Friend's computer crashes during games.

[oLLie]

hello all, my friend has a problem with his computer. it crashes during the first 10 minutes or so of playing a game. we suspected his video card (ati radeon 7200) so we formatted and then swapped a geforce2 mx in it's place. dxdiag will do direct3d fine, and it seemed like counter-strike would work in opengl or direct3d but other things will crash within the first 10 minutes or so. I thought it might be his ram, but it seems to only crash while gaming, not regular computer use. any ideas? thanks guys.

 

[richleader]

Your guess seems to be quite logical.

 

[oLLie]

Originally posted by: richleader
Your guess seems to be quite logical.

but then why wouldn't it crash during normal computer use?

 

[richleader]

Could be heat related, or just the added stress on the chips. My computer's ram fails the Norton Mem Diognostic but works in everything else.

Try pulling the sound card out and see if that makes a difference, IRQ conflicts and all.

 

[Dreadogg]

could be heat issue! Games stress causing more heat! Also post his specs OS etc..

 

[oLLie]

Ok it's a P3 533 mhz, running windows 98, pulled the sound card, slow arse 5400 drive all on a really shitty old FIC KA-6110 mobo. Could it be heat? We've been trying two cards: radeon 7200 and geforce2 mx. the radeon has a fan (maybe heatsink/fan) but the geforce2mx only has a heatsink. When we tried counter-strike on the computer with the 7200 in opengl it didn't freeze (although cs did close itself a few times). When we played starcraft that worked fine, but when I try playing Diablo II on 2D it freezes! This is the odd part, when I play it in 3d and it freezes I push this sleep button on his keyboard, then I push the wakeup button, and the computer unfreezes and closes Diablo II with an unhandled exception. When I google the exception it comes up with something about DirectX not functioning properly. So I run DXDiag and run the direct3d test and the cubes are spinning CRAZY fast with the radeon 7200 (IIRC they spun normal speed w/ the geforce2mx, but direct3duse like diabloII would still freeze with the mx, too). I was under the impression that they were supposed to spin at a set speed because it asks if you saw a cube w/ the directX logo on the sides which would be hard to see at a super-spinny-speed. Also, I don't see how Direct3d can be screwed up as we just formatted that computer and installed DirectX 8.1 freshly on it. it's so frustrating not to be able to fix it. I think we'll try swapping ram from another computer he has just temporarily to see if the ram is a problem. Ram, heat or mobo I'm thinking (maybe a BIOS flash?). Thanks for all your help guys,

Ollie

*edit*
I can't understand what might be wrong with it:
Ram , heat, or mobo would lead me to believe that it would crash during normal non-gaming use, which it doesn't.

 

[oLLie]

Well since the format I tried to run Half-Life again with both cards and it just exits out of itself constantly whether it's in software, or opengl, or directx. Diablo II still freezes in Direct2d or Direct3d, but Starcraft magically works just fine. thanks again guys,
Ollie

 

[Mem]

Some bios tweaks for gaming can`t do no harm,disable all video shadowing in bios,disable system bios cacheable,try AGP at 1x in bios,also having all latest drivers for both video card and sound sound,keep PCI slot 1 empty(nearest to AGP) so it does not share IRQ with AGP card,and finally bios update might help as last resort.

Also that board is a VIA chipset right? So install the latest VIA 4 in 1 drivers 4.38 .

 

[Drifter]

oLLie. I second Mem.
I would also try using your MX card and Direct X7 with the 14.70 Detonator driver at this site
If that doesn't work.See if one of your friends will borrow you there video card.Before you go out and buy one.

I had the same problem as you.It ended up being the video card(bought used).My computer just didn't like it for some reason.Once I put in the new card everything worked fine. The funny thing about this for me was when I swapped the same video card to my other computer everything worked fine.

 

[oLLie]

mem & drifter thanks for all the suggestions, I'll definitely try them out.
As for the VIA 4-in-1 I tried installing those to no avail . Windows reported no IRQ conflicts, but I'll keep the 1st PCI slot empty. I think the first thing I'll try is swapping ram from a different computer in and seeing if that makes a difference. If not, then I'll do a BIOS flash. After that, I dunno. Is it possible to install directx 7 over directx 8.1? 'Cause I know you need a special 3rd-party program just to remove directx (stupid ms).

Guys, thanks for all the help!

 

[Drifter]

To uninstall Direct X go HERE