huge mindblowing explosive reboot on a geforce mx 440

[deneddie]

I actually tried playing civilization 4 as you people probably guessed. And everytime I try to play a game, it stays alive and kicking for about 5 minutes and then I get a reboot, always a bluescreen and a reboot.
After the reboot I get the message that the system crashed and it was my video cards fault. It's a

geforce 4 MX 440

I know people can play the game with this card, as I already looked through this forum, but I haven't found a solution to this problem.
Thought it might be my drivers but www.driverguide.com for example tells me I have the latest one.

Could just someone with a mx 440 please tell me what drivers they use or someone else who knows what the problem might be and how I can fix it?

btw: other system specifications are

windows XP on a
pentium4 2.8GHz
512 Mb of RAM



thanks in advance

 

[senwiz]

What does http://www.nvidia.com say? I have the latest drivers from there, using a 6800 with no problems. It could be that you are using a beta driver maybe? I used to use beta drivers exculsively, and always had issues. I changed over to the latest "production" drivers about 8 months ago now, and haven't had a problem with any game since.

 

[deneddie]

so I tried installing drivers from nvidea. And I can assure you, it where the right ones. And the stupid thing tells me it can't find the right hardware and therefore it aborts the install. Very nice...
This is such a weird card and it creates weird problems. Last time i had trouble with wow with this card and there did exist some drivers that could fix the problem, a guy with a mx 440 then told me these existed somewhere on a creepy site in the far end of the internet. So I went out to get them and they did fix the problem where others failed or could not even be installed (like now).

This time, weird stuff happens again and I fear it will take a mx 440 owner to help me. Please is there anyone out there who had the same problem with the reboot? I would very much appreciate your help.

 

[kabouki]

I have a machine with an MX440 ... I remember installing the game and playing on it ... but I don't know the driver version now. I'll be able to look at that machine within 2 days, I'll post the driver version then if you haven't solved the problem.

 

[auldian]

Reboots are very common. There are dozens of posts you'll find.
Drivers, DirectX 9.0c (latest release), XML parsers, etc., have been updated to resolve the issues. You've said your video drivers are functioning errantly. I'd start there.

 

[Lahdoz]

I think the MX 440 has passive cooling rather than a fan since it is a basic desktop card rather than a gaming or performance card. It is likely that the card is overheating since it is being pushed to it's limits. Overheated video memory will give you those kinds of problems. Overheated GPU will more likely give you artifacts.

See if you can put some more space in between your video card and any PCI cards that may be close to it. If you can install a fan as well, you should have better luck.

I generally don't push new hardware, but at the risk of sounding rude, the 440 is weak. Even the 5200 I did some testing with gave me choppy graphics, but the game was definitely playable. I would put money toward a better video card before trying to cool a 440.

 

[deneddie]

You where right, it was overheating that caused the problem. But I can't put a cooling device in the computer because it's a laptop. For the same reason I can't put a better graphical card in there. But it's ok, after I put the graphiqs on "low" , there where no more significant problems and everything is running.

Thanx people

 

[crunch]

Some more cooling hints:
- don't put your laptop on a pillow when playing (some guys reported improvements when they put their laptop on 2 sticks so that air flows underneath)
- edit ini file to clamp max frame rate (to your screen refresh rate or less; e.g. 60 or 30)