For what it's worth, as someone who has been both using and fixing PCs since the late 80s, computers with the beginnings of hardware failure or something wrong with the drivers can indeed run certain games with no or little issue and yet have massive issues with another. It all depends on how the specific program works.
It generally works out best to always assume your system is at fault and do your best to troubleshoot it from that direction first, using error information you get from a program that routinely crashes. Even if it's the program that is crashing trying to utilize your specific driver or hardware combo in an odd way it's not easy to determine if that is indeed the case.
In my experience game crashes are caused by the following four issues, in order of frequency:
DISABLE ANY GAME MODS AND START A NEW GAME FOR TESTING. DISABLE OVERCLOCKING IF PRESENT.
Drivers
If a simple uninstall/reinstall doesn't work, use a driver cleaner program to clean the registry thoroughly. All else fails, back up your stuff and do a full operating system reinstall. I typically will do this if the following two issues don't resolve it as it largely rules out driver, malware, virus, and other software related causes. Almost always video card/driver related.
Memory
Try running a program like Prime95 for an hour or two and see what happens. It will run your memory at very high intensity. If it's going bad it probably won't be able to run the program for very long.
Disk Drive
Do a full hard drive scan as it's possible that some game files have been written to a bad sector(s) on the drive. You can also trying moving the game to another drive and see if the issue persists. Just be sure to re verify the files.
CPU
Specifically the memory onboard the CPU. Hard to trace without bluescreen error messages IMO. Look for CPU stressing programs and benchmarks. Also more likely to affect everything you do, not only certain games or tasks.
Last edited by BoogieMan; 03/10/17 12:58 PM.
