My computer crashes when playing games?

I own a Dell studios xps purchased in 2009, i5 quad core running windows 7 64 bit. the graphics card it came with is the nvidia geforce ge 220, i havent switched up. 8 gigs of ram, a tarabyte of disk space

I have a ton of games installed on here and theyve been running with no problems until about 3 weeks ago, when I was playing street fighter IV, the monitor went black and the audio was stuck and was making a really anoying sound. the keyboard was unresponsive, but the cddrive would still eject. so i forced reboot. i thought it was some random problem, so i didnt give it much thought. I didnt really touch my games anymore until a week later, when i noticed it happened again while trying to run Dragon Age: Origins. im just in the middle of the game when the monitor goes black and the audio gets stuck. Same problem with dragon age 2, halo, halo 2, halo custom edition, halo trial version mass effect, mass effect 2, portal, portal 2, call of duty black ops, fallout: new vegas, fallout 3, bioshock, bioshock 2, H.A.W.K, warcraft 3, starcraft 2, age of empires 3.



age of empires 2, 1602 ad and maplestory and minecraft seems to run fine. this problem also happens when im running wii, game cube, and ps2 games in their respective emulators, however, the ds emulator, gba emulator, ps1 emulator, and n64 emulator run ok.



the crash reminds me of when my video card fails some times and recovers, except this never recovers, and i either have to unplug the cord or hold the power button to get out.



i dont know what happened. all those games used to run fine... now they just run for 3-5 minutes then my computer crashes. whether it would work or not, i tried everything i can think of: reinstalling the games, uninstalling some games, lowering graphics on games, lowering audio on games, unplugging my other monitors, interchanging monitors, interchanging cords, changing outlets, using a different account, cooling down the system, blowing out the dust, cleaning up the registry with regcure, ending useless processes, scanning for viruses, disconnecting the internet, updating all the the software including the video driver, and rolling back the video driver. and so besides that the only thing i can think of is to reformat my computer completely.

i can't seem to access the error log becuz the service is not running, and so i dont know exactly whats wrong.

i dont play any of these that often anymore, but its annoying to see them there and know they wont work if i ever felt like picking them back up. :(

this is a great computer, and has never given me anytrouble before this.

any help would be greatly appreciated.My computer crashes when playing games?
It could be the heatsink/cooler in your video card. It could be clogged with dust. Either vacuum it out (actually open the case and clear out the dust), or get a new video card.



Somebody else has had this problem before



http://superuser.com/questions/95700/win鈥?/a>