Magicka restarts computer seemingly randomly

Question

Magicka restarts the computer, even though nothing special happened (no level switch, scripted event, etc.). Not BSOD, no error. Happened both in sp and coop. How to fix/get more info of it?

Answer 1

When a PC restarts during a game without BSOD or no error there could be different causes:

1. Videocard is damaged. I remember that I had an AMD HD 4670 once and it caused to reboot PC but not with all games, only with some, that probably triggered some unexpected hardware conditions. They substituted it in warranty without problems.
2. Firmware (Bios) or drivers problem. Check if there is a new version of bios on your vendor's website. Check also that you have last version of drivers installed; if you have already last version installed, and it continues hard crash, try install an older version (in few cases older drivers are more stable)
3. Temperature. Magicka is not "very optimized" and it use a lot of resources even on well equipped PCs. Therefore it could stress your videocard too much. Check your videocard temperatures and if they seems too high try lowering the default frequency of GPU/Videocard RAM.
4. Power. For the same reason a 3. could be that Magicka demands too much power and your power supply cannot afford those ampere peaks.

In other cases I also suggest to try tweaking game video settings but unfortunately, at the moment, Magicka lacks in that aspect.

Answer 2

It may also be that it really is a BSOD, but it flashes on the screen so fast you can't read the error message.

Try disabling auto-restart on system crash (Windows 7 instructions). Also, check the event logs.

It should be noted that as a user- (and managed!-) process, it is extremely unlikely that Magika itself is causing a BSOD. More likely, it's faulty hardware, faulty hardware-settings, or possibly a poorly written service installed on your system.