I wasnt really sure where to post this, but as this has alot to do with games, I thought this would be the place.
So. Lately I've been experiencing odd behaviour on nearly all my games. As im begininning to concider sawing the computer in half, I post this thread as a cry for help. Let us begin, with the problems in order of appearence:
a) Battlefield 2. I get weird stuttering, long load times and for the most serious problem, I get weird looking objects, like gigantic funnels of lava in the skies followed by a reboot without warning. Sounds like overheat, doesnt it? The air around the gfx card does feel warm when this happens, but alas, I have no temperature sensors in my gfx card. Motherboard, CPU, and PSU sensors all show temperatures below 45 celsius.
b) Source games with HDR. DoD:S and Lost coast seemingly randomly freeze/lock up when HDR is enabled, and it often seems to have something to do with lot of strain being put on the computer, like a quicksave in middle of combat or something. Then again, spawning 500 zombies, taking screenshots and quicksaving didnt cause the crash in Lost Coast. In DoD:S the crash often happens in beginning of a new round or map change. Previous thread from the subject, with no solution: http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=94887
c) Source games with 16x AF on. Exact same crash as in b), so I suspect it does have something to do with lot of strain.
d) Counter-Strike Source. AA doesnt seem to work even if it's enabled 4x on the video options, and sometimes I get sudden fps drops from 70 to 3-4 frames per second. This continues for a while, then models or even the whole map disappears, until I disconnect from the server. What the hell? It seems to happen most often in de_inferno.
e) Call of Duty 2. First few missions went fine, until the second British mission, End of Beginning. When initializing the map, whole computer would first freeze, when flash a bright blue screen with no text however, and then reboot. This is accompanied with looping sounds.
I solved the problem then by lowering sound accelration to Basic from Control panel. This seemed to work, even if it did cause some stuttering in sound. Then, the next time I encountered this in the first American mission, Pointe du Hoc or Hac or whatever it was. In here, the crashing began going insane. First it couldnt even load the map. Then I could play it about 3-5 minutes by again lowering sound accelration. This seemed to help a little, but still I got crashes from time to time. I lowered my desktop resolution to 800x600x32, as Activision so wisely suggests, with surprisingly no help. I am still getting this problem, sometimes I can play for half an hour without crashing, sometimes not even a minute. To make matters worse, when the game has crashed a few times, It loses my saves and configs, totally. I wouldve had to start the whole game all over again without console commands.
f) Finally, as no other game works, I play Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe. Today I noticed weird stuttering and choppiness in it. Yes, in a game from ****ing 1995. This is getting out of hand.
Actually, only games I havent had problems with are FEAR and Quake 4.
What ive tried so far? Updating all drivers kabillion times, downgrading them, checking for IRQ conflicts (even though I didnt get a clear answer if I had conflicts the last time), moving my SoundBlaster Audigy 2 from one PCI slot to another, tweaking BIOS, running games with no sound, disabling intergrated sound chip and uninstalling it's drivers, disabling all SATA controllers etc... Ugh, I dont even remember what all Ive tried. Virus and spyware scans come up negative, and there's no suspicious exes or files eating my memory. Im thinking of trying to buy a new graphics card, but at the moment I dont have any money.
Ideas?
EDIT: Oh right, and specs once more. Athlon 64 3000+. MSI Neo2-FX motherboard, Club3d 9600XT, 1024mb of dualchannel ddr400, 20+160gb ATA hard drives, Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS. Plus Windows XP with latest updates.
So. Lately I've been experiencing odd behaviour on nearly all my games. As im begininning to concider sawing the computer in half, I post this thread as a cry for help. Let us begin, with the problems in order of appearence:
a) Battlefield 2. I get weird stuttering, long load times and for the most serious problem, I get weird looking objects, like gigantic funnels of lava in the skies followed by a reboot without warning. Sounds like overheat, doesnt it? The air around the gfx card does feel warm when this happens, but alas, I have no temperature sensors in my gfx card. Motherboard, CPU, and PSU sensors all show temperatures below 45 celsius.
b) Source games with HDR. DoD:S and Lost coast seemingly randomly freeze/lock up when HDR is enabled, and it often seems to have something to do with lot of strain being put on the computer, like a quicksave in middle of combat or something. Then again, spawning 500 zombies, taking screenshots and quicksaving didnt cause the crash in Lost Coast. In DoD:S the crash often happens in beginning of a new round or map change. Previous thread from the subject, with no solution: http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=94887
c) Source games with 16x AF on. Exact same crash as in b), so I suspect it does have something to do with lot of strain.
d) Counter-Strike Source. AA doesnt seem to work even if it's enabled 4x on the video options, and sometimes I get sudden fps drops from 70 to 3-4 frames per second. This continues for a while, then models or even the whole map disappears, until I disconnect from the server. What the hell? It seems to happen most often in de_inferno.
e) Call of Duty 2. First few missions went fine, until the second British mission, End of Beginning. When initializing the map, whole computer would first freeze, when flash a bright blue screen with no text however, and then reboot. This is accompanied with looping sounds.
I solved the problem then by lowering sound accelration to Basic from Control panel. This seemed to work, even if it did cause some stuttering in sound. Then, the next time I encountered this in the first American mission, Pointe du Hoc or Hac or whatever it was. In here, the crashing began going insane. First it couldnt even load the map. Then I could play it about 3-5 minutes by again lowering sound accelration. This seemed to help a little, but still I got crashes from time to time. I lowered my desktop resolution to 800x600x32, as Activision so wisely suggests, with surprisingly no help. I am still getting this problem, sometimes I can play for half an hour without crashing, sometimes not even a minute. To make matters worse, when the game has crashed a few times, It loses my saves and configs, totally. I wouldve had to start the whole game all over again without console commands.
f) Finally, as no other game works, I play Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe. Today I noticed weird stuttering and choppiness in it. Yes, in a game from ****ing 1995. This is getting out of hand.
Actually, only games I havent had problems with are FEAR and Quake 4.
What ive tried so far? Updating all drivers kabillion times, downgrading them, checking for IRQ conflicts (even though I didnt get a clear answer if I had conflicts the last time), moving my SoundBlaster Audigy 2 from one PCI slot to another, tweaking BIOS, running games with no sound, disabling intergrated sound chip and uninstalling it's drivers, disabling all SATA controllers etc... Ugh, I dont even remember what all Ive tried. Virus and spyware scans come up negative, and there's no suspicious exes or files eating my memory. Im thinking of trying to buy a new graphics card, but at the moment I dont have any money.
Ideas?
EDIT: Oh right, and specs once more. Athlon 64 3000+. MSI Neo2-FX motherboard, Club3d 9600XT, 1024mb of dualchannel ddr400, 20+160gb ATA hard drives, Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS. Plus Windows XP with latest updates.
