It's that time of the year again and here we are still going mad. Well, I have a short but quick reason the lockups are starting again.It can only be that summer is now here..A year ago when I was experiencing some lockups, I had check my system BIOS to see what the temperature was. I saw that when my lockups occur, my PC temperature was just over the allowable limit to where it would shut down any programs that had any excessive use of my CPU..Flightsim was of cause the only one.During last fall and thru the winter, I experience flawless flight times without any problems whatsoever, regardless of what drivers I was using...Now that the teperatures has suddenly, crept up to the 90's and 100's, I've already encountered at least two lockups, both within the week and I'm convinced that my CPU is beginning to overheat because of the rise in temperature.My resolve: I leave the side panel off, with a room fan blowing on the inside of my PC along with the three additional fans already installed in my PC..It works for me..well, that and just flying when darkness has come upon us...Hope you take this into consideration. This may help with the heartache/headache of trying to resolve those annoying PC lockupsTroySytem Specs"WinXp ProAMD 1.0ghz, 512MB DDR RAMIWILL motherboard @ 266 FSB60GB HDD@ 7200Sound Blaster PRO PCI 51223.11 driversGeforce2 64bit cardSaitek Joystick

Very well said. . . and after reading your post, I simply realized that this same time last year, it was happening to me aswell. And this was w/ my old setup. hmm. . . Thanks for reminding me ;)

>Very well said. . . and after reading your post, I simply >realized that this same time last year, it was happening to >me aswell. And this was w/ my old setup. hmm. . . >>Thanks for reminding me ;) Was suggested to you yesterday in reply to your post. :)

Maybe this will fix them up!

LOL!!! Not sure, but that fan is probably running on AC power, and being that close to the whole system, magnetic fields wont be too computer friendly! :-rollStill cool though! :)

you are welcome PaulL01

Nice work Wsieffert...what do u have running in there?

Hi !I checked your profile to see where you live. Your comments are interesting, as it is almost unheard of for us in the UK to get these temperatures. Anything over about 85 deg.F and we think we've got a heatwave !I thought that most homes in the US had full air conditioning, and, if anything, were usually cooler than our un-air-conditioned homes ! Is this not the case ?Cheers,Alastair

I can relate to this... Although I don't think it's my CPU at fault. May house in the winter is 68 deg F, in the summer it's 74-76 deg F. My CPU measures 42-43 deg C max load in the winter and 45-46 deg C max load in the summer. Both of these temps are far less than the 70 deg C "danger zone" for CPUs. After researching and reading up, I see that the GF3 card is plagued with overheating problems, both because of the electrical design as well as the poor manufacturing tolerances of the stock heat sink fan units... So, I am ready to try using some arctic silver ceramic thermal epoxy with a CoolJag311 1U HSF mounteed to my GF3 and I hope this cures my problem. My guess is that the GF3 has been marginal since the day I installed the card due to a bad Heat sink fan and that the rest of the fans that keep my CPU cool (220 Cubic Feet/Minute) were allowing it to operate without lockups -- the 3 deg C temp change is enough to take it over the "stability edge".

I downloaded that pic from http://www.vidbay.com/pics/index.htm . Back it up a notch to main and they have all kinds of stuff. Here's another.

I'm here in Boise Idaho, where the winters are very cold (snow,hale, blizzards, etc.....Currently though, 100 degrees today...BLISSTERING OUT..Most homes in the US does have air condition, but with the power bill bouncing back in forth all the time, some of us likes to remain conservative...