civ4 and google earth clash - any ideas?

Question

i have an AMD athlon and an Nvidia GEforce graphics card. If both civ4 and google earth are installed on my pc neither work (computer reboots itselfor sometimes waits for me to do it) civ4 on its own works most but not all of the time. Google earth works for longer without civ4 installed.

pcpitstop and all the tests I know say there is no problem.
Any ideas?

Answer 1

It sounds like your computer is generally unstable. Run memtest http://www.memtest.org/ to see if your ram is bad. If your computer's case is really dusty, you'll want to clean it out with a can of compressed air in a well-ventilated room. Dust leads to heat, and heat can lead to instability.