the hard disk to the motherboard are not split or otherwise improperly connected.

Could even be bad IDE drivers. But check the disk and you'll see if there are physical errors.

What are your computer specs?

And have you formatted the hard drive in the last year or so? Sometimes a fresh install fixes the problems (or if its a hard drive problem, will let you know).

Does event viewer show any errors?


To me it sounds more like a memory issue, or motherboard.

ok even with a brand new hard drive

i'm still getting the same errors,

guildwars hangs after a while,
after crash files gotta be reinstalled again cos they're corrupt

all other programs run fine...
only guildwars hangs the machine...

so... issit guildwars thats screwing up the machine or my hardware...
i've eliminated HDD causing the problem...

its either overheating from video card (radeon 9000)
i suspect its faulty cables maybe...
argh...

what is event viewer and what is IDE thingie?