Thread: Computer Freezes/Error Screen

As of a few weeks ago, my computer started freezing when I play various games.

Heroes 5 freezes about 10 seconds into the game, I can't alt-tab out or anything. I'm pretty much dead in the water, and I have to restart.

CS:S is a little more random, sometimes I can play for two hours with no issues, sometimes it freezes multiple times in 5 minutes. The game will freeze for about 20 seconds or so, the sound will loop over and over again during this freeze (about a quarter second worth of sound) and then voila, I'm back in the game. (but missing 20 seconds worth of action)

However, every once in a while the game will not continue, but instead kick me to desktop with the following error: "Failed to lock vertex buffer in CmeshDX8::LockVertexBuffer"

Like I said, this only recently started happening. I had no problems previously. Drivers are up to date, I've done some minor troubleshooting, but I don't know all that much. I've mentioned this problem to a few people and they've all said it sounds like a hardware problem, possibly video card. I'm not sure, so I figured I'd come here and ask. The vertex buffer error screen is a very recent development though, just started happening the other day.

Computer specs:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4600+ 2.41 GHz
2.00 GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT
Win XP
DirectX 9.0c

Please let me know if you guys have any ideas. Also let me know what other info might help.

Thanks!
-Kyle

Definitely sounds like a hardware issue to me. Start by opening your system up and making sure you don't have a lot of dust clogging your fans. Since it only happens when you go into games, it sounds like it'd most likely be your video card. Get some sort of temperature monitoring program like PC Wizard, Everest, or EVGA Precision. Make sure your card isn't overheating.