Can anybody tell me if it's possible for an emulator to crash a computer? I swear my laptop has been shutting down by itself for no apparent reason ever since I downloaded the NDS emulator from here. It only shuts down when I'm using the emulator so it's really hard to think anything else is doing it. At the same time it's weird to think that an emulator can crash a computer. I've used several emulators before and never had a problem. The computer just totally shuts down with no warning and no error message once I re-boot it. I'm pretty sure it's the emulator but I need to ask if it's even possible for an emulator to do this? -TeK
It sounds like overheating to me. You should monitor the temperature of the CPU/RAM and graphics card.
I agree with seph, although monitoring the temps might be fairly difficult as in my experience laptops tend not to have sensors.
Does overheating become an issue when you are doing something in specific? I remember having the laptop on for HOURS you know surfing the web or messing with photoshop. I can't even go half an hour with the emulator going before a crash. Also I remember a program that monitors the temperature of that stuff...but I forgot the name, I'll try google. -TeK
Looks like Loony was sorta right. My laptop has some motherboard named Quanta 3093(WTF?) which is not supported by a program called MotherBoard Monitor...which supports 1100 different motherboards, awesome. I still don't think it's overheating though, since my laptop has been on since I made that last post and it hasn't shut down...but I'm gonna try the emulator now and see if it crashes my computer and how long it took since this post. -TeK
My laptop is on 24/7 with no problems, but 15 minutes of TES:Oblivion causes physical damage to the graphics chip because of overheating
Well that sucks...I've played so many games on this laptop with no issue..and now it wants to crash when it's running a simple NDS emulator? BAH! -TeK
Yeah, its same with me here. Whenever i use the NDS emulator at one stage it would just restart my computer and it just gets really annoying
Well I've had the emulator running for two hours now and it hasn't crashed. I started cooling the inside of the laptop and I dumbed everything down visually. Removed the wallpaper and disabled all the visual features that make everything "nice." Instead of Windows XP it looks like Windows 98. Closed all applications and browsers, I pretty much just lightened the load on my processor and GFX card by a buttload. I'm monitoring the CPU load while I'm playing to make sure it doesn't go over 80%, because I feel that if it does the laptop will be liable to crash cause of overload. Interesting how you can adjust the emulator settings (Emulator Speed, LCD refresh) and it directly affects the cpu load. I have found a reasonable setting with every game so that it doesn't kill the fun of the game but it doesn't kill my laptop as well. -TeK
A NDS emulator is quite heavy to run actually, lots of calculations going on. The most important thing is to make sure you don't block the fan area and that you have it on a surface that can absorb and transport the heat; perhaps move it around a bit on that surface so that it's always possible for your laptop to get rid of the heat.
Yeah, I have a serious fan like literally inches from the laptop cooling it. There is only one fan that I can see underneath the laptop, it is on a hardwood desk but I always make sure that the desk isn't blocking that fan. For MusicAddict: I have a Compaq Presario V2000. Note: This crap is really random, I just laid down almost 8 hours of gameplay with Pokemon Diamond and only had 2 computer shut downs, and they were 5 hours apart. Although I started doing a certain procedure that when I say it to myself it sounds ridiculous lol but I can't say for sure that it isn't helping. If the problem really is overheating then I figured with the powerful fan I have cooling the laptop and some minutes rest that the gfx card or the processor would never have a chance to 'overheat.' I noticed with the emulator that even though you can save in-game if the computer is shutdown with the emulator running you lose all the progress you made in that session. You have to literally save in-game and then manually close the emulator for it to really save. So since I got tired of losing hours of gameplay because of forced shutdown I figured I take advantage. Once I do a good portion of the game I save and shut down the emulator and for the next few minutes I watch a good portion of one of my favorite shows on tv while the laptop cools down. It's painstaking (sorta) because I just want to keep playing..but I have to do this in order to keep playing, or at least I think I have to. Before, when I first made this topic once the computer crashed and I re-booted and started playing again it would shut down again within minutes. Doing what I said above extended my play time from minutes to hours, 8 hours to be exact, with only 2 shutdowns in 5 hr intervals. Pretty simple process but annoying at the same time...and not to mention sort of ridiculous at heart. I feel like I should just go out and buy a DS but then that means I give up on the laptop and the emulator and I don't like giving up at anything, honestly. I do the far fetched and the ridiculous to avoid giving up. Also, I can't help but to think about the DS in the long run, when it comes to money I think of investment and long time value. My sister has a PSP and I feel well, I can play psp games on her crap so I should get a DS and fill the 'void' if you will. Then there is the problem where there is only a handful of games that currently interest me on the DS. Meh, I'm totally digressing. *Walks away* -TeK
