Help for Plants vs Zombies Lock up

[Diogones]

Greetings Geekhack Users!

I am a huge fan of the game Plants vs Zombies, but I have an issue with the game which I need help with. The game will play fine on Windows 7 64 bit for about 30 to 45 minutes, after which point it will lock up and become unresponsive. If I restart the game, it will continue for a few seconds, and lock up again. I have tried running it in compatibility mode with all sorts of OS choices; I have enabled the option to always run the game as an administrator; I experimented with full screen and windowed mode; I tried fiddling with the resolution and the Windows 7 theme (Basic or Aero) but nothing seems to work. I don't think that it is an issue of the game being unable to run in a 64 bit OS, because I have had other games which had that issue, and I couldn't even install them. This game installed and ran very well for almost an hour before giving me constant lock ups. I have installed it from the CD version, and I don't think there are any updates that I have to get for it. Does anyone here have a solution to this problem? If so, I would be much obliged for the answer, as it is a fun game and I would hate to be unable to play it simply because of an incompatibility issue.

[MissileMike]

Can you try powering down your PC for an hour and playing again?  If it goes a while before a lockup, you're probably dealing with an overheating issue.

[MissileMike]

Plants vs Zombies is perfectly compatible with 64bit systems, I run 64bit Windows 7 with no trouble at all.  Whether it's pvz or crysis, it's still blasting polygons out to the video card fast enough to cause an overheating issue.

Plus, the playing for a while, then lockups thing is an overheating clue.

[MissileMike]

Prime95 is, but it won't tax the video card.  There are programs for that too.

[Scarzy]

http://www.daionet.gr.jp/~masa/rthdribl/

Try this for stressing GPU, weird to hear that crashing your system

[audioave10]

I've read about an issue with an ATI driver with that game. Do you have an ATI video card? They are working on that issue. That game should not be stressing your hardware.

http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33967782

[kriminal]

worrying about compatibility issues with 64bit is a thing of the past, im glad i switched.
and yep really sounds like an overheating issue... from PVZ ... lol

[Rajagra]

Ironically, simpler 3D programs may be more likely to make graphics cards overheat. WoW doesn't tax my system at all - until I leave it at the simple login screen, where it eventually causes the graphics card fan to start whirring at full blast.

[Diogones]

Thank you all for your prompt and helpful replies! Well still no luck, but I do not think it is an overheating issue. For one thing, I do have a decent gaming laptop, and secondly, I do have a cooling pad for it, so that couldn't be it. After all, I don't have overheating with any of the other games I play.

It isn't really crashing the system, the game just locks up and has to be restarted. I do like audioave10's suggestion, as I do in fact have an ATI graphics card, so maybe there is some sort of incompatibility with that? The thread audiave10 linked suggests turning off 3D acceleration until a fix or patch is released. I'll try that and let you all know what happens.