a few times now, while playing the game (just started here, still in my eight hour trial) my computer shuts right down and reboots.

when i reboot, windows reports the error, and i go to the webpage link that it gives you, and it says it's a problem with my video card.

any known issues with GeForce FX 5200 cards? it's 128mg AGP cards. i know it's a cheap brand, but it should play fine, shouldn't it?

AFAIK there aren't any problems w/ GeForce FX 5200 cards. A few other things you might want to mention:

Are you using OpenGL, DirectX 8.1, or DirectX 9? In Vendetta goto Options->Video, and it'll show which driver it's using on the top of that screen. Under MS Windows it's not recommended to use OpenGL, and I think (but I'm not sure) GeForce FX 5200 cards don't support all the features in DirectX 9, so you'll probably want to be using DirectX 8.1; if it doesn't say DirectX 8.1 click the "Change Driver" button & change it to DirectX 8.1. If it was already on DirectX 8.1, it might be worth trying DirectX 9.

Also make sure you have the latest nVidia drivers installed from http://www.nvidia.com/drivers

Actually, complete restarts are often hardware problems. Power supply, processor, motherboard, memory or video card could cause the issue. Are you able to play other fairly recent video games without the rebooting issue?

I had a similiar problem when I first upgraded to my current hardware.... About 5 minutes into VO the machine would reboot. Nothing else I ran on the machine would cause it to reboot....but VO was the only game I was playing at the time.

After installing a util to monitor the CPU and case temp the problem became apparent. VO was pushing the CPU and video card enough to raise the case temp which in turn was raising the CPU temp and causing a reboot. I added another case fan and the problem went away.

Your mileage may vary....

i'll try switching to the older version of directx

this actually happened one day while i was playing the freelancer demo, but only one time.

i've even went into the advanced properties and turned down hardware acceleration two notches. i guess it could be a heat problem, i don't know.

Problem is, lowering hardware acceleration may cool down your video card, but your processor is almost certainly going to remain just as hot. You might want to look into a temperature monitor, as Beamrider did. Any motherboard made in the last 5-6 years should support some kind of temperature monitoring.

Edit: If your processor temperature starts venturing into the 60 degree celsius range, you should be worried. Below that, your processor will be fine.

jees. i swtiched to directx8.1, and while i was sitting ina station afk for maybe 10 minutes my computer crashed!

maybe i should take the side of the case off and put a bigass fan in there

That would be a good step toward ruling out overheating. Usually video driver isues crop up when changing modes between the menus and flight. To crash out while in the station and afk would seem to suggest overheating.

Good feedback everybody.