ok so i have a litttle problem....

...yeah, my supposed elite gaming rig...went down the other day, no response, nothing. so i called up the guy that fixed it, he checked through everything and came to the conclusion that the PSU was somehow busted.

so i got a new psu, can't remember voltage right now.

Pc awesomely fast, as per usual, lol, with the exception that it would play any game at all. Nothing. I can save a ten track cd in 320kb mp3 in less than 5 minutes, but it will not play any games.

so i'm guessing its the gfx. i only had one or two games on my pc before it went screwed, so i didnt really push the card to the limit. (9800pro).

i got the latest catalyst last night, installed ok etc etc. booted up, some message in red about "current sata configuration only compatible with win 2000/xp" ya da ya da ya dah.

install couple games, all of which are within the year - Age of mythology and Empires dawn of modern world....

aom gets 4 seconds in to a random map, and bam, straight back to desktop.

empires won't even run. click icon, title comes up. bugger all.

i am gonna try getting the latest mo bo drivers, but given that its newish, surely old games will run.

any ideas? its not too hot, i checked. reckon the card is screwed? any way of testing to see?

on yeah, on never winter nights, it said "game may not run properly as CPU does not meet min. spec. = processor -1152"

and I have 2.8 prescott.

what the hell does minus 1152 mean???


thanks for any ideas/help.

 

ok that should read, would NOT play any games at all.

 

Well, snag AIDA 32, since you can open it up and see stuff like temps and voltages in real time. If the power supply did go poof, there's a chance it could've took a crap on the motherboard too, and it's sending it down. Of course, there's also the video card. If you have something else (any AGP 4x/8x or PCI video card that is DX7 capable should be fine), try that too since the PSU could've hit the video card. NeverWinterNights seems to be problematic from the little I've read on it, so I'd put more stock in something like UT or CS/Half-Life.

 

ok i will try some more games, thanks.

sods law, the second i posted it, i thought i'd give empires one more shot. and it opened fine, 1600x1200x32, all on high, no lag whatsoever.

so very strange. i am getting far cry tomorrow, so i shall see if that runs.

thanks

 

just a thought...the AoM, The Titans and some crappy Zoo Tycoon game, all by Microsoft or Ensemble Studios...they don't work. full stop.

ASSUMING i had a um, lets say, not a proper copy of XP Pro, reckon that could effect anything?

little bizare that three out of 5 games don't work, and those 3 are microsoft, and i possibly might have a crack copy...

 

doubt it. very much, if microsoft games could detect if a user was running an illegal copy of XP Pro, then they would have stopped you from doing pretty much anything..

most likely it's just a compatibility error, after all it is.. well microsoft.. who after all are the kings of buggy code.. !

i DO NOT know what a cracked version of XP pro is, but if i did i could tell you that 6 computers on my network run: MS: flight sim / aoe / aom fine.

although make sure u have sp1, might help..

 

You might wanna check for patches then, and see if that works.

 

i gave up on Aom.

Far cry was out of stock, so i got call of duty, at a steal - £10. Anyway, got home, loaded it up. Got to "Click to Play", so i clicked to play. I went a way to get snacks, came back, still hadn't loaded. The logo was on screen, but no go. So I sat down, and waited. 2 1/2 minutes later, opened up the program, flew through loading and automatically put everything on Max, 1600x1200x32 reso. Each level loads in under 3 seconds, and no slow down whatsoever.

So Empires and Duty both work superbly, but do not load up very fast at the start. Any ideas on that, or do both games take some time on your systems?

thanks

 

I don't have either, so I can't say.

 

ok thanks. i may get round to updating xp at some point, but im not networked right now, so pain in the ass to bring pc downstairs.....i'm lazy

 

hmm, if it crashes to the desktop with no errors it might be your ram. Are you overclocked at all?

Check and make sure your video card is plugged in snug and that the 4-pin molex connector is plugged in snug too.

"i got the latest catalyst last night, installed ok etc etc. booted up, some message in red about "current sata configuration only compatible with win 2000/xp" ya da ya da ya dah."

Yadda, yadda yadda...LOL! Reminds me of seinfeld...anyways... what does the "current sata configuration only compatible with win 2000/xp" error mean? Is this normal?

As for a non-legit copy of XP, that in no way could be the problem unless it is not a stable version, i.e. a beta version.

Check what brand PSU you have and check your voltages.

Good luck, let us know

 

hm, i have an Aopen DVD/CD Writer combi drive. I was told by the guy that this is high end, and if the disks were scratched (which both microsoft games were) then the game wouldn't run/may not as it was so sensitive. Personally I think that this is all bull, as my laptop drive runs disks with huge gashes.

call of duty was brand new and despite the loading time, no problems.

 

Scratches, unless theyre pretty gnarly, wouldnt cause the game to crash, after all, it loads the level from your HDD and into/onto your RAM. The CD is just there to verify that you didnt download the game or do some other illegal action with it

 

yeah probably. i dunno, somethings not right, but i used a pendrive and dropped the ut2004 demo off on the desktop. loaded in the blink of an eye, full everything, no problems. pc just don't like Cd's and or microsoft....

ok thanks all