Computer powers down on its own

Bard

... happening on a laptop - it's suddenly deciding to turn itself off.

only happening when playing "Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?" (Irish Edition) and usually happens a few minutes into the game.

it has me stumped- but I need to sort it out as I'm using the laptop and that game for a quiz night in work on Monday.

any ideas, anyone?

[EDIT]: FYI, O/S is Windows 2000 Pro SP2 with DirectX 8a installed. I only log in as "Administrator".

... oh, and this only suddenly started happening just today - the game was working fine until now (for the past - say - 2 weeks). The only other time the laptop has done this was while playing a DVD.

My own suspicions are that it *might* be due to overheating in the DVD/CDRW drive, but I can't confirm that. (in fact - this seems unlikely...)

Bard

sod that overheating guess... it's nothing to do with that...

I now think it's a problem within DirectX.

When I go into DXDIAG (The DirectX Diagnostics tool) it reports an error in DirectSound as follows:

Error: Could not get basic sound info., result code = 0x8878000a (The request failed because DirectSound resources, such as the priority level, were already in use by another caller.)

Also, under "Device" on the Sound tab in the Diagnostics Tool, it says "Name: Modem #0 Line Playback (emulated)" - which I find strange ... surely it should name my sound card there...

All sounds are playing fine, mind you... just DirectX seems to be misconfigured... and the laptop still powers itself off (seemingly randomly) during "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" and DVD playback.

'elp!!!

Typedef

If it's not direct X it could be some kind of error with apm, ie there is a windows 98/Me issue which hangs a system rather than shutting it down properly when you start + shutdown etc. This sound like problems people have with arbitrary reboots and apm, perhaps your system is doing some kind of powerdown of a device that is not in use while you are running that exe?

Bard

Thanks for the suggestion Typedef... I'm downloading DirectX 8.1 at the moment, ... 60% down right now, - so I'll wait for that, install it and see how it goes.

DirectSound is definitely mis-configured... an error message comes up telling me that each time I go into DXDIAG - then on the Sound tab I get the error mentioned above.

Microsoft's Knowledge Base doesn't seem to have an answer for me... darnit...

Bard

Ok- I updated DX to 8.1, installed the DirectX updater (sets Windows up thinking that its set up with the full install of DX and not just the Windows 2000 bits - according to the blurb), installed the Windows Compatibility Update (for fooling apps into thinking that they're running on 95 or 98). Re-installed PowerDVD and WWTBAM. PowerDVD now runs like a dream and the laptop doesn't hang as before... success!

I tried using the Compatibility Update for WWTBAM to fool it into thinking it was on Win98 or Win95 but for both, the program just assumed that a debugger was running, asked for it to be closed before continuing, and then exited. Trying it then, without the compatibility update it still caused the PC to freeze up somehow... and just as before it's going to a black screen with a blinking cursor, then turning itself off.

I don't get it... it's annoying ... and I need WWTBAM working for Monday evening

Bard

Sorted it out... (*phew!*)

Seems to have been a conflict with a running TSR service... either McAfee VirusShield, PGPFree or pcAnywhere, it would appear.

I just uninstalled all of them and reinstalled WWTBAM and it worked perfectly once again...

Thanks to Typedef for chatting with me in #tech.ie about it and running through a number of options with me.