Help Please Microsoft Train Sim

Does anyone know of any issues with MS Train Sim and certain graphics cards?

On my husband's new computer the demo train ride stops after a while and the machine reboots.

On his old Celeron machine with Intel 810 chipset it ran without any problems even if slow and on my P4 computer with 64MB Nvidia card it runs very well with no problems.

The relevant parts of the spec of my husband's new machine are

Intel P4 3.0GHZ
1 GB DDR Dual Channel 3200 RAM
Radeon X300SE 128MB PCIExpress graphics
MS XP Home SP2 OEM

Have you checked that all the fans are working?
It seems like a problem of overheating. Does this happen in any other game? Try another heavy cpu load application, and see if it crashes also.

No the machine is not overheating, it has three fans which you can hear only too well! The machine is running very well otherwise but the operator(my husband) is a techophobe who panics at the slightest thing and crashes really freak him out.

Anyway, Train Sim ran OK on his 700mhz Celeron without overheating and runs well on my 2.2ghz machine.

Would an uninstall and reinstall help? Could it be the 5 yrs old 15" monitor which can only go up to 1024x768 and 24 bit?

What do you suggest we use as a heavy load app to test the machine? He does not have antyhing else on it yet as he's only had it just over a week. He has watched DVD movies without any problem but the only other games he plays are Solitaire and a Pool game which both run well.

When he goes for his hydrotherapy tommorow I will have a look round the machine, event logs etc.

He has just told me that Train Sim runs for an hour or so before shutting down and I thought it was after a short while so I think it might be the software don't you? He is not very good at reporting faults accurately.

Overheating can take place even after and hour, check that the CPU fan is running ok. Thats the most important one.
Also see that DirectX9.0c and the latest Ati Drivers are installed.

DX9.0c

ATi Catalyst 5.3 : Driver Suite | 2000/XP including Control Center