Large Problem, begging for help or advice

I'm having rather tricky problem and I'm out of ideas on how to fix it, so turning here. Perhaps someone else has had this problem and will know how to advise me.

When I am playing City of Villains and I alt tab my computer turns off within 5 minutes.

There is no graphics glitches or any other indication anything is wrong. It all works perfectly, right up until my computer turns off.

I've replicated the issue with City of Villains as the only program running. When I hit alt tab to access my desktop, without anything else running, the computer turned off.

Normally I would think this is a power supply issue but its only started occurring since issue19 and it only occurs when City of Villains is running.

I ran the computer for 8 hours yesterday with Firefox, itunes, Adobe photoshop and yahoo messenger and no problems. Again this morning for about 6 hours. Again, no problems.

So far I have tried a system restore to back to a point in time where the problem wasn't occurring. That fixed it for about an hour, then the problem started happening again.

I tried verifying all files on the City of Villains loader, but that didn't help either.

My computer isn't overheating, I checked that and everything is securely plugged in with no signs of corrosion on any of the parts.

I've yet to try completely uninstalling City of Villains and reinstalling it as I don't have the installation discs anymore and wasn't sure if it was possible to download the game online.

Any assistance in the matter will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance.

Try posting this in the Technical Assistance forum. The folks who hang out there tend to really know their stuff.

Yes, you can download the game without the disks, but it takes a while (like overnight).

You could try running in windowed mode and show your taskbar to be always on top. That way, you can click on the other programs running in your taskbar in order to switch to it.
If you have Ultramode on, maybe turn it off and lower the quality settings.
This is a longshot, but check if you have any macro keys programs. Make sure that Alt and tab aren't mapped to start some background process.

My son had had a similar problem and he came to realize somehow things had been reprogrammed on the keyboard to shut down by hitting the alt button.

Okay, I have no idea what caused this problem, but I do know a work around. When playing, switch to windowed mode. Then, you can just minimize cov/h and check your e-mail, or whatever.

In the meantime, I would run a dxdiag, and send the results to support, and explain what the problem is. It may be a good while before they reach you, but they are the experts.

Sorry to sound newbish but, what is "a dxdiag" ? Do I need to download something or is it an ingame thing?

Tidbit: was your son having the problem only occasionally? I was using the alt tab function to get between my other programs when CoV was not running and didn't have the problem but my keyboard did have a giant spaz attack yesterday and a couple other keys are messed up so I am viewing it as a possibility.

Just wondering if its something that occured only occasionally for your son, as it is happening for me, or if it was every time he used the alt key.

To everyone, thank you for the responses. I shall go and find the tech support forum. I didn't know there was one =)

You should head over to the tech support forum (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/forumdisplay.php?f=578) which you said you were doing anyway, but...there's an easy to miss sticky up there (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=231628) with instructions on downloading a program that will gather the technical specs of your system (driver versions, hardware, all that good stuff) and format it for easy consumption. It'll also walk you through running a hijackthis report to see what other stuff might be running on your computer that could be interfering.

Just follow the instructions, post the results and see if anybody has any ideas.

CoHelper is a dud on my computer thus far, unfortunately. Same with attempting to install the framework.

Hijackthis I am thankfully familiar with and have already.

"it wasn't an instant shut down"

Wow, that is sounding really similar to what happened with me. Other than that 1 time I did a system restore it did take 5 minutes pretty consistently.

/eyes her keyboard suspiciously.

For CoH Helper - if it's not installing, simply open run (Start Menu - > Run) and type in "dxdiag" - copy paste that.

CoH Helper is just a tool that auto-trims the dxdiag it runs. IIRC.