Why does my computer keep crashing?

Question

Whenever i play Call OF Duty, my computer sometimes crashes and shows a blue screen saying 'Beggining To Dump Physical Memory." What does that mean and why do i keep getting it? Is there a way for this to stop?

Answer 1

I would suspect your video card drivers first off. Many ATI cards have the same symptoms that you have. ATI has solved the problem with patches http://www.megagames.com/news/html/patches/callofdutyaticrashfix.shtml but If I were you I would get the latest video card drivers updated then try playing again.

If that is not the problem you might have an iffy motherboard. Try using a keyboard and mouse that don't use USB ports, also keep all other USB devices disconnected when playing games.

Other than that I can only suggest that there might be other kinds of conflicts occurring.

Check with the game manufacturer's page. They might have patches of their own.

Answer 2

I agree that is may be a memory issue, but not as the young women suggested. She is confusing the Hard Disk Drive, and Randem Acess Memory or RAM. The Hard Disk Drive is storage, while RAM is the memory used to run software and software drivers which allow harware to speak and/or communicate with hardware. If you are experiancing memory dumps this suggests your computer does not possess enough RAM to play this particular game.

How much RAM does your computer possess? Games work best with at least 1 Gigabyte of RAM. While some games can run adequently with 512 Megabytes of RAM, they all run much better with 1-2 Gigabytes. I highly reccomend at least 2 Gigabytes as you can easily run any of the most popular games on this amount of RAM.

However, just having a low amount of RAM should not cause your computer to crash. This can cause extremely reduced game performance, and video performance as well, especially if you are using an Onboard Video, rather than a seperate video card. Onboard video doesn't have any RAM of its own, nor a GPU-or Graphical Prosessor Unit, which allows for taking a lot of the work off of the CPU or Central prosessor Unit.

So, this leaves me to speculate that Pete may be correct about a Video Card Driver issue or conflict.

Have you recently added hardware or software to your system? The number one cause of system crashes-the BSoD-or Blue Screen of Death, are Device Drivers. When you add hardware to your system a Device Driver is added which allows the OS to communicate with the device. Also, if you have recently updated a Device Driver this too can cause a system to blue screen out.

Software programs can also cause crashes. While this is not as often it does occur. Especially if it is an older program. I am not into playing computer games so am not sure how old this game is. If it is older then you may wish to go into the properties can click onto the tab to make it compatible. Just right click on the games icon, then click the Compatibility Tab. Down on t he screen you will see a drop down box and here you can choose which OS it was made for and select it. Then follow any other instructions and finish by clicking Apply and then OK. It is worth trying anyway!

If you have added any hardware recently, it would be a good idea to remove it via the Safely Remove Hardware Wizard. You access this Wizard down in your notification area. Click on it and follow the instructions in the Wizard. After you remove the hardware you should use Add/Remove programs to remova all the related software which will include the Devices Driver. It would be a good idea to do this in Safe Mode.

To enter Safe Mode simply tap repeatedly on F8 after the manufacturers logo. If you miss and it goes to the Welcome Screen or your desktop depending upon how you have it configured, start over again.

If you do it correctly you will see a black background with several options to choose from. Use the arrow keys to highlight Safe Mode and hit Enter. Then your OS will be highlighted, hit Enter again. You will see a lot of numbers and letters flow down the screen, this is normal the system is loading the minimal items to run in Safe Mode. Once at the Welcome Screen select an Administrator account, either yours if it is one, or the Systems Administrator Account. If it has a password put it in and hit Enter or leave it blank if you don't use one.

A black screen will appear with a window with a warning you are entering Safe Mode, this window gives you the option of continueing onto Safe Mode or to do a System Restore Point. If you wish to get rid of the software by using a Restore Point, do so. It is simple and easy to do. Just click on System Restore. Or, you can use Add/Remove in Safe Mode to remove the related software.

Once you have performed this, reboot and see if all is well. If not, you may wish to remove this game from your system as for some reason it is not working correctly with the system.

Once you have done all of this and are still having issues, and still wish to use your game, consider taking your machine to a reputable repair shop and have a knowlegable technician fix your issue for you. There is no shame involved in having somebody who is more experianced fix issues.

Good luck and have a great day.

Answer 3

Sounds like a memory problem. Make a Disk Cleanup and you can see how many space you have.

Answer 4

you got a windows error message. you will have to re-install windows again. or you can upgrade your memory to more than 512mb of ram.