Computer restarts in during game

Hello,

I have recently been having a problem with my computer auto restarting while i am playing warcraft 3 frozen throne, this only happens playing a game called DotA in wc3. The restarts are random for time of game it happens, but i can tell when it is going to happen as my screen starts to have slivers of black flashing every so often. I have played this game since i bought the computer and never had any problems before, this just recently started in the last month or so. Any help would be greatly appriciated.


thx.

The first thing that comes to mind here are the artifacts you are seeing pre-emptive to the shut down.
These are most likely due to the GPU on the graphics card over-heating. It may be that it is overheating in general, i.e. clean dust out, or may even be overheating to a point where it fails as it has no doubt been in use for some time.

It is very likely that what is happening is your GPU on the video card is freaking out, which is sending a random signal to the m/b causing a shutdown.

My initial steps would be to take out the graphics card (if it has one) and run the game with the on-board at the highest spec it can handle. If however if are not using a graphics card and have on-board graphics (heaven forbid) get yourself a graphics card.

i have narrowed down the error code for the times it has restarted, my computer runs windows xp, the coding is 7000 and 7009.

Also iv traced the problem back to a fatal error that happened about a month and a half ago. I still have the report on that error in my system files if it would help any.



AS for the graphics card iv never had any problems with it before but i did blow out the inside with air and pull and replaced the graphics card, to no avail it still restarts.

Are you able to obtain error logs, or possibly post what errors you are getting on screen, other than just the numbers?
The reason I ask as these numbers a relevant to a lot of different errors depending on the context.

Have you tried just the on-board video? While it is unlikely that your graphics card has started to fail it is still a possibility, therefore testing on-board is a must to completely eliminate that card as a variable.