Member Avatar for shifty91

:o hi,
after about a year of no luck on my dad's behalf i have resorted to asking some peopl ewho know what they are tlaking about. it seems to be a problem with games, whenever one is installed every so often the hard drive light flashes and constantly stays on and the monitor shows a sign saying no signla the only way to recover the computer is to re boot and who knows how long before it does it again. the only way of sorting it out is to take the games off the computer. but that doesnt mean it is fixed. could anyone help me with what the problem is and how to over come it???

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Dani AI

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Symptoms: installing/running games eventually leads to constant HDD activity and the monitor going to "no signal", recoverable only by reboot; removing games reduces the trigger. As asked, collect full system details (CPU, RAM, GPU model, PSU wattage, Windows build) using msinfo32 and dxdiag /t dxdiag.txt. flagged a graphics angle — instead of swapping parts immediately, follow a measured diagnostic workflow to prove whether this is a driver/service issue or failing hardware.

Suggested diagnostic workflow (order matters):

  • Reproduce once, then immediately check Event Viewer (System) for display-driver, disk, or kernel errors and enable small memory dumps in System Properties so crashes are captured; analyze dumps with a tool like BlueScreenView.
  • Do a clean graphics-driver reinstall: boot Safe Mode and remove drivers with Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU), then install the vendor package from NVidia/AMD/Intel.
  • Run targeted hardware tests: GPU stress (FurMark/OCCT) to try to force the fault; RAM with Memtest86; SMART + chkdsk /f for the drive. If available, try a Linux live USB and run a stress test there — persistent crashes outside Windows point to hardware.
  • Check for heavy background services installed by games (use a clean boot via msconfig to disable non-Microsoft services) and monitor whether disk I/O spikes before the display loss.

Notes and cautions: consistent HDD activity with display loss often means the OS or a driver is hanging (captured events/minidumps will show that). If driver names appear (eg. vendor .sys files) search vendor support for that specific error. BIOS/chipset updates can help but flash only when a targeted update addresses the issue. Useful downloads: Memtest86 and Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU).

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Member Avatar for TinglyCourier

What's the specs on the computer and what types of games are we talking about? Could simply be a matter of too much for the computer to handle if the games are high demand or if you have an old system with only onboard video.

Member Avatar for fry

the problem is in your video card, is it inbuilt, i think that it's overheated, the best solution would be to change it, but you can put a fan on it's chip and memory.

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