Games crashing 9700-Pro all of a sudden

[Di Farker]

Recently I did a clean install of XP and now a lot of my 3D games (Farcry,
Unreal 2, Painkiller etc) all crash for seemingly no reason. They either
turn the monitor off, freeze themselves or even reboot the entire machine.
This sought of thing did not happen on '98'. It is the same machine with the
same components and it's all patched up (although older patches didn't seem
to help either). I'm pretty sure it is the GFC card because I often get VPU
errors saying that the card needs resetting. Sometimes I can carry on and
sometimes it just freezes. The longer I go on for, the more chance there is
of a 'mess up'. I wondered about overheating so (despite the fact that I
didn't have to with my old OS) I ran the PC with the case off, but had no
luck.

Is there something that (perhaps I'm not aware of) I should be doing with
this new fangled XP? No jokes please! I mean I can fully understand it
having trouble running old games, but these are all pretty new and
XP-compatible. I, of course, have made sure I'm using XP-specific drivers.
By the way, does XP make things run hotter? Or is that just an old wives'
tale?

Here are my system specs for those of you who might want to know:

AMD 2600XP
XP home
Audigy 2
Radeon 9700 Pro
x8 AGP
512 DDR 3200 RAM
160GB HD 7200RPM (primary - lots of space)
80GB HD 7200 RPM
Duel fan PSU
1 'intake fan'
1 'outlet' fan

I guess a lot of that is irrelevant, but you never know and I'm getting
kinda desperate (

Oh well, I hope some of you can provide me with a few tips.

Thanks all

 

[Bandit]

1. Witch drivers are you using ? ( 4.4' work the best for me
everything after that caused problems )

2.Turn off vpu recover that makes only problems from what i've herd

3. What kind of power supply you got ?

 

[Nick Le Lievre]

Recently I did a clean install of XP and now a lot of my 3D games (Farcry,
Unreal 2, Painkiller etc) all crash for seemingly no reason. They either
turn the monitor off, freeze themselves or even reboot the entire machine.
This sought of thing did not happen on '98'. It is the same machine with the
same components and it's all patched up (although older patches didn't seem
to help either). I'm pretty sure it is the GFC card because I often get VPU
errors saying that the card needs resetting. Sometimes I can carry on and
sometimes it just freezes. The longer I go on for, the more chance there is
of a 'mess up'. I wondered about overheating so (despite the fact that I
didn't have to with my old OS) I ran the PC with the case off, but had no
luck.

Is there something that (perhaps I'm not aware of) I should be doing with
this new fangled XP? No jokes please! I mean I can fully understand it
having trouble running old games, but these are all pretty new and
XP-compatible. I, of course, have made sure I'm using XP-specific drivers.
By the way, does XP make things run hotter? Or is that just an old wives'
tale?

Here are my system specs for those of you who might want to know:

AMD 2600XP
XP home
Audigy 2
Radeon 9700 Pro
x8 AGP
512 DDR 3200 RAM
160GB HD 7200RPM (primary - lots of space)
80GB HD 7200 RPM
Duel fan PSU
1 'intake fan'
1 'outlet' fan

I guess a lot of that is irrelevant, but you never know and I'm getting
kinda desperate (

Oh well, I hope some of you can provide me with a few tips.

Thanks all

Check the BIOS do you have APIC mode enabled ? Windows 98 doesn't support
APIC mode but Windows XP does - so if you install Windows XP with APIC mode
enabled XP will be in APIC mode - this can cause the problems you are
describing - its known as the infinite loop.

Its not as easy as just disabling APIC mode however you gotta disable it
then do a repair install or re-install of Windows XP to get it to run in PIC
mode as it was doing under Windows 98.

 

[Robert Jackson]

heat issue

 

[TS]

Recently I did a clean install of XP and now a lot of my 3D games (Farcry,
Unreal 2, Painkiller etc) all crash for seemingly no reason. They either
turn the monitor off, freeze themselves or even reboot the entire machine.
This sought of thing did not happen on '98'. It is the same machine with the
same components and it's all patched up (although older patches didn't seem
to help either). I'm pretty sure it is the GFC card because I often get VPU
errors saying that the card needs resetting. Sometimes I can carry on and
sometimes it just freezes. The longer I go on for, the more chance there is
of a 'mess up'. I wondered about overheating so (despite the fact that I
didn't have to with my old OS) I ran the PC with the case off, but had no
luck.

Try turning fast write off - when i had that on i had random lockups but
when i turned it off it made my computer completely stable..

 

[Kent_Diego]

Recently I did a clean install of XP and now a lot of my 3D games (Farcry,

Unreal 2, Painkiller etc) all crash for seemingly no reason.

Be sure to get latest AGP chipset motherboard drivers. VIA 4in1 is VIA
chipset. RAM timing issues should be looked after that.

Check the forums at http://rage3d.com for best info.

-Kent

 

[Wags]

Make sure you installed your chipset drivers. And also try AGP 4x
instead of 8x. 8x made my computer crash all the time with games.

 

[Di Farker]

Check the BIOS do you have APIC mode enabled ? Windows 98 doesn't support

APIC mode but Windows XP does - so if you install Windows XP with APIC mode
enabled XP will be in APIC mode - this can cause the problems you are
describing - its known as the infinite loop.

I had a look and, sure enough, it is enabled. I disabled but the PC wouldn't
go to the desktop, so I enabled it again.

Its not as easy as just disabling APIC mode however you gotta disable it
then do a repair install or re-install of Windows XP to get it to run in PIC
mode as it was doing under Windows 98.

I haven't heard of a 'repair install' before, is it easy to do?

Thanks

 

[Di Farker]

Try turning fast write off - when i had that on i had random lockups but

when i turned it off it made my computer completely stable..

Thanks, but I've just found out that it already is turned off

(

 

[KCB]

Thanks, but I've just found out that it already is turned off

(

Make sure you are not using WindowsXP default video drivers. They do not
support OpenGL. You said this was a fresh install, but I saw no mention of
going to www.ati.com to get the latest drivers for your card. Of course,
load the newest chipset drivers before your vid card drivers. Good luck.

 

[Nick Le Lievre]

I had a look and, sure enough, it is enabled. I disabled but the PC wouldn't
go to the desktop, so I enabled it again.


I haven't heard of a 'repair install' before, is it easy to do?

Yeah like I said you have to do a repair install or re-install with APIC
mode disabled in the BIOS in order to correct it. Just disabling it isn't
enough as XP won't load.

 

[JD]

I had the same problem--same video card too...and it seemed to be that if I
had my AGP driver installed and the motherboard was set to 8X mode it would
crash, but setting it to 4X then its perfectly stable.

 

[wired and confused]

Its probably when u install xp and the bios feature enabled or not like
previous install than can cause these stability issues. I know xp works with
bios changes will be how it configures itself.