computer crashing?

[leonardo davinci]

hi everyone,

my computer crashes sometimes. once every now and then, the screen suddenly goes black, while a sound is repeated very fast. the light on the on/off button of my screen is orange, meaning that it doesn't have a signal from the computer. but, my computer is still on. the only way to make it stop is by either do a forced shutdown, or by pulling the plug. it starts up normally then (but it does ask me if i want to start it safe, or regular), and i can use it normally untill it happens again. it has happend 4/5 times now, and it is really anoying. it has happened when 1)i was playing napoleon:total war, 2)when i was playing shogun2:total war and 3)when i was playing minecraft (not via steam or something). shogun 2 and minecraft was both when i had to go for a while, and when i came back, it had crashed. note that shogun 2 already crashed before i came back, and minecraft crashed the moment i moved the mouse.

if you have an idea of what is wrong, and think you know how to stop it from happening, please tell me.

don't know if it helps, but my computer specs are:

fabricator: Hewlett-Packard Company
model: m9351.nl
processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @2.40GHz 2.40 GHz
memory: 4.00 GB
type computer: 64-bits controlingsystem
Tablet-PC functionality: available

i apologize for any translating mistakes, it is in dutch on my computer. if you need to know more, ask me, then i'll post it here.

thanks in advance.

[Xiahou]

while a sound is repeated very fast

Could you elaborate on this?

[naut]

Sounds like a beep error, what does it sound like exactly?

[Whacker]

Beep codes happen during BIOS POST. My guess is that his machine is just freezing and whatever sound is being played is looped forever until the machine resets.

It's could be one of the system getting too hot, buggy drivers, bad RAM/corrupted memory, bad power. From the described symptoms I'd lean towards 2 or 3, laptops usually have clean power due to power coming from the battery, even when plugged in.

[leonardo davinci]

it's 1 single tone repeated over and over.

the thing i don't understand is why it started doing this, because napoleon worked for over a year without any problems, and shogun 2 worked normally since august.

my dad is cleaning out the computer and the fans, maybe that will keep it cooler, and keep it from crashing.

[leonardo davinci]

ok, my dad cleaned it, but that didn't really do anything. i measured the temperature from the GPU while shogun 2 was on and when it was off. when nothing was on, it usually was 70 ºC. when i started shogun 2, it started increasing to 90 ºC. when i was resuming as host for an MP campaign, it increased to 99 ºC! the fans were working at 96% of their power. when we were in the campaign, it immediatly dropped to 90 ºC, to eventually stabalize at 92-94 ºC. this was all on the lowest setting of everything, except for the fleet and unit size.

i decided to buy a new computer solely for gaming (see this thread). i still don't know why it happened. i will play on the lowest settings from now on, untill i have a new computer.