Oh...my...GOD....please help!!!

  • Thread starter Thread starter Devon
  • Start date Start date
I had the exact same symptoms with a 9700 pro and the final resolution was
simply to scale back the AGP setting in the BIOS from 8x to 4x then it has
been fine. If it were a heat issue you would likely see artifacting before
the lockup.

It may be a PSU problem but my experience has been that a weak PSU results
in not being able to boot up since thats when the biggest power draw is,
right when it has to fire up the hard drives and whatnot. Though if your
AGP is set to 4X I would maybe suspect the PSU next especially if it is
350W or less with that sort of system.

Maybe try pulling the extra ram and see if that helps, it could be that when
your computer boots up it is utilizing good ram and doesn't crash but as
soon as you load enough programs that it needs to use some bad area of ram
then it all goes haywire.
 
I have been a pc gamer for about 10 years (started about when wing commander
2 came out).

I bought an xbox a month ago and its the best gaming decision I ever made.
Having a common platform with a uniform online community is great. Its
like pc gaming without all the headaches. If you are a gamer that is
worried about what graphic options are turned on and want to see a barrel at
1600x1200 res, then you will be disappointed, but if you are gamer that
wants to stick a disc in and be in a online game (with voice support) in
less than 3 minutes, xbox is the way to go.

I still plan on pc gaming, but I think the bulk of my game time now will be
spent on the couch playing xbox multiplayer games on xbox live.

--
Mickster

Visit my website and see my arcade!!

http://mickster.freeservers.com
 
Hi Devon;

If it's a brand new machine I would take it back. There is no reason given
the hardware that you purchased, that this should be happening. Let the
vendor sort it out.
Click to expand...

True, but who is he going to blame? If he has bought components from
different places, like the Radeon x800 and extra 512MB he mentioned,
some vendors will unfortunately just blame each others. The place who
sold him the HP machine: "It is probably your video card, take it to
them.", etc.

It never hurts to try though. But I have learned that for situations
like this it is good to buy your main components from one place.
 
B U Y A N X B O X

Sorry, I quit PC gaming because of this...
Click to expand...

Shouldn't he be waiting for XBox 2 instead, hmmm? ;^P

"DON'T BUY AN XBOX, IT WILL BE REPLACED BY XBOX 2 SOON!"
 
I'm almost there myself. I bought Mafia yesterday at Wal-Mart for $10 and
was excited to finally give the game a go. It took about 20min to install
the thing, I load up the setup applet and got that going, then I started the
game only to have it drop back to my desktop right after the load screen. I
spent over 2 hours last night trying to get it to run on XP and finally
decided to boot up '98 (I have a dual boot setup)
Click to expand...

That is like being unable to run a XBox game with XBox 2. If you are
unable to achieve that, will you also give up console gaming?

Mafia is, after all, a bit older game already. Apparently it wasn't
really designed with XP in mind. By the way, did you try the
compatibility mode in XP? But, according to www.ntcompatible.com,
others have been able to run Mafia ok in WinXP.
and had to sit through another 20 min. install. I was happy that the game
did start, and I'm having fun so far. But I did some looking around on the
Mafia forums and found out the a whole lot of other people have the same
problem with the startup crash. And guess what? The game maker could give a
crap about it.
Click to expand...

Wasn't Mafia published by Gathering Of Developers, which I presume hit
the dirt long time ago? If the company is defunct, it may have
problems to support the game anymore.
pull me away from the PC was the graphics. High rez and AA had me sold. But
what I discovered was the Xbox games look damn good on my TV. I'll never say
that they look as good as my PC games, but because of the fact that I don't
have to worry if a game is going to run or not it's worth it to me.
Click to expand...

The main reason for me not to bail from PC games to only console games
is that consoles don't have all the games I want to play. As simple as
that. I have a Playstation 2 but it could never cover all my gaming
needs. Neither could XBox, nor XBox 2.

Funny thing though, I have had technical issues with my Playstation 2
as well. To get the best possible picture, I used a RGB cable to
connect it to my widescreen TV. But the problem is that this
widescreen TV, as well as many other widescreen models, doesn't allow
changing the aspect ratio of the screen if the signal comes as RGB
signal (works only with composite video and S-video signal). Which
means that all the 4:3 PS2 games look stretched out on the 16:9
widescreen TV (fat characters etc.), if I use the RGB cable for best
possible picture quality. Not nice at all.

If I want to play all my PS2 games with the correct aspect ratio, my
only options are to either to use normal composite video (=> crappier
picture quality), or buy an extra S-Video cable, as my TV LUCKILY has
a S-Video input jack. But there lies another problem, because I also
have other device(s) connected to the S-video in, so I have to change
the cables every time I want to play PS2...

Who ever said console gaming is hassle free, huh??? ;)
 
I bought an xbox a month ago and its the best gaming decision I ever made.
Having a common platform with a uniform online community is great. Its
like pc gaming without all the headaches.
Click to expand...

and minus the PC games which is why people play on PC.

Call me back when XBox has e.g. Rome: Total War.
 
Take it back pronto and demand a refund! Don't let them take it in to work
on, god knows what parts they'll replace and never tell you. HP are
Click to expand...

Take back what? The whole machine to HP, or the ATI x800 to the place
where he bought it? What if the HP dealer says the issue must be with
the video card so it is not their problem?

I've seen this happening with systems where different components are
from different dealers...
Caveat: Did you buy the brand new PC and then fit the extra mem and x800
yourself? You could be on shaky ground then so far as demanding a full
refund goes :-(
Click to expand...

Yep, exactly. I have found a PC shop which I like, and I do 99% of my
PC component purchases from them, except for e.g. DVD-R blanks etc.
That way I know exactly who to blame if something doesn't work. ;)
 
Ken said:
Hi,

#Unlike the other poster's in this thread, I'm betting it's a
#software problem not hardware. When you buy a machine from a
#major manufacturer like HP, they load up the system with all
#sorts of crap that you, as a gamer, won't need or want running
#in the background.

Well, you're right about the deleterious effects of shovelware.

However I've also noticed that Power Supplies from Dell and HP are
typically marginal with the delivered system, and worse than that when
upgraded. IMHO anyone putting in a high-end video card better take a
long, hard look at their PS first.
Click to expand...

Yeah, they definitely skimp on PSUs. Reading his post,
I assumed that the OP bought all his components from HP
and that their techs would have taken this factor into
consideration, but perhaps that's a false assumption! <g>
 
walter said:
With enough memory these system programs do very, very little when
running a game. I disable my anti-virus and thats about it : no problems
or slowdowns whatsoever.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure how XP handles things, but in previous
versions of Windows, System Resources were independent
of the overall amount of system RAM. Not to mention
that if a "scheduled task" starts up during a gaming
session, you will definitely see a performance hit or
even a crash. Games like Far Cry and Doom 3 aren't
going to like sharing CPU cycles with anything else.
Have you ever seen System Restore take a snapshot of
your system? <shudder!>

The mass market PC vendors evidently think that all their
customers are idiots, or complete novices with computers.
They ship PCs with every stupid little app loading itself
at startup and all sorts of unnecessary processes running
automatically. It can take an experienced user hours to
track down the proper menus to shut these things down and
clean the Registry so they won't automatically start up again.

This is one of those factors that prompt people to build
their own systems. When the user starts with a clean system
and installs his own operating system and software, he knows
exactly what's running and how it's configured.
 
I bought Doom 3 and Far Cry this afternoon, and an HP AMD 3400+
computer, an extra 512MB of RAM, and a Radeon x800 Pro to go with it.

That's the good part.

I can't get either one of these puppies to go longer than 5 minutes
before dumping me back to the desktop, or locking up the PC entirely.
I've tried ATI's latest drivers, their beta Doom 3 drivers, AND
Omega's drivers, with no luck.

I'm starting to think that I wasted a lot of money today - if anyone
has any suggestions for me, I'd be forever grateful.

Thanks.
Devon
Click to expand...
You have a heat problem . either add some case fans, most likely the system is
lacking in them being a HP oem
 
Devon said:
I bought Doom 3 and Far Cry this afternoon, and an HP AMD 3400+
computer, an extra 512MB of RAM, and a Radeon x800 Pro to go with it.

That's the good part.

I can't get either one of these puppies to go longer than 5 minutes
before dumping me back to the desktop, or locking up the PC entirely.
I've tried ATI's latest drivers, their beta Doom 3 drivers, AND
Omega's drivers, with no luck.

I'm starting to think that I wasted a lot of money today - if anyone
has any suggestions for me, I'd be forever grateful.

Thanks.
Devon
Click to expand...

1. it could be a heat problem. take the side panel off and have a room
fan blow air over your system.
2. make sure you have the latest version of DX?
3. what version of Windoze do you have?
4. does your computer lockup/crash if you surf the web for 2 hrs? or is
it just when you're doing 3D gaming?
5. did you install the video card or was it already installed? have you
got another video card laying around that you can swap out.
 
(e-mail address removed) (Devon) said:
I can't get either one of these puppies to go longer than 5 minutes
before dumping me back to the desktop, or locking up the PC entirely.
Click to expand...

If you built it yourself, double check the heat sink and then run
memtest86.
 
Briarroot said:
This is one of those factors that prompt people to build
their own systems. When the user starts with a clean system
and installs his own operating system and software, he knows
exactly what's running and how it's configured.
Click to expand...

The majority of PC users don't/won't/can't deal with this level.
Personally I agree with the vendors - ship them with all bells &
whistles turned on and let the savvy users turn them off as required.
 
Briarroot said:
Yeah, they definitely skimp on PSUs. Reading his post,
I assumed that the OP bought all his components from HP
and that their techs would have taken this factor into
consideration, but perhaps that's a false assumption! <g>
Click to expand...

It depends on how good their techs are. They probably have limited training
on how to put a given set of components together, but have little to no real
technical knowledge. Real techs would probably cost too much. I don't
actually know what I'm talking about but it sound right to me.

--
Morgan.
----
* When we drink, we get drunk. When we get drunk, we fall asleep. When we
fall asleep, we commit no sin. When we commit no sin, we go to heaven.
Sooooo, let's all get drunk, and go to heaven... :- Brian O'Rourke

Mail: (e-mail address removed)
Webpage: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/msales
 
Morgan said:
Briarroot wrote:




It depends on how good their techs are. They probably have limited training
on how to put a given set of components together, but have little to no real
technical knowledge. Real techs would probably cost too much. I don't
actually know what I'm talking about but it sound right to me.
Click to expand...

The assembly "techs" don't design the systems. They assemble what they
are told to assemble.

Briarroots comments are somewhat "general" considering we are talking
about HP HW Engineers - comments like "definitely skimp on PSUs" and "I
assumed ..... would have taken this factor into a account" are somewhat
generalised and a tad self satisfied and smug IMO.
 
N said:
Shouldn't he be waiting for XBox 2 instead, hmmm? ;^P

"DON'T BUY AN XBOX, IT WILL BE REPLACED BY XBOX 2 SOON!"
Click to expand...

Yes but then there is Playstation 3 as well.

(heh, soon the console turnaround will ne faster than the need to
upgrade your PC, which isn't that bad really, you dont HAVE to have the
next gen card. You can play Doom 3 and HL2 on a 9800. Sure not at MAX
settings, but then again with a console your stuck at medium settings
through it's whole cycle.)
 
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