computer die possibly due to gaming

its acturally my desktop, hopefully you guys can still help. my computer's specs are as follows
core duo 2180
hd 3650 ddr3
2gb of ddr2 667 ram
win xp pro sp3

So I was running diablo 2 in windowed mode with some background applications for about 2 hours, then my screen showed artifact, froze, and turned black. so I restart and all was going well till it froze again after desktop and some applications are loaded, some other applications are not yet loaded. and I had restarted the machine again but it never got pass the windows logo, it would always freeze there and revert back to my bios screen and the cycle continues.

btw I wasnt watching the temps as diablo 2 is such an old game, and I have played much more demanding games such as mass effect and crysis for hours on end and had no problem. what do you think the problem is? I dont think my video card burned out as i can see graphics, cant be cpu as well it still tries to start. So what do you think the problem is? thanks for the help

 

If it's your GPU, Diablo 2 wouldn't have to cause the problem. It could be building up and just picked today to die.

If you have another card, you could replace them and see how the other GPU works.

 

In these situations, test:
Memory: http://www.memtest.org/
Video memory: http://majorgeeks.com/download5896.html
Hard drive: http://support.gateway.com/s/harddrv/Misc/gwscan512/gwscan512nv.shtml

If you have a spare graphics card, replacing your current one temporarily is an even better test than the VMST.

Also, I would suggest you rapidly tap F8 on bootup and select "disable automatic restart on system failure" and post back the code at the bottom, along the lines of "0x00000000"

 

ya I got the codes from the bosd
**stop 0x000000ED (0x8A4A8900,0xC0000006,0x00000000,0x00000000)

and no I dont have a spare video card

btw, how would i conduct the above test without booting into windows? sry I am not experienced with these tests. thanks for the help

 

have you checked your Hard drive, i remember someone i know got some weird error similar to that well it had " **stop 0x000000ED" not too sure about the rest but i think it turned out his HD went crazy and died

 

you think its my HDD, I cant seem to make the connections of how playing diablo 2 lead to HDD failure. anyways, how would I test it?

 

Correlation is not causation.

 

0x000000ED is UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME, which usually is a hard drive issue.

Who manufactured your hard drive? I generally use GWScan for an "all around" hard drive testing tool, but the drive manufacturer's tests are always better.
For memtest, download this disc image, unzip it, and burn the .iso to a CD using software like IMGBurn.
Same goes for VMST. GWscan has directions on the website I linked.

 

oh thank very much. so is playing diablo to blame? or is my computer just waiting to die?

 

i thought i might have been right
i i wouldnt blame it all on a game, how long have you had it? maybe its just ready to die and its going piece by piece

 

It probably wasnt diablo 2 that lead to the failure, the error will come at random times, it can be due to a memory overflow, hdd going nuts, etc. Your hard drive could have gone nuts while playing diablo but not being caused by diablo, coulda been something in the background.