Need Help, games locking up.

[User Name]

This is the only gaming site I go to so I hope you guys don't mind helping me try to figure this out.

My friend recently put together a computer from mostly spare parts. It's having problems playing games. Here is what it's got:

500W PSU
Asus Socket 939 Motherboard (latest BIOS already installed)
AMD 4000+ Athlon 64
2 GB Kingston DDR
ATI HD 3870/Geforce 8800 GTS 320MB
X-Fi Xtreme Music card
320 GB Sata HD
Windows XP SP3

It plays through 3dmark 06 just fine, but when you try to play games the graphics freeze and the sound just repeats. In Call of Juarez it will play for a minute or two and then lock up. In Unreal Tournament 3 it locks up a second into the opening sequence in the SP campaign.

At first we thought it was his HD 3870. Since it was the only new component, and we knew everything else was working, we tried My old 8800 GTS 320. It did the same thing. The system does not lock up because you you can hit Alt, Ctrl, Delete and close the game via Task manager and the computer runs just fine.

If anyone has any ideas we'd greatly appreciate any help you can provide.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Mahnsikir]

Stating the obvious here but have you checked that the display drivers are installed correctly etc?

You should also should check and see what dxdiag says.

 

[User Name]

Stating the obvious here but have you checked that the display drivers are installed correctly etc?

You should also should check and see what dxdiag says.

We tried both Nvidia's/Ati's drivers, and Omega drivers for both. None of them made a difference.

Haven't checked dxdiag though.

 

[=GG= Mr Moe]

I agree. Check the drivers. Just the fact that you have gone back and forth between ATI and NVDIA says there may be a chance of problems. Download the latest drivers (including MB drivers). Uninstall your display drivers. Use a program such as CCleaner to make sure you thoroughly got rid of them. Then install the new drivers.

Hopefully it is only a driver problem.

 

[User Name]

I agree. Check the drivers. Just the fact that you have gone back and forth between ATI and NVDIA says there may be a chance of problems. Download the latest drivers (including MB drivers). Uninstall your display drivers. Use a program such as CCleaner to make sure you thoroughly got rid of them. Then install the new drivers.

Hopefully it is only a driver problem.

I did use CCleaner, and the HD 3870 was the first card installed on this fresh XP install. I used the latest drivers for everything, and have already updated the motherboard bios and chipset drivers.

 

[fiftyone]

OpenAl...

http://connect.creativelabs.com/developer/Wiki/OpenAL Installer for Windows.aspx

If you don't have it already.

 

[User Name]

Well, I tried reinstalling the chipset drivers, running ccleaner again, and a few other things. All other games seem to play fine now except the two I just mentioned. If I skip the intro on SP UT3 the game runs fine. As for COJ I haven't tried it yet since I did this.

 

[blkmgc]

Had the same thing on a recent build. It would browse and low level apps fine, but lock up under gaming load. Found that I had to manually adjust the memory voltage and timings for that particular mobo/memory combination. I'd try doing a Google for the motherboard and memory together. Chances are someones already figured this out.

 

[Grobut]

Well, I tried reinstalling the chipset drivers, running ccleaner again, and a few other things. All other games seem to play fine now except the two I just mentioned. If I skip the intro on SP UT3 the game runs fine. As for COJ I haven't tried it yet since I did this.

Dont know about COJ, but UT3 is not a good benchmark for system stabillity, that games is very fickle about what it will run on:

• It hates overclocking.
• It hates X-FI cards, and especially thouse with X-RAM, try disabeling Open-AL in the game.
• It hates some RAM configs, with a passion, especially on XP systems.
• It hates ATI cards.
• It hates all but the latest drivers for anything, including BIOS revisions.

Patch it up, disable Open-AL, see if it'll run, but if it wont, that doesen't mean your system is on the fritz, just that UT3 hates you.

 

[[5.SS]Pzgr.Zay]

I doubt this is the problem, but make sure nothing is overheating.
Download some kind of temp. monitoring software.
Download RivaTuner and turn your video card fan up to 100%.

 

[fiftyone]

I confirm what Grobut says about the X-Fi problem.
RO Dev's take note.

 

[=GG= Mr Moe]

I confirm what Grobut says about the X-Fi problem.
RO Dev's take note.

Well, that sucks, as I have one

 

[fiftyone]

I'm using XP.
I'll keep my eyes peeled, I haven't bothered to check it out but I've an idea that its mixing the use of "system driver" and the OpenAL option.
The card is hard driving OpenAL and "system driver" soft driving.

Well, thats what logic tells me !