Another 'game crashing' thread

[plastic_angel]

A month ago I bought a new computer, these are the specs:

Mainboard: MSI KT4V-L Mainboard for Socket A Retail KT400, ATA/133, ATX, USB2.0, AGP 8X, LAN

CPU: AMD Athlon XP2600+ 2.083 GHz 333MHz bus. Socket A (Thoroughbred) processor.

Fan: EKL Blade CPU-fan - PIII 1,53 GHz, or AMD XP 3200+

Memory: TwinMOS PC3200 DDR-DIMM 512MB (DDR-PC400MHz) (x2)

HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 80GB IDE ATA/100 HDD 2MB cache 7200RPM

Graphic: Sapphire Radeon 9600 Atlantis PRO 128MB AGP, ATI9600PRO, DVI-I, TV-Out

(I first installed Win2k but changed to WinXP Home when I couldn't get the computer to work, but nothing changed)

I'm going to take this from the very begining, and hopefully someone will notice something that I did wrong.

I formatted C: to NTFS, then installed XP Home edition.

When the OS was sorted I installed all drivers, graphic, mainboard (mainboard has onboard LAN and sound).

Downloaded all microsoft updates, and installed DirectX9.0b

Installed DAoC - Shrouded Isles.

First the game would run for a few seconds - some minutes, but then the computer hardlocked and you had to restart using the reset button.

I installed Counterstrike to see if there was any problem with it, and CS showed ugly graphics and also crashed.

I contacted the company I bought the computer from (komplett.se) and they told me to reinstall drivers, directx etc. Nothing helped. After a week of trying different things that they told me to do, flashing BIOS, running DirectX tests and so on we found the problem. Apparently it was something called an 'infinite loop' problem, and they said it was faulty software.

However, I sent the computer back to them to let them look at it, and then they agreed that it was something wrong with the graphics card and they changed it, tested Half-Life for 1 hour, and sent it back, saying it now worked as intended.

When I got the computer back, I tried playing DAoC SI again and after 10 minutes I crashed. The computer didn't hardlock like before, but the game just crashed.

I've tried setting shadows to Classic, and turning reflective water off completely, but neither helps.

I sent the errorlog to RightNow and got a quick(!) reply from them, asking for my DXDiag. I sent it to them, and got another quick reply telling me to:

1. Reinstall graphic drivers, install Catalyst 3.8.
2. Reinstall DirectX.
3. Reinstall mainboard drivers.
4. Set display mode to 16 bits if you were in 32 bits.

Ok, I did that, and still the game is bloody crashing. I read lots of CTD threads on BW and VNboards and tried all sort of things, but still it's crashing. After setting Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic to 2x the game runs for 20-40 minutes if I'm lucky.


Just got this message from RightNow a minute ago:

"To improve things you can try the following tests :

With you graphics card :

- disable the antialiasing or anisotropic options
- lower its frequency

With your bios :

- if your graphics card is on the AGP port, modify its speed (modify to 4X,2x or 1X)
Increase the AGP Aperture ie : 64 to 256 mb
- you can set your memory type to "normal" and select a trasfer mode "low" instead of "high" "

I guess I will have to play around abit with the BIOS again and see if that solves the problem, I doubt it though.

All help is welcome, I've probably forgot to mention things I've tried because I have done too many things :O

Thanks in advance

 

[plastic_angel]

Update:

I did everything that RightNow suggested and still crashed after about 2 minutes.

I got the idea to check what happend if I removed 512MB ram, and after doing that the game ran solid for a bit more than 2 hours... So does anyone have an idea of what the problem can be?

 

[asorek]

its one of two things,

1. Your Memory is fecked..it you removed 1 stick and got a better performance, then take your memory back to your supplier and get new ones.

2. NEVER EVER flash your bios!! there really is NO point! unless its a CRITICAL need to flash..i.e your mobo manufacturer says you MUST..then dont do it..it often causes more problems than it fixes!!

 

[plastic_angel]

With 512MB ram the computer can run DAoC SI for 5 hours + but crashes still happen. When I tried putting in the other 512MB in another slot, the game crashed within 5 seconds, so that must be the problem.

Even with 512MB ram programs like ICQ, Internet explorer etc crash on startup if mulitple programs are running at the same time.

 

[Driwen]

dont know much about computers, but cant you remove every ram you got with your pc lend some of your old computer or some other and try it then? So none of your new ram is in the pc, as it seems to be related to your ram.

 

[ztyx]

I had major problems with a computer running Radeon 9600 pro and Catalyst 3.9 (and 3.2). Tried everything yet it crashed after a few seconds in most areas. Reinstalled the computer from scratch and the graphics was then a mess - looks like when u've been playing daoc for too long, major renedering errors.

Anyway after installing Catalyst 3.6 my computer seems to be ok. But now Excalibur crashed so I can't see for sure.