What's wrong w/ my pc =(

Hello there... I'm having an issue w/ my 2 year old computer and it has gotten to the point that I think I might just go and sell it / trash it.  The specs are:  AMD Athlon 3500, Radeon X850XT, 1gig ram, Windows XP and an Nforce mobo, 420 watt psu.  

About a year ago when I got Oblivion I first encountered the problem.  I played the game fine for 3 days, and on the 4th day the screen froze and a crazy multicolored grid appeared.  My pc's temp on the front of my case never seems to go above 105ºF but my video card seems to run hot.  I fixed the problem temporarily.  I had reformatted and dled the latest drivers... which didnt work, but then I dusted out the entire case and it worked for a good 8-9 months.  I didnt see the problem again until WoW's expansion BC came out.  In the "Outlands" I started crashing the first couple days.  The problem eventually went away.. without me doing a thing.  The computer has worked fine up until about a month ago when I started playing Oblivion again, and seems to be getting worst.  I cannot play WoW for more than a 1/2 hour some days before crashing.   Instead of the screen freezing and displaying that grid-like thing... instead it goes black and then the sound cuts 5-10 seconds after.  I tested Ram w/ test I downloaded, but I havent tried the test that u need a floppy for.  I also took off the side panel to the case and blew a fan on High directly into the pc... bringing down my temperature on the front of the case to 80º F and it still crashed. Plz share some insight.  Thanks.

Bump

Plz help

reinstall your vid card drivers. uninstall and reinstall them.

then reinstall direct x and direct x runtime environment

run disk defrag, and then go into command promt and run chkdsk, if it finds errors type chkdsk /r that way it repairs them on startup. 

try memtest86+ to test your ram on start up, its free, put it on a cd, and boot from cd 

assuming this fixes or eliminates any software / file issues, now try and troubleshoot your parts. if yo dont have parts to try on your pc or another pc to try your parts on, this will be hard to replace the broken part. could be your vid card, ram, mobo, a combination. bad files from a bad hdd, a bad psu not giving enough power, a bad fan on the vid card ,etc. so you see its hard. 

Hello there... I'm having an issue w/ my 2 year old computer and it has gotten to the point that I think I might just go and sell it / trash it. The specs are: AMD Athlon 3500, Radeon X850XT, 1gig ram, Windows XP and an Nforce mobo, 420 watt psu.

About a year ago when I got Oblivion I first encountered the problem. I played the game fine for 3 days, and on the 4th day the screen froze and a crazy multicolored grid appeared. My pc's temp on the front of my case never seems to go above 105ºF but my video card seems to run hot. I fixed the problem temporarily. I had reformatted and dled the latest drivers... which didnt work, but then I dusted out the entire case and it worked for a good 8-9 months. I didnt see the problem again until WoW's expansion BC came out. In the "Outlands" I started crashing the first couple days. The problem eventually went away.. without me doing a thing. The computer has worked fine up until about a month ago when I started playing Oblivion again, and seems to be getting worst. I cannot play WoW for more than a 1/2 hour some days before crashing. Instead of the screen freezing and displaying that grid-like thing... instead it goes black and then the sound cuts 5-10 seconds after. I tested Ram w/ test I downloaded, but I havent tried the test that u need a floppy for. I also took off the side panel to the case and blew a fan on High directly into the pc... bringing down my temperature on the front of the case to 80º F and it still crashed. Plz share some insight. Thanks.

Negatory

In windows xp it runs HOOT, 80c-100c on Vista it will run 60-70c.

I cleaned the dust, and nothing happend to the temp on XP.

If you have Vista try that and see if it still gets really hot. 

It sounds like either a bad video card or a cheap/crappy power supply. Never go cheap on the power supply. It's a good way to fry your expensive components. But who knows, it could be software related too. It sounds bad enough that you might want to consider formatting and reinstalling XP.