Modern Warfare 3 crashes my computer in the middle of game

I can't find anyone else with this specific problem, but the general "modern warfare 3 black screen" issues people are encountering seem to be fixed by:

• Updating your graphics drivers. I think there was a special release for the BF3 beta recently that caused issues with MW3 at launch. Even if you've updated recently, check for a newer revision.
• Verify your Steam cache
• Disable the Steam overlay

Beyond that I'm afraid I don't know - there's so many tiny things that can go terribly wrong with a recent game and an individual PC setup that I'm not sure how to advise you in your current situation.

I note that you're overclocking, if you stop, does that help any? That's the first thing I try if I'm having an issue of any type while overclocking.

This sounds very similar to an issue I ran into a while ago

Even though everything checked out normally, it turns out that somehow my memory has gone bad (despite passing all memtests!).

I eventually figured this out by placing only one stick of memory into my system at a time, and it would constantly crash with one stick but not the other.

Ever since I replaced my memory I've had no problems with my system.

The only other thing I can offer is to check the voltage levels for your memory and other components. Some motherboards set the default voltage levels to be too low/high for certain types of memory, which can cause them to burn out faster. (I suspect this is what happened to my machine).

Just to definitively rule out overheating, I'd open the case and place a large house fan blowing directly on the open side of the PC at full blast. If you still get the crash in that scenario, then excess heat cannot be the reason why.

Beyond that, the standard PC stability troubleshooting rules apply:

Try

• run Prime95 overnight and see if your CPU is stable

• run Memtest86 overnight and see if your memory is stable

• run Furmark for an hour or so (be careful as this thing loads GPUs far beyond any realistic load)

By changing the game's sound from "Windows Default" to "Stereo" I was able to reduce the occurrence of this problem to once every 3 to 5 hours, however, the problem persists. If is a clue to anyone, your advice is really appreciated. Thanks.

Given that this seems to be pretty audio-related; try changing your default audio format to different values, you can find this options in the properties of your sound device:

The rule of thumb here is to go for lower settings as they are less of an impact, so try 24 bit, 44100 Hz as well as 16 bit, 48000 Hz and 16 bit, 44100 Hz. At least try the two values involving 44100 Hz because these should really be working. It might be that Modern Warfare 3 has problems with your specific audio card driver and its format settings.

Changing the type of sound seems from non-Stereo to Stereo settings already made the impact on the Sound card lower, so changing the format might have additional relieving effects. You might also want to check that all sound effects are disabled on the Enhancements tab and / or that it is set to an immediate mode. Again, to ensure that the load on your audio card is decreased, the latency is low and the buffers don't get fill because there is something slow.

Other than that, trying older more stable drivers might have possitive effects. But I really think you should be looking for audio related issues. Thinking about audio related issues, the Deferred Procedure Calls can interfere with audio so it might be that you have some spikes there. What does the DPC Latency Checker report to you? It might also play a role...

This is a mega long shot, but a similar thing used to happen to me whenever I played CSS, about an hour in, with no warning, regardless of graphics settings, the game would freeze and I'd hear the "n-n-n-n-n-n" you described of audio looping. Brand new computer, first game I installed. It was the only game that caused this error.

I always thought it was a heat issue as well, but if it's not running higher than other games, than I doubt it is.

I never figured it out until I got into the APB beta, and had the same issue. I e-mailed their support team and gave all the details I could. They told me to update my BIOS drivers. I don't know why it solved the problem but it did, and I haven't had the issue since.

**I would have posted this just as a comment, but I registered just to offer this advice.

Also I noticed you said at the end of games and in AC-130's, the screen goes mostly black and white at these points. I don't know if that could have something to do with it. To recreate it, create a private match and get a friend to spawn with tac insertions so you can quickly farm an AC-130?