Thread: Almost too Paranoid to Play

Myself and two friends all bought Left 4 Dead while we were LANing one night a couple of weeks ago, and proceeded to LAN it all night long. Over the course of the next week, both my friends' computers DIED while they were playing L4D. Both of them had pretty decent machines, (within the requirements for the game) and while playing the game, they both blue screeened and their computers would not boot at all, they can't even get into the BIOS. I have had minor crashes twice when trying to exit the game, I just end tasked it and that was the end of it, but I find myself almost too paranoid to play the game, both of my friends are convinced that the game is what destroyed their machines. Has anyone else heard of any crashes this severe with L4D involved? I have preemptively done the dual core processor fix and the windows vista "net localgroup Administrators /add Local Service" fix just in case, but L4D does seem to make my fans go crazy like no other game I have ever played and it is freaking me out a little after having witnessed the demise of two good computers possibly due to the game. Any advice for my friends, or has anyone out there ever seen anything like this before? Thanks in advace.

Sorry, but I'd put my money on the issue being Vista and not the game. My comp used to bluescreen on EVERYTHING, even opening firefox, but I got a new rig for Christmas and I have not had a single issue with L4D (apart from the weird pink texture clipping in NM2).

Sorry I can't really be any help, but I doubt that a computer game could destroy your comp unless you Limewired some unlegit version of the game and your comp is getting raped by a virus. Beats me dude

Originally Posted by Target Practice

If I had to guess purely on the basis of what you've told me there, it sounds like overheating. Make sure your computer is properly ventilated, has a decent powersupply that can support your graphics card, and that your cooling fans are up to the job.

I have not had any serious problem out of the game...yet. it is my friends who boith had their PCs destroyed while playing. I have only had 2 minor lockups like you might expect out of any game, it is my friends who got pwned, I know they had legit copies of the game, I was with them when they bought it. I have not had any real trouble, I am just a little paranoid because both my friends' computers crashed while playing, they both had XP. I was just trying to help them figure it out since they currently cannot post for obvious reasons.

The only thing that might explain that being they OC'd their systems with out thought for removing the excess heat from the case.

That said L4D stresses just about every part of a computer so it tends even on a non-OC'd system to generate a lot of heat.

On standard systems running standard settings you shouldn't have a problem, but there are plenty of 3rd party programs to monitor how hot every part of your system is getting.

Left 4 Dead: Common PC Fixes

AMD XP 2400+ | 2GB DDR 3200 | Audigy 2 ZS | ATI Radeon HD 3850