[MicroPsycho]

As of sometime last week I've started to have a problem with my computer. I was playing MechWarrior 4: Mercs online when I heard a click from inside my computer that sounded like the harddrive turning off and the in a matter of seconds it was followed by a similar sound and then my game froze. At first I thought little of it, **** happens. But the problem over the last week has become increasingly worse. Now it seems whenevr I start playing MechWarrior it does the same thing, but only in the game, not the menu or game lobby. I tried playing Halo, to see if anything was wrong with it, it was fine...untill today where 10 seconds in to the game, again, not the menu, it did the same thing. Now my computer seems to do this thing whenever I use anything that  is even remotely graphics intensive, MW4, Halo, even my screensaver (mind you the screensaver is a high quality ATi Gargoyle clock thing.

It seems as though my video card is somehow related, but I cant see anything it couldn't handle, its a Radeon 9800 btw.

Also whenever my game locks up and I have winamp running, my music continues to play longer than the game, but it too succumbs to the problem.

Any help would be greatly appreciated as my computer is, for lack of a better word, crippled.

Specs.
AMD 2200+ 1.84Ghz
512 DDR RAM
40 gig hd
128mb Radeon 9800

[Black Wolf]

Hmmm... I'd say your computer has been possessed. You can try holy water if you're confident about the application, but given that you're working with electronics, it's probably better just to bite the bullet and spend the money for a full exorcism.

[Bobboau]

hard drive, the exact same thing happened to me, exept it was solder of fortune, installing windows on an old hard drive I had fixed the ptoblem (other than I had 120 gigs of unstable hard drive)

[Thorn]

Sounds like a heat issue. Something is overheating and its shutting itself off to keep from getting fried.

[MatthewPapa]

Yea, parts do stuff like that when they get hot.  Make sure you have proper cooling on your CPU and airflow in your case.

[ChronoReverse]

Check the fan on the 9800.  See if it's clogged with dust and clean it.  You might also want to see if the fan is stalling because the bearings are worn.

[Liberator]

Add a fan that blows directly onto the hard drive, get rounded cables to increase airflow.

Clean you're case regularly.  Try not to set it on the carpet.

[aldo_14]

Oh.  I thought that was an existential question at first.

Er, carry on.

[MicroPsycho]

It's probably safe to rule out power, I have a 2 week old 600 W power supply. My Radeon is less than 3 months old so I cant see there being anything wrong with the card itself. It could be heat related but I unplugged it and had it out from te wall and It became quite cool, but when I turned it on I had the same problem.

I consulted with a friend and he said it might be DirectX related. Could this be possible?

I will check all of the fans in my computer, but I don't think I'll see any change.

And if it is my hard drive then...Christmas is coming soon.

[Lightspeed]

I think it's a power issue. The 600 W power supply might be broken.

I had something similar happening with my power supply, everything was fine after I went to the store and exchanged the malfunctioning one.

[MicroPsycho]

fans are clean

no fans blow directly into hard drive

all power cables are connected and not loose

My harddrive functions when I'm doing anything other than a game.
Now I can't be ingame longer than a few second, the problem has spread to the main menu. I just replaced my power supply a couple weeks ago, my last power supply just died and my computer just stopped working, this isn't the case now. When I restarted my computer, it would not start, just after windows started to load, I heard the infernal double click!

This is really frustrating!

[WMCoolmon]

I'd suggest making a backup of your vital data, first of all. Unusual hard drive sounds are usually not good.

Also, while I was building my computer, I did a lot of reading on power supplies. The quality of the things is incredibly important - a quality PSU of 300w can easily be better than a 350w one. Also, since the problem seems to be progressively getting worse, maybe it's just been over the last week or so that it became evident?

Check your voltages - make sure they're not deviating too far from the norm.

Also make sure you're getting enough power on the 12v line. According to this site, the 12-volt line is used for disk drives, and I've read that more and more manufacturers are using the line for video cards and processors (So it's possible that your video card, CPU, and HD are all on the same line. With a 600w power supply, it's probably not the problem - but better safe than sorry.)

Or, you could just plain try switching out the PS for another one to make sure it's not faulty. Like I said, just because you didn't notice the problem right after you bought it doesn't mean it didn't exist (Could be you just didn't play MW long enough. )

[mitac]

Voltages can be checked using an analysis tool (like Sandra, Everst) or by checking your bios. There should be some options there, labelled "system monitor" or similar.

Anyway, I tend to concur Bobboau. What brand is the hard drive? Is SMART enabled in your Bios?

BTW : if it's a Hitachi/IBM drive : better get a new one ASAP.