XP throws me out of a game!

[Dennis]

Hello,

I posted about this before, but the discussion ended
without any result :-( So, I'll try again.

XP Home is in the habbit of throwing me out of a game
suddenly and silently. This happens in SimCity4 and
StarWars GB Saga. And those are the only two games I
play There's nothing written in the event log, and it
just dumps me to the desktop. The game's window is closed
immediately and without any notifications.

Any ideas?

Please HELP!

Thank you.

 

[Guest]

Hi,

You could try changing your display driver to a standard
VGA one (640x480) and then trying again. It will look
horrible but may help to diagnose whether the display
driver is causing this.

Another thing to try is playing without sound (disable
soundcard). Same reason as above.

Regards,

Tim

 

[Dennis]

Thank you for your suggestion. The only problem with it
that it throws me out at really irregular intervals -
sometimes 15 minutes, sometimes 2 hours. I'd think that
if the problem was hardware-related, then it would dump
me at the same place all the time?

 

[Guest]

Go to my computer, properties, advanced, and then
startup, properties, check you have error reporting
turned on, the boxes should all be ticked.

Then click performance and advanced from previos options.
Is your page file large enough I have for instance 1536
Mb.

Have you checked for any patches for the game at the web
site?

This advice may be too generic but without an error
message or symptom it could be anything. Most minor
problems can be solved with a clean graphics driver
upgrade.

But if its a bug in the game, hence no error warnings
then report it to the manufacturer for a responce any
information would be a help!

You could also try turning down your hardware accelerater
in control panel, display settings, advanced,
troubleshoot.

Click the slider down a notch each time you play, if that
cures it then it is definatly your graphics driver.

This will also mean a small decrease in 3D performance
but might actually be better for playing the game with a
dodgy driver.

 

[Dennis]

Thank you for your suggestions - but there's only one
thing that I haven't tried and that's turned down
hardware acceleration. Other than that everything seems
fine - the machine is quite new and all of my drivers are
up-to-date (I check regularly), as well as the XP's
(DirectX 9b). And I do have all reporting turned on.