ATI drivers / game instability....need some help troubleshooting...

  • Thread starter Thread starter GO
  • Start date Start date
G

GO

I'm hoping someone can help eliminate some problems I'm having with crashing
games. The problem's been ongoing for a while but I've just come across a
very repeatable crash which should assist in troubleshooting. First off,
some games are very stable on my machine (Doom 3, Quake 4, UT 2004 and Far
Cry come to mind). GTA - San Andreas and the new Lost Coast "demo" for Half
Life 2 are my two current games causing me problems. San Andreas fails once
or twice in a gaming session (2 or 3 hours) but the Lost Coast is failing
every time, roughly 5 minutes in into the game. Both games will freeze and
I usually can switch back to Windows and kill the the game, other times it's
a "hard freeze" and I have to reboot. As a test, I reinstalled Windows 2000
on my machine (restored a Ghost image actually) and the Lost Coast played
through the entire thing without an issue. I then restored my WinXP image
and the Lost Coast again crashed after about 5 minutes. Both were using the
same version of the Catalyst drivers (5.10), but XP may have remnants of an
older version even though I've used ATI's driver removal tool. The video
card is an ATI 9600XT and WinXP is running SP2 and fully up to date (Win2k
was running SP4 and fully up to date). I was thinking that possibly the
card is overheating but I've checked after a crash and it was running around
43C (according to ATI control panel) which I assume is acceptable; and the
fact that it ran fine in Win2k leads me to believe it's not faulty hardware.

Any thoughts/suggetions/tips?


TIA,


Greg
 
Hi GO,

I would "GO" with a clean install of XP instead of the image that
you restore from to eradicate any of those driver remnants you
referred to in your post. Normally, I would also suggest the steps
below, and I will again, even though your post seems to indicate
that there are no hardware issues such as overheating at fault ...

Hardware issues can cause freezing, black screens and other
errors. Also, your drivers should always be kept up to date.

Try the following steps one at a time to try and resolve the issue.
I hope this helps. Please post back if you have any questions! :-)

1. Update DirectX and your Chipset, Sound, &Video Drivers:
For all Video / DirectX / Game and Hardware Issues, I have a
Checklist of Solutions at: http://NibblesNbitsVideo.tk

2. Dust your fans, vents and components using a 1/4" paintbrush
and a hose vacuum. Use compressed air for hard to reach places.
Set a housefan to blow cold air into your case to expose an over-
heating issue.. If it works add more fans or replace defective ones.
Use this Motherboard Monitor Utility: http://mbm.livewiredev.com

3. A faulty power supply can cause STOP errors, random reboots,
and black screen lockups. One way to test for that is to check the
wattage sticker on your power supply and then calculate your need
http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/ (Min. 350 for gaming)

4. Test your RAM using: http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

--
Cheers, Windows XP MVP Shell / User
Jimmy S. http://mvp.support.microsoft.com

Game FAQs: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=FH;[LN];gms
Visit my Zone.com / Gaming Helpsite: http://nibblesnbits.tk or Call / Contact
MS Support at: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=sz;en-us;top
My advice is donated "AS IS" without warranty; nor do I confer any rights.
_________________________________________________________


| I'm hoping someone can help eliminate some problems I'm having with crashing
| games. The problem's been ongoing for a while but I've just come across a
| very repeatable crash which should assist in troubleshooting. First off,
| some games are very stable on my machine (Doom 3, Quake 4, UT 2004 and Far
| Cry come to mind). GTA - San Andreas and the new Lost Coast "demo" for Half
| Life 2 are my two current games causing me problems. San Andreas fails once
| or twice in a gaming session (2 or 3 hours) but the Lost Coast is failing
| every time, roughly 5 minutes in into the game. Both games will freeze and
| I usually can switch back to Windows and kill the the game, other times it's
| a "hard freeze" and I have to reboot. As a test, I reinstalled Windows 2000
| on my machine (restored a Ghost image actually) and the Lost Coast played
| through the entire thing without an issue. I then restored my WinXP image
| and the Lost Coast again crashed after about 5 minutes. Both were using the
| same version of the Catalyst drivers (5.10), but XP may have remnants of an
| older version even though I've used ATI's driver removal tool. The video
| card is an ATI 9600XT and WinXP is running SP2 and fully up to date (Win2k
| was running SP4 and fully up to date). I was thinking that possibly the
| card is overheating but I've checked after a crash and it was running around
| 43C (according to ATI control panel) which I assume is acceptable; and the
| fact that it ran fine in Win2k leads me to believe it's not faulty hardware.
|
| Any thoughts/suggetions/tips?
|
|
| TIA,
|
|
| Greg
|
|
 
Hi Jimmy,

Thanks for all the tips and info...some good stuff there. A clean install
of XP was something I was going to try but wasn't planning on until I
exhausted everything else. My first attempt was to reinstall DirectX 9.0c
which appears to be an impossible task. I followed the instructions on how
to remove it and revert to v8 but there was no way I could figure out to get
9 to reinstall. I ran the install, accepted the user agreement, pressed
"next" and before it did anything it said it was done. Very weird; it looks
like there is some remnants kicking around that XP still thinks it's
installed? And I tried both the network install and the "standalone"
install, both with the same results. Do you know of anyway to force a
reinstall of directX? After the directX fiasco I had enough and did a fresh
install of XP (w/SP2). Installed the 5.10 Catalyst drivers and had the same
crashing in the Lost Coast. That pretty much eliminated (in my mind at
least) an issue with any old drivers still lingering, so I restored my
standard XP image but installed the oldest Catalyst drivers I had (5.1) and
it appears the problem is solved......I played the Lost Coast for probably
about an hour without issue. I know 5.9 gave me troubles as well, but I'll
play around with some of the other versions and see what results I get.


Thanks again,


Greg



Jimmy S. said:
Hi GO,

I would "GO" with a clean install of XP instead of the image that
you restore from to eradicate any of those driver remnants you
referred to in your post. Normally, I would also suggest the steps
below, and I will again, even though your post seems to indicate
that there are no hardware issues such as overheating at fault ...

Hardware issues can cause freezing, black screens and other
errors. Also, your drivers should always be kept up to date.

Try the following steps one at a time to try and resolve the issue.
I hope this helps. Please post back if you have any questions! :-)

1. Update DirectX and your Chipset, Sound, &Video Drivers:
For all Video / DirectX / Game and Hardware Issues, I have a
Checklist of Solutions at: http://NibblesNbitsVideo.tk

2. Dust your fans, vents and components using a 1/4" paintbrush
and a hose vacuum. Use compressed air for hard to reach places.
Set a housefan to blow cold air into your case to expose an over-
heating issue.. If it works add more fans or replace defective ones.
Use this Motherboard Monitor Utility: http://mbm.livewiredev.com

3. A faulty power supply can cause STOP errors, random reboots,
and black screen lockups. One way to test for that is to check the
wattage sticker on your power supply and then calculate your need
http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/ (Min. 350 for gaming)

4. Test your RAM using: http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

--
Cheers, Windows XP MVP Shell / User
Jimmy S. http://mvp.support.microsoft.com

Game FAQs: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=FH;[LN];gms
Visit my Zone.com / Gaming Helpsite: http://nibblesnbits.tk or Call / Contact
MS Support at: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=sz;en-us;top
My advice is donated "AS IS" without warranty; nor do I confer any rights.
_________________________________________________________


| I'm hoping someone can help eliminate some problems I'm having with crashing
| games. The problem's been ongoing for a while but I've just come across a
| very repeatable crash which should assist in troubleshooting. First off,
| some games are very stable on my machine (Doom 3, Quake 4, UT 2004 and Far
| Cry come to mind). GTA - San Andreas and the new Lost Coast "demo" for Half
| Life 2 are my two current games causing me problems. San Andreas fails once
| or twice in a gaming session (2 or 3 hours) but the Lost Coast is failing
| every time, roughly 5 minutes in into the game. Both games will freeze and
| I usually can switch back to Windows and kill the the game, other times it's
| a "hard freeze" and I have to reboot. As a test, I reinstalled Windows 2000
| on my machine (restored a Ghost image actually) and the Lost Coast played
| through the entire thing without an issue. I then restored my WinXP image
| and the Lost Coast again crashed after about 5 minutes. Both were using the
| same version of the Catalyst drivers (5.10), but XP may have remnants of an
| older version even though I've used ATI's driver removal tool. The video
| card is an ATI 9600XT and WinXP is running SP2 and fully up to date (Win2k
| was running SP4 and fully up to date). I was thinking that possibly the
| card is overheating but I've checked after a crash and it was running around
| 43C (according to ATI control panel) which I assume is acceptable; and the
| fact that it ran fine in Win2k leads me to believe it's not faulty hardware.
|
| Any thoughts/suggetions/tips?
|
|
| TIA,
|
|
| Greg
|
|
Click to expand...
 
Hi GO,

I'm glad to hear that Lost Coast is finally working again on your
system. If you ever need to update those drivers and run into
the same problem, use the driver rollback option to easily get
back to the version that works best on your system again. :-)

--
Cheers, Windows XP MVP Shell / User
Jimmy S. http://mvp.support.microsoft.com

Visit my MSN Zone.com and Gaming Help Site: http://mvps.org/nibblesnbits
MS Games Help and Support Center: http://support.microsoft.com/?pr=gms
My advice is donated "AS IS" without warranty; nor do I confer any rights.
_________________________________________________________

| Hi Jimmy,
|
| Thanks for all the tips and info...some good stuff there. A clean install
| of XP was something I was going to try but wasn't planning on until I
| exhausted everything else. My first attempt was to reinstall DirectX 9.0c
| which appears to be an impossible task. I followed the instructions on how
| to remove it and revert to v8 but there was no way I could figure out to get
| 9 to reinstall. I ran the install, accepted the user agreement, pressed
| "next" and before it did anything it said it was done. Very weird; it looks
| like there is some remnants kicking around that XP still thinks it's
| installed? And I tried both the network install and the "standalone"
| install, both with the same results. Do you know of anyway to force a
| reinstall of directX? After the directX fiasco I had enough and did a fresh
| install of XP (w/SP2). Installed the 5.10 Catalyst drivers and had the same
| crashing in the Lost Coast. That pretty much eliminated (in my mind at
| least) an issue with any old drivers still lingering, so I restored my
| standard XP image but installed the oldest Catalyst drivers I had (5.1) and
| it appears the problem is solved......I played the Lost Coast for probably
| about an hour without issue. I know 5.9 gave me troubles as well, but I'll
| play around with some of the other versions and see what results I get.
|
|
| Thanks again,
|
|
| Greg
|
|
|
| | > Hi GO,
| >
| > I would "GO" with a clean install of XP instead of the image that
| > you restore from to eradicate any of those driver remnants you
| > referred to in your post. Normally, I would also suggest the steps
| > below, and I will again, even though your post seems to indicate
| > that there are no hardware issues such as overheating at fault ...
| >
| > Hardware issues can cause freezing, black screens and other
| > errors. Also, your drivers should always be kept up to date.
| >
| > Try the following steps one at a time to try and resolve the issue.
| > I hope this helps. Please post back if you have any questions! :-)
| >
| > 1. Update DirectX and your Chipset, Sound, &Video Drivers:
| > For all Video / DirectX / Game and Hardware Issues, I have a
| > Checklist of Solutions at: http://NibblesNbitsVideo.tk
| >
| > 2. Dust your fans, vents and components using a 1/4" paintbrush
| > and a hose vacuum. Use compressed air for hard to reach places.
| > Set a housefan to blow cold air into your case to expose an over-
| > heating issue.. If it works add more fans or replace defective ones.
| > Use this Motherboard Monitor Utility: http://mbm.livewiredev.com
| >
| > 3. A faulty power supply can cause STOP errors, random reboots,
| > and black screen lockups. One way to test for that is to check the
| > wattage sticker on your power supply and then calculate your need
| > http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/ (Min. 350 for gaming)
| >
| > 4. Test your RAM using: http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp
| >
| > --
| > Cheers, Windows XP MVP Shell / User
| > Jimmy S. http://mvp.support.microsoft.com
| >
| > Game FAQs: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=FH;[LN];gms
| > Visit my Zone.com / Gaming Helpsite: http://nibblesnbits.tk or Call /
| Contact
| > MS Support at: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=sz;en-us;top
| > My advice is donated "AS IS" without warranty; nor do I confer any
| rights.
| > _________________________________________________________
| >
| >
| | > | I'm hoping someone can help eliminate some problems I'm having with
| crashing
| > | games. The problem's been ongoing for a while but I've just come across
| a
| > | very repeatable crash which should assist in troubleshooting. First
| off,
| > | some games are very stable on my machine (Doom 3, Quake 4, UT 2004 and
| Far
| > | Cry come to mind). GTA - San Andreas and the new Lost Coast "demo" for
| Half
| > | Life 2 are my two current games causing me problems. San Andreas fails
| once
| > | or twice in a gaming session (2 or 3 hours) but the Lost Coast is
| failing
| > | every time, roughly 5 minutes in into the game. Both games will freeze
| and
| > | I usually can switch back to Windows and kill the the game, other times
| it's
| > | a "hard freeze" and I have to reboot. As a test, I reinstalled Windows
| 2000
| > | on my machine (restored a Ghost image actually) and the Lost Coast
| played
| > | through the entire thing without an issue. I then restored my WinXP
| image
| > | and the Lost Coast again crashed after about 5 minutes. Both were using
| the
| > | same version of the Catalyst drivers (5.10), but XP may have remnants of
| an
| > | older version even though I've used ATI's driver removal tool. The
| video
| > | card is an ATI 9600XT and WinXP is running SP2 and fully up to date
| (Win2k
| > | was running SP4 and fully up to date). I was thinking that possibly the
| > | card is overheating but I've checked after a crash and it was running
| around
| > | 43C (according to ATI control panel) which I assume is acceptable; and
| the
| > | fact that it ran fine in Win2k leads me to believe it's not faulty
| hardware.
| > |
| > | Any thoughts/suggetions/tips?
| > |
| > |
| > | TIA,
| > |
| > |
| > | Greg
| > |
| > |
| >
| >
|
|
 
Me too! :) I'll keep XP's driver rollback in mind, especially now that I
have to work my way forward and find a more recent stable set of drivers.


Thanks again,


Greg


Jimmy S. said:
Hi GO,

I'm glad to hear that Lost Coast is finally working again on your
system. If you ever need to update those drivers and run into
the same problem, use the driver rollback option to easily get
back to the version that works best on your system again. :-)

--
Cheers, Windows XP MVP Shell / User
Jimmy S. http://mvp.support.microsoft.com

Visit my MSN Zone.com and Gaming Help Site: http://mvps.org/nibblesnbits
MS Games Help and Support Center: http://support.microsoft.com/?pr=gms
My advice is donated "AS IS" without warranty; nor do I confer any rights.
_________________________________________________________

| Hi Jimmy,
|
| Thanks for all the tips and info...some good stuff there. A clean install
| of XP was something I was going to try but wasn't planning on until I
| exhausted everything else. My first attempt was to reinstall DirectX 9.0c
| which appears to be an impossible task. I followed the instructions on how
| to remove it and revert to v8 but there was no way I could figure out to get
| 9 to reinstall. I ran the install, accepted the user agreement, pressed
| "next" and before it did anything it said it was done. Very weird; it looks
| like there is some remnants kicking around that XP still thinks it's
| installed? And I tried both the network install and the "standalone"
| install, both with the same results. Do you know of anyway to force a
| reinstall of directX? After the directX fiasco I had enough and did a fresh
| install of XP (w/SP2). Installed the 5.10 Catalyst drivers and had the same
| crashing in the Lost Coast. That pretty much eliminated (in my mind at
| least) an issue with any old drivers still lingering, so I restored my
| standard XP image but installed the oldest Catalyst drivers I had (5.1) and
| it appears the problem is solved......I played the Lost Coast for probably
| about an hour without issue. I know 5.9 gave me troubles as well, but I'll
| play around with some of the other versions and see what results I get.
|
|
| Thanks again,
|
|
| Greg
|
|
|
| | > Hi GO,
| >
| > I would "GO" with a clean install of XP instead of the image that
| > you restore from to eradicate any of those driver remnants you
| > referred to in your post. Normally, I would also suggest the steps
| > below, and I will again, even though your post seems to indicate
| > that there are no hardware issues such as overheating at fault ...
| >
| > Hardware issues can cause freezing, black screens and other
| > errors. Also, your drivers should always be kept up to date.
| >
| > Try the following steps one at a time to try and resolve the issue.
| > I hope this helps. Please post back if you have any questions! :-)
| >
| > 1. Update DirectX and your Chipset, Sound, &Video Drivers:
| > For all Video / DirectX / Game and Hardware Issues, I have a
| > Checklist of Solutions at: http://NibblesNbitsVideo.tk
| >
| > 2. Dust your fans, vents and components using a 1/4" paintbrush
| > and a hose vacuum. Use compressed air for hard to reach places.
| > Set a housefan to blow cold air into your case to expose an over-
| > heating issue.. If it works add more fans or replace defective ones.
| > Use this Motherboard Monitor Utility: http://mbm.livewiredev.com
| >
| > 3. A faulty power supply can cause STOP errors, random reboots,
| > and black screen lockups. One way to test for that is to check the
| > wattage sticker on your power supply and then calculate your need
| > http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/ (Min. 350 for gaming)
| >
| > 4. Test your RAM using: http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp
| >
| > --
| > Cheers, Windows XP MVP Shell / User
| > Jimmy S. http://mvp.support.microsoft.com
| >
| > Game FAQs: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=FH;[LN];gms
| > Visit my Zone.com / Gaming Helpsite: http://nibblesnbits.tk or Call /
| Contact
| > MS Support at: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=sz;en-us;top
| > My advice is donated "AS IS" without warranty; nor do I confer any
| rights.
| > _________________________________________________________
| >
| >
| | > | I'm hoping someone can help eliminate some problems I'm having with
| crashing
| > | games. The problem's been ongoing for a while but I've just come across
| a
| > | very repeatable crash which should assist in troubleshooting. First
| off,
| > | some games are very stable on my machine (Doom 3, Quake 4, UT 2004 and
| Far
| > | Cry come to mind). GTA - San Andreas and the new Lost Coast "demo" for
| Half
| > | Life 2 are my two current games causing me problems. San Andreas fails
| once
| > | or twice in a gaming session (2 or 3 hours) but the Lost Coast is
| failing
| > | every time, roughly 5 minutes in into the game. Both games will freeze
| and
| > | I usually can switch back to Windows and kill the the game, other times
| it's
| > | a "hard freeze" and I have to reboot. As a test, I reinstalled Windows
| 2000
| > | on my machine (restored a Ghost image actually) and the Lost Coast
| played
| > | through the entire thing without an issue. I then restored my WinXP
| image
| > | and the Lost Coast again crashed after about 5 minutes. Both were using
| the
| > | same version of the Catalyst drivers (5.10), but XP may have remnants of
| an
| > | older version even though I've used ATI's driver removal tool. The
| video
| > | card is an ATI 9600XT and WinXP is running SP2 and fully up to date
| (Win2k
| > | was running SP4 and fully up to date). I was thinking that possibly the
| > | card is overheating but I've checked after a crash and it was running
| around
| > | 43C (according to ATI control panel) which I assume is acceptable; and
| the
| > | fact that it ran fine in Win2k leads me to believe it's not faulty
| hardware.
| > |
| > | Any thoughts/suggetions/tips?
| > |
| > |
| > | TIA,
| > |
| > |
| > | Greg
| > |
| > |
| >
| >
|
|
Click to expand...
 
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