XP Home crashes during Scrabble 2003 edition (latest)

[Guest]

When using keyboard to assign letter to blank tile, pc immediately crashes to
blue screen - 'a problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to
prevent damage'. On restart 'the system has recovered from a serious error'.
MS online crash analysis states 'error occurred in Intel graphics driver' or
sometimes states it is unable to determine the source of the error. After
restart, desktop icons and words are about twice the size they were before
the crash. My PC is year-old Dell Dimension 2400; 80 Gig hard drive; pentium
4; 2.80 GHz; 512Mb SDRam. Game should be compatible with Win 98/2000/ME/XP,
but even trying compatibility mode for these makes no difference. I have
tried the game on an older, less powerful Fujitsu PC running Win 98 and there
is no problem. The game manufacturers/ distributors, Ubisoft/Runecroft,
totally unhelpful, offerring no advice whatsoever. Dell offerred generalised
but ultimately unhelpful advice and referred me to Ubisoft. Any help would be
appreciated.

 

[Malke]

When using keyboard to assign letter to blank tile, pc immediately
crashes to blue screen - 'a problem has been detected and windows has
been shut down to prevent damage'. On restart 'the system has
recovered from a serious error'. MS online crash analysis states
'error occurred in Intel graphics driver' or sometimes states it is
unable to determine the source of the error. After restart, desktop
icons and words are about twice the size they were before the crash.
My PC is year-old Dell Dimension 2400; 80 Gig hard drive; pentium 4;
2.80 GHz; 512Mb SDRam. Game should be compatible with Win
98/2000/ME/XP, but even trying compatibility mode for these makes no
difference. I have tried the game on an older, less powerful Fujitsu
PC running Win 98 and there is no problem. The game manufacturers/
distributors, Ubisoft/Runecroft, totally unhelpful, offerring no
advice whatsoever. Dell offerred generalised but ultimately unhelpful
advice and referred me to Ubisoft. Any help would be appreciated.

Is there a place in the game where you can change video options? If so,
make sure the game display resolution is set to the same resolution as
your normal Windows display (800x600, 1024x768 or the like). I don't
think it's a question of computer power; rather it is a problem with
the video. The onboard Intel graphics chip you have is not ideal for
playing 3D games, and perhaps the graphics card you have in your Win98
box is a better one. You can try updating the Intel video driver. Get
it from your computer or motherboard mftr., not from Windows Update. If
the game worked before and you recently updated your video drivers from
Windows Update, rollback the drivers via Device Manager (System applet
in Control Panel).

Otherwise, my experience with Ubisoft is that they make buggy games. If
there are no patches for your game, then I'd have to say don't run the
game on the XP box.

Malke

 

[Guest]

Malke, thanks for your help. Can I impose my problem a little further. In
taskmanager/processes I noted I have 53 processes running. I ended all
processes except those referring to system/taskmngr/explorer, leaving about
15 processes. Lo and behold, scrabble ran without crashing! When I restart,
the processes are back in action and the game crashes as before. Do you think
I am stuck with this procedure? Updating Intel video driver did not help and
Dell say they do not supply video cards other than with full system. The Win
98 system I tried successfully has nvidia (geforce I think) graphics. Can
you suggest a suitable video/graphics upgrade; I don't do much gaming, just
scrabble, chessmaster 9000 and children's amusement/educational games for the
younger members of the family. Sorry this is a bit long-winded but as you can
probably tell I am barely computer literate.

 

[Malke]

Malke, thanks for your help. Can I impose my problem a little further.
In taskmanager/processes I noted I have 53 processes running. I ended
all processes except those referring to system/taskmngr/explorer,
leaving about 15 processes. Lo and behold, scrabble ran without
crashing! When I restart, the processes are back in action and the
game crashes as before. Do you think I am stuck with this procedure?
Updating Intel video driver did not help and Dell say they do not
supply video cards other than with full system. The Win
98 system I tried successfully has nvidia (geforce I think)
graphics. Can you suggest a suitable video/graphics upgrade; I don't
do much gaming, just scrabble, chessmaster 9000 and children's
amusement/educational games for the younger members of the family.
Sorry this is a bit long-winded but as you can probably tell I am
barely computer literate.

No trouble at all. Since you have so many processes running, your
computer may be infected with viruses or spyware. Here are general
troubleshooting steps you should take first before you mess around with
video cards:

1) scan with current antivirus ("current" means a version not earlier
than 2002 but using updated virus definitions); 2) remove spyware with
Spybot Search & Destroy (www.safer-networking.org) and Ad-aware
(www.lavasoftusa.com). These programs are free, so use them both since
they complement each other. You may also want to run CWShredder and
HijackThis from http://aumha.org/freeware.htm. Although CWShredder is
no longer being updated, it will still clean older variants of the
CoolWebSearch malware. Always read the instructions before running a
spyware removal tool. Be sure to update these programs before running,
and it is a good idea to do virus/spyware scans in Safe Mode; 3) delete
temporary and Temporary Internet Files; 4) stop unnecessary
services/programs from starting with Windows - see www.blackviper.com
for services info and www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_index.htm for
programs info; 5) look in Event Viewer for clues; 6) make sure you've
visited Windows Update and applied all security patches. Do not install
driver updates from Windows Update; 7) run a firewall.

After you've gotten your computer squeaky-clean, try running your game
again. If you still have problems, repost to this thread and let me
know what happened.

Malke

 

[Malke]

Malke, many thanks. I'll try all the things you suggest & let you know
how I get on, but can you explain about not installing driver u/dates
from win u/date please.

Sure. I'll be very simple, so if you know all this please don't be
offended. I'd rather err on the side of being complete and I don't mean
to insult you.

Every piece of hardware ("device") in your computer has a corresponding
piece of software - called a "driver" - that tells the operating system
how to use that hardware. If your computer is working well, in most
cases it is unnecessary to update a device driver. The exception can be
video cards. Video drivers are most often updated by gamers (hard-core
gamers fragging aliens in "Doom3", not games like "Scrabble" or online
games) to get every bit of performance out of their video cards.

XP comes with a lot of basic drivers for common hardware. The key word
here is "basic". The best place to get drivers for particular devices
is from the device mftr. because they normally produce drivers that do
more than the basic ones. When your computer is scanned by Windows
Update, it identifies the hardware in your machine and sometimes offers
updated drivers. However, Windows Update is often wrong. Very often
people will post about having problems with their sound, display, etc.
after visiting Windows Update and it is because they went ahead and
installed drivers. Use Windows Update for security patches, not
drivers.

I hope that helped. It was probably more than you really wanted to know.
Please let me know how your troubleshooting goes with the "Scrabble"
game. I love Scrabble, too, although I'm awful at it.

Cheers,

Malke

 

[Guest]

Malke, Thanks, I never understood that about Win u/date before. I live & learn.