Windows XP SP2 (recently removed SP3)
Pentium 4 3.01GHz H/T (Recently Re-applied thermal paste because temperatures were reaching 100D CELSIUS)
3GB RAM (Recently Added 1GB May be faulty RAM, Any RAM testing application suggestions?)
80GB IDE (Quite old, Speedfan says it's in good shape)
Nvidia 128MB gfx (This may be the source of the issue)
Mobo, Drivers up to date - no issues there.
[Minecraft concern info: JDK 7; JRE 7]
Recently games such as Minecraft, Plants vs. Zombies and Morrowind have been crashing abruptly and without warning.
No error dump file will be generated in any of the game folders which is odd, and the process has disappeared in the task manager.
I am thinking it may be a Java issue, the problem is I am sure many games I play do not use Java such as 'Morrowind'.
So I decided to rule that out. I had heating issues with the CPU not too long ago so I replaced the thermal paste and elevated the speed of the CPU fan and out-take fans.
The CPU is happily sitting away at around 50 degrees Celsius when in use.
So I decided to rule the CPU out (Hopefully a good move)
I added a 1GB stick of RAM which does not conform to the other 2 sticks of RAM. I have not yet tested to see if the issue still occurs after removing the stick. Are there any memory diagnostic tools you guys/girls could recommend?
I kept the RAM a fair participant in the issue.
So this left me with either somehow a PSU issue (unlikely)
Or a GFX card issue.
No matter how I tweak the gfx card, (even under-clocking it), the error still seems to occur.
I'm thinking either bad drivers or bad card.| It has the latest drivers it can support.
Hard drive is not corrupt, basically fresh installation, registry is tip-top shape.
Any suggestions?
And anything else I should diagnose?
Thanks for any help!