Chess Engines cause my comp to crash?

[Matt Switzer]

Very odd... At first I thought it was just winboard, but it turns out that any analysis I do with something like Crafty, Fritz or GNU Chess all eventually cause my comp to grind to a halt and ultimately restart.

Things might go well for a while, then all of a sudden things will get a bit slow and the cursor goes a bit screwy. I might have about another 5 seconds before the whole thing freezes, becomes unresponsive and then restarts.

Major, major bummer.

I can review games no problem in winboard, but as soon as the engine is going doing analysis/me playing against it, things ultimately get hairy within 5 minutes of play.

Has anyone heard of this? I'm not finding much on this and apart from buying a new comp, I'm wondering if there are some obvious culprits?

Thanks!

Matt

[Dr.Wael Deeb]

Hi,
It might turn out to be an overheating problem with your processor!!
The fan of the processor is broken or is not managing to cool it after a considerable overclocking
Cheers,
Dr.Wael Deeb

[Ron Murawski]

Hi Matt,

Dr.Wael Deeb is correct!

I had a cpu that would overheat despite an over-sized cooling fan. It was not over-clocked at all. After buying several expensive cooling fans I replaced the cpu and all my troubles went away.

Ron

[Roger Brown]

Very odd... At first I thought it was just winboard, but it turns out that any analysis I do with something like Crafty, Fritz or GNU Chess all eventually cause my comp to grind to a halt and ultimately restart.

Things might go well for a while, then all of a sudden things will get a bit slow and the cursor goes a bit screwy. I might have about another 5 seconds before the whole thing freezes, becomes unresponsive and then restarts.

Major, major bummer.

I can review games no problem in winboard, but as soon as the engine is going doing analysis/me playing against it, things ultimately get hairy within 5 minutes of play.

Has anyone heard of this? I'm not finding much on this and apart from buying a new comp, I'm wondering if there are some obvious culprits?

Thanks!

Matt

Hello Matt,

I suspect that you have a cpu + overheating problem.

I have an ancient computer here and I have just about abused it in every possible way with Winboard and its attendant engines.

Not one crash here.

I do hope that you will not need to buy a computer but life without Winboard can be really empty....

Later.

Ps. What is your ram size and what setting do you give for the engines?

[Matt Switzer]

Hey:

Ps. What is your ram size and what setting do you give for the engines?

Overheating... Hmm... I have 512 MB of ram, none of which is overclocked. I wouldn't be surprised to see the comp overheating... It has started to become a bit more unstable these days. I've monkeyed (monkied?) with it enough already cleaning it out, cpu grease, etc... I suppose I could upgrade the fans inside.

Or, I'll cave in and buy that new computer I've been eyeing.

I should track my cpu temp while I'm playing and see what happens.

Thanks for the advice everyone!

Matt