TR Forums

Hey all,

This just started very recently, but many of my games now freeze when I try to start them. Any time I try to play something like the Hulk, Vice City, Postal 2, Tony Hawk 3, ect. the games will always freeze when starting. Other games, like Freelancer, Motocross Madness, ect. work just fine. I've tried reinstalling Catalyst drivers and DirectX 9, and reset all of my D3d/OpenGL settings back to default. I'm not OCing any of my hardware, either. Seems like a D3D issue, but I'm not sure. Is there anything I can do, short of reinstalling, to remedy this problem?

Ohhyea... and System Restore won't work, either. Just tried it several times.

I recently had a similar problem that got progressively worse, it turned out to be an audio problem. If you have onboard sound try turning it off in the bios and see if games will load and play. My prob was probably a driver issue but I didn't bother to shoot it, I just went and got a new audio card loaded the drivers for it and all was fine.

Just tried that, and no luck Thanks anyway, Niteslayer!

To be more specific... The Hulk will kick up a white screen, that will stop responding after a few seconds. Postal 2 will remain stuck on the disclaimer, frozen, and not respond. Vice City only shows an hourglass cursor that disappears after a few seconds, and although nothing happens afterwards, "gta-vc.exe" will be in my processes. I've tried reinstalling them all, several times, no result. I would just reformat, were it not for the 32GB of data I need backed up and have no room to do so.

Any more suggestions?

try using a different vid card, preferably one thats not ATI, as it would use the same drivers.

Did you have a nvidia card before your ATI one?

Have you tried removing the ati drivers "properly" before reinstalling them?

Starfalcon: No Nvidia, I've been running off of ATI cards since I gave up my old Voodoo3 years ago.

Coldfirex: Yea, I made sure they were completely eradicated before reinstalling. Not only that, I went as far as an OS reinstall after backing up files and still no results with a fresh OS and drivers. The only other card I have lying around is a 32MB Radeon 7500, which I doubt would even run any of the games I'm having troubles with. I do fear more and more that it's a problem with the actual card itself, though. I may try to bum a similar ATI card from a friend and, given that card works, I'll be able to come to that conclusion.

Looks like I should start saving up for at least a 9700 Pro

Hmm... seeing as how most of the faulty games were relatively high-powered, i tried running some of the 8500 demos to give the card somewhat of a 'stress-test', to see if perhaps the card was indeed damaged. It ran the tests perfectly (although they look ugly compared to the 9700 tests ), which makes me want to reconsider the cause of the problems. I figure if it can run the demos, it should be able to run the games. Ohh well.

Everything you mentioned is D3D. That means it's maybe not a driver problem, as driver problems tend to nuke all D3D or all OGL, or everything 3D.

It's also probably not hardware, as a hardware problem usually nukes all 3D, all 2D/3D, or nothing much.

When's the last time you took a can of air to your system? A gradual onset might indicate dust clogging a fan or blocking up a heatsink. Have you tried running with the case open?

Have you completely dissassembled and reassembled your PC? I find that sometimes helps... You reset *every* connector, so it tends to check all your connections in one go.

Run memtest86. Run Prime95 for a bit. Make sure the CPU and RAM are OK, so you can then rule them out.

Try unplugging anything you don't *have* to have, any USB peripherals, any printers/scanners/blinky lights. Try unplugging any CD/DVD drives you don't have to have, then give your games a shot. Power supplies tend to die gradually, and although I don't suspect it, it's easy enough to test....

Are you up to date on all the XP "compatability fixes"? I don't know if your games are affected, but I remember seeing a "fix" on the Windows update site that mentioned a ton of games.Might be worth a look.