Let's all have a moment of silence..

My beloved Dell Dimension 8400, which plays Guild Wars like a dream, seems to be not working properly. I fear it is cancer--no, worse--some kind of Power supply error. I will turn it on and within about 5 minutes, it will shut off by itself without warning. While I'm hoping I can get it fixed, the only way to fix it may involve erasing everything off of the Hard Drive, including Guild Wars.

I have a question, though: If guild wars gets erased, and I tried to re-install it, will my CD Key be viewed as invalid? Or will it work?

I don't think you'll need to enter a CD key. You'll just log in the account that you already have.

The CD key is account based, so you should be fine. Make sure you write-down your account/password

Oops. I'm an idiot. >_>

Bad power supplies are a pretty common problem. My first custom-built rig shipped with a bad one and I had to replace it. Went off without a hitch and I'd never cracked open a computer before, so don't start looking at coffins just yet...

Possiblities - cooling, power supply wattage (Check the notch in the back and make sure it's set to the wattage of your region), faulty wire, processor issue... If it shuts down a few minutes after it starts up without a warming, thats about all I can think of atm. If it's ram, you'll know. It loads up in DOS and gives you an annoying "BEEEEEEEP". Lucky for you, I hear Dell has a good customer support team that should be able to hook you up. I personly don't like Dells since I can make my own system for better and cheaper (IE, my rig right now) but if something goes wrong, I'm on my own. You got da power to fix it :3 Good luck!

Shut yo mouth boy, your broken card works better than my peice of crap, you dont kno wat i go through in the game lol

could be overheating -- so maybe a heat sink issue?

if it is overheating, or power supply, then i don't see why you have to wipe your drive.
if you do wipe though, when you reinstall, just remember your login, and passwd.

There's an easier way in which has worked for my PCBU (PC Base Unit)... Remove one of the side panels (except for the one with the motherboard closest to that panel) and hopefully the problem will be sorted out. Used to have loads of problems with an Nvidia graphics card inside a closed-up PCBU...