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| Thread ID: 53054 | 2005-01-06 07:50:00 | Windows 2000 hangs in games | agent (30) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 311218 | 2005-01-06 07:50:00 | I'm having some trouble getting games to work correctly in Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 (no other updates/patches installed aside from that and the High Encryption pack). Basically once I've entered a game, it'll work perfectly for a couple of minutes, and then it'll completely freeze. Ctrl+Alt+Del doesn't work, I can't open Task Manager, and the keyboard or mouse don't respond. Whatever audio was playing at the time it froze will play over and over like a scratched record. I'm sure that I read an article in PC Authority a long time ago about this sort of thing happening (in Windows 2000), but I can't find it, and a search through Google, Clusty, and the Microsoft support archives has turned up nothing relevant or useful. The games that I've tried so far are Quake 3 Arena and GTA3, and the graphics chipset is an onboard VIA VT8751A chipset, and I have the ProSavageDDR driver installed. I'm not running the latest version of VIA Hyperion drivers, as advised by their website due to the chipset. |
agent (30) | ||
| 311219 | 2005-01-06 07:54:00 | And you're using the latest DirectX 9.0c? You sure its not overheating or anything? Latest Drivers.... im sure youve already checked those. WinXP and Win2K have provided the best gaming experiences for me in terms of stability (Second only to Linux, but installation can be a pain sometimes) so yeah.... Before WinXP (With the release of Win2k SP1) microsoft were touting Win2K as being the next gamers platform..... Chill. |
Chilling_Silence (9) | ||
| 311220 | 2005-01-06 08:38:00 | Yes, I'm using DirectX 9.0c, and I doubt it's overheating (it won't be stressing the computer too much). The only advice I've found so far is to disable AGP Texture Acceleration on the Display tab of dxdiag, but that hasn't made a difference whether it's enabled or disabled. It may be that I'm not using the latest Hyperion drivers, or maybe even the wrong video drivers (which I double checked to make sure I had the right ones), but other than that I really am baffled (if I find this PC Authority article it might help, but that'd be a mission). |
agent (30) | ||
| 311221 | 2005-01-06 09:39:00 | has it worked before? have you tried any other games other than those that you stated? is there anything running in the background that may cause it to crash |
Prescott (11) | ||
| 311222 | 2005-01-06 10:05:00 | No, there's nothing running in the background - it's been doing it since I installed Windows (an unattended install), and the games do work on other computers. I don't know if they'd work in another operating system on the same computer because it's a new computer. |
agent (30) | ||
| 311223 | 2005-01-07 02:37:00 | I've installed the latest Hyperion and S3 display drivers, but it makes no difference. Something I've noted is that although Unreal Tournament freezes, the audio continues to play normally - but it still freezes as per normal in Quake 3 and GTA3. |
agent (30) | ||
| 311224 | 2005-01-07 02:45:00 | I had the same problem with a game recently. Turned out lowering the 3D sound acceleration for my soundcard fixed it. Try updating your soundcard drivers and if the soundcard has any 3D sound acceleration settings lower them to see if that helps. | John Grieve (367) | ||
| 311225 | 2005-01-07 02:57:00 | I'll try that, John, but I've also uncovered something else: during cutscenes in GTA3 the whole computer will hang, except the sound will continue playing through to the end of the scene as if nothing had happened. | agent (30) | ||
| 311226 | 2005-01-07 03:37:00 | seeing as the games are actually running for a bit before freezing i would suspect hardware problem such as overheating or poor PSU. what specs is the pc? what cpu and case temp? what size PSU ? |
tweak'e (69) | ||
| 311227 | 2005-01-07 03:57:00 | Well running Unreal Tournament with the software renderer works perfectly, which implies it isn't a problem with CPU, RAM, etc - it's the onboard graphics. The CPU is a Celeron 2.4D, and it's got 256MB of memory - 32MB of which is shared with the onboard S3 ProSavageDDR graphics chipset. I know it's crappy integrated graphics, but this shouldn't necessarily cause the games to lock up. I'm not sure what the PSU is though. And I can report that the games hang whether Direct3D acceleration is disabled through dxdiag or not, whether all sound acceleration is turned off or not, and whether AGP Texture Acceleration is disabled or not. Due to the fact that the software renderer works fine I think it may be a graphics driver problem. |
agent (30) | ||
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