wilkes

I just took one to the shop doing the same thing. the fan was bad. When it got hot, it cut off to cool down and then restarted. We replaced the fan.

I would say it could just be re seating your cards in the computer, many times with heat and cooling those cards become partialy unseated, good idea wihle you take them out to also use a can of air and blow all that dust out as sometimes lots of dust will make things do what you describe. Once all cards are reseated and dust blown out, try again. If still having issue, then it could be a fan issue, or even a power supply, the fan is easy with the case open turn it on, does the cpu fan move fast and easy.. if so the fan is probably ok, but for 10 bucks, just have it replace, along with the power supply. power supply failure can destroy a hard drive and the data, cpu fan failure will cook the cpu.

Those are the typical for a computer rebooting on its own, start with the cheap and easy ways, work your way up..

hope it helps which ever you try

thx man :D

it will double your video memory.. and if you buy it you will need to go to the compaq website and hunt down instruction to disable your onboard video
somewhere in these
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/e...

ok you need a pci video card the only one i could find was a
RADEON 9250 128mb video card that said it would work with your 250 watt power supply
http://www.tigerdirect.com/... or similar might be available at walmart or staples
but it might not help your pc is pretty much getting to be a
dinosaur in the gaming world

ok cheap temporary " fix" ( maybe)
start the game and go to the video options
select the lowest screen resolution
and lowest quality everything else ( disable shadows , blood, fog of war ect ect)
it should help some

Carefully check the specs for the video card.

Make sure your power supply is "beefy" enough to handle it.

I found the hard way.

it depends on what kind of card slot you have open agp , pci or pcie
i'm gonna have to do some hunting compaq's info ain't very user friendly

yea satan i was wondering that myself, but I've been wanting to buy one but idk what kind my computer takes if u get what im saying, i want either a radion or NVIDIA but, idk how to tell which one my computer will handle

sounds to me like your overloading your pc's graphics capacity
the game spec's suggest a minimum video card if you are just using the integrated graphics that can cause the pc to crash

I would take it by express computer clinic. He can tell you for sure if that's the problem. You wouldn't want to buy a new power supply and the problem end up being something else.

Where do i get and how much would it cost?

If it isn't heat related, I would check power next. Try a different power supply.

bump.

yea i just sprayed it out again, maybe it will fix it, there wasnt much dust and both fans were running, do u think there could be a short in the power button or cord? or something like that

You can take the side panel off the case while it's on, just make sure you don't reach in there while it's on. I've had my share of cuts by accidentally hitting fans that were on.

While it's on, make sure all the fans are running. There is one inside the power supply that you can only see from the rear of the computer. There is one on the CPU, and possibly some additional fans on the rear of the case or mobo chipset.

While the computer is off, clean the fans and CPU heatsink. They may be covered in dust. That will interfere with airflow and can cause heat problems.
hope this helps

Thanks, could u give me a procedure on checking the fan, (not that Im that computer illiterate lol, I dont wanna mess something up haha) does it hurt to open it up while the comp is on?

It's very late at night for me, but my instinct is that you're having a heat issue. Check to make sure that the CPU fan on the inside is running, and the fans in the back are flowing freely with nothing in the way.

A fan is the cheapest hardware to fix on any computer, so with any luck this is the problem. A new fan is less than $10, and I doubt that Express Computer Clinic would charge much more than that to replace it for you.

If it's not the fan, then the next thing to look at would be the CPU, then the hard drive. Neither are terribly cheap to fix, though, so cross your fingers that it's a fan.

FWIW, I doubt that it's software related. If it freezes up and you have to restart it manually, then that would most likely be a software problem, but if it's restarting itself on its own then that sounds like hardware.

My anti-virus is Avast, didnt mention before