Game Randomly Shuts Down Computer

[Anon Zytose]

Every so often, while playing Civilization Beyond Earth, my computer will suddenly shut off. No blue screen of death or frozen screen or anything, just abruptly shut off faster than if I had held down the power button. This will happen in-game. I have yet to determine what situation will cause this, other than it happening while playing the game. There have also been a few cases where trying to continue a game from the last autosave will cause the game to crash at the same spot.

I use a Sony VAIO laptop that was first activated at the end of 2010. It runs Windows 7 at 64-bit. It has an Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU, Q 740 @ 1.73GHz, 6GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA graphics card with 1GB VRAM.

When I start the game, I receive a message saying my graphics card is out of date. However, I have at least one friend whose computer also displays that warning and runs the game fine. Regardless, I am open to the possibility that my graphics card has a more unique handicap in relation to this game.

If someone here can help me get the game to run without it crashing my computer every few dozen turns, that would be most appreciated. I'd rather not have to wait until it finally becomes time for me to get a new machine.

Thank you.

Edit: This issue has been somewhat fixed as the game seems to no longer crash my computer. While I'm not sure, I think it may have been because I turned off leader animation. Again, Thank You!

 

[superliminal]

From what you describe it sounds like your computer is overheating. Is your laptop getting really hot? You can check in event viewer to see if this is what's happening. Civ5 and BE use a good deal of processing power and can lead to overheating.

 

[Anon Zytose]

I had thought at first that my computer had been overheating, as it had done with previous games in the past. However, many times in this situation, the computer would abruptly shut down while merely warm.

The event viewer has logged the last such crash while trying to play Beyond Earth as such:

Log Name: System
Source: Kernel-Power
Logged: 1/19/2015 6:18:05PM
Event ID: 41
Task Category: (63)
Level: Critical
Keywords: (2)
User: SYSTEM
Computer: BeaconSpire
OpCode: Info

When trying to see if loading the last autosave would crash my computer at the same spot, I noticed that other leaders were not moving. I'm pretty sure that it's because the previous time I had dropped all graphics effects to bare minimums, and that on Monday I misread "changes cannot be made until the computer is restarted" as "changes cannot be made until the game is restarted". In any case, the number of turns I've managed to play of that game has so far extended from 12 (I set autosaves for every 4 turns) to 171 (when I decided to save and take a break). I think I may actually be in the clear here.

Dealing with cardboard cutouts for leaders is a small price to pay for being able to actually play this game, which finally is working well enough for me. Thank you for your help!