Topic: Something is up with my PC

[Pugnate]

It happened with Mass Effect 1, then it happened with Mass Effect 2... then I was watching some TV show using VLC and it happened again.

Basically a few hours in, the game/video goes through this weird massive slowdown where I can hear the audio somewhat but the video crawls to a snails pace of one frame every thirty seconds. If I hit ctrl+alt+del, the system still takes a lot longer than usual to pop up the task bar, and the problem only goes when I close the video/game.

If I shutdown the machine for a few minutes and then restart, the problem goes away for whole days even during games.

I thought it was my CPU, but orthos ran fine for 24 hours and the temperature was great.

Could it be my video card? God I hope not.

Here are my specs:

P5WDH deluxe mobo
Core2Duo processor
4GB Kingston RAM
8800GTX

Is there some Nvidia GPU test or something? There use to be one, but they seemed to have taken it out of the default drivers.

[idolminds]

Very strange. Especially that a restart fixes it for such a long period of time.

[scottws]

Yeah sounds like a videocard thing.  Maybe overheating.

[Pugnate]

Well, you may be right. I got my air spray can out deciding that my video card needed cleaning. I was a bit shocked to find a giant fluffy furball resting in the center of the heat sink fan.

I have four Persian cats, and they tend to shed hair. I hope that's mystery solved, because I really don't want to get another video card.

[Quemaqua]

Honestly, dust is probably rhe single greatest, most consistent cause of computer problems for me.  If basically anything goes wrong, my first action is always to open it up, take it outside, and blow the hell out of everything.

[idolminds]

Yeah, I cant wait for it to warm up outside so I can dust my system out.

[scottws]

I just do it inside and then dust and vacuum after.  Usually it needs to be done anyway.