Since 3 days ago, Heroes V can't be played on my PC

[NeXaR]

Firstly, sorry about my english, I hope I can explain myself sufficiently well.

Let me explain this thing... I bought Heroes V next day to the spanish release, so I have played for some time now... with no problems at all, as opposite to many others, as I can read on this forum. No problems with slowdowns, graphic glitches... no problems at all. But 3 days ago, "something" happened. I was playing Academy campaign map 3. Just freed Godric, and 3 or 4 turns after, the PC suddenly reseted (not a crash-to-desktop one, a full reset).

That day, here in Spain we were having about 35 or more degrees out there, so I thought of an overheating issue as the cause (but not for sure), the PC has a system to reset or shut down itself in case of reaching certain levels, so this is normal. The main problem is... that since this one, Heroes do this ALWAYS. I mean, everytime I load a game, start a new one (no matter what kind of game, from campaign map to Hot-Seat MP), run up to three turns max, and PC resets (although it can even do it in the first one) wether the game is a 1vs1 or 8 player deathmatch, as it does it when the last player ends its turn and just after starting to save the game (so the save becomes corrupt). When playing against CPUs, it can do it also when the progress bar of their turns is running, too. And this is true wether my PC is hot (some time after turning it on and playing other games, for example) or not (just turned on and launching heroes just before windows loads).

Trying to discard things, I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling the game (tried in 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2 without any mod) using min. setup for graphics, etc, loading saves, starting new games... but still it's doing the same and I have no clues.

I will write down my system specs, althogh I dunno if it will help...

AMD Athlon XP 3200+
1024Mb RAM
GeForce FX 5700LE 256Mb
almost 40Gb of free disk space
Integrated VIA sound

My Heroes V configuration up to the first crash was 1152*864 at high "texture definition" (dunno how is this item called in english version), witho no anti-alising or nothing more activated except the hardware cursor and the other option with a checkbox... is called "sin florituras" in spanish version, dunno how it is in english.

Hope someone can help me

[Sir_Toejam]

with nothing else to go on, i would suspect you might have a bad RAM chip, either on the video card or one of the system memory chips.

does it reboot doing anything else?

if not, try installing new video drivers and see if that helps.

[NeXaR]

If it is a bad RAM chip, then I suppose i fried it that day, because I've been playing for months with no problems However, I haven't found problems with other games yet, I'll try some benchmark software to test the PC components separately and try to find what's doing this.

[batalex]

Try the reinstal video driver and directX and delete all old saved games in my doc...

[NeXaR]

Delete saved games? Why?

[NeXaR]

Well anyway. I found the problem. I installed the benchmark software Everest, it installs tray icons showing several things monitored, such as core CPU voltage, cooling fans speeds... and temperatures. My processor is running at 76º C without doing anything but having e-mule on and surfing the web

I'm going to enforce CPU cooling ASAP, but i wonder now if the processor may have some permanent damage by now... what do you think?

[Mytical]

Very possibly, only way to be sure is to a) be a computer tech person...b) take it to somebody who is such.

[Paulus1]

I think most file-sharing applications but a pretty heavy load on your CPU.
I wouldn't want to run such a program together with Heroes V, since they are both using a lot of RAM and CPU power.

I don't think your CPU us permanently damaged though. An AMD Athlon XP can withstand temperatures up to 85 degrees. If they get higher computer will most likely crash and temperature will get lower all by itself

It can shorten the life of the CPU though to often go very high.

Try hitting Ctrl+Alt+Delete and check the running processes. I'd like to know which processes are using your CPU power while system is (or should be) idle.

[NeXaR]

Well, I just cleaned up dust in proccesor cooler (a lot of dust) and now it's 9 degrees under the previos values. It's a good start, but i need to cool it down more.

[ThunderTitan]

I'm going to enforce CPU cooling ASAP, but i wonder now if the processor may have some permanent damage by now... what do you think?

If it did you would have known.

For cooling down more you could leave the box opened, and maybe use an external fan. I started doing that a while back, and the PC now works OK most of the time.

[NeXaR]

Well, now it's working again. I will enforce cooling anyways, but at least now I can play heroes V again

Thank you all for your help and suggestions

[asandir]

good to see it is working again .... and hope the cooling solution keeps working, would not be good to see the CPU fried!