Help me, I command you...

[Lord Kaizen]

My sanity is at it's end!

The problem I have is that most newer games freeze up on my computer, such as Alice, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Alone in the Dark the New Nightmare and even Half-life freezes almost constantly when I play them.

First I thought it was memory, so I disable my background tasks. It didn't help. So I got a memory upgrade and is now up to 191 MB. Load times are improved greatly but doesn't help the freezing. So I decided to swicth graphic cards. I replaced my old Radeon 32 with a Geforce FX 5200. Surely it would solve my problem - I was wrong.

What gets me, I can play Doomsday and Quake 2 for hours without my computer ever having any problems. What could possibly be causing this? Is there a solution to this madness?

Please, oh please help me. For I'm afraid I may find myself locked within a padded cell... *crazy*

[Ninja_of_DooM]

Well you could start by runnning your full system specs past us. That would help better than knowing just the RAM and graphics card.

[Deathgiver]

1)What are your system specs?

you might need to get more ram


edit:NoD beat me to it.

[Lord Kaizen]

I'm not sure what you would need. It's a windows 98 with a pentium 3 processor.

BTW, how do you find out what the MHZ are for the processor? I think it's 533 MHZ.

And, uh, should the file system and virtual memory still be 32 bit since I upgraded to a 128 MB card?

Edit: another strange thing is that certain levels/maps don't seem to ever freeze at all. *confused*

[Deathgiver]

I'm not sure what you would need. It's a windows 98 with a pentium 3 processor.

BTW, how do you find out what the MHZ are for the processor?

you could try right-clicking the "My Computer" icon & select "properties"

And, uh, should the file system and virtual memory still be 32 bit since I upgraded to a 128 MB card?
The amount of video ram has nothing to do with file system and virtual memory

I'm curious, How big is you swap file.

[Lord Kaizen]

The processor is not listed. But I have it written down as being 533 MHZ. Don't know how I found that.

And what is a swap file?

[Deathgiver]

A swap file is space on the Harddrive set asside for when your ram is full, it's very slow but it helps out.

[Kaiser]

this belongs in the tech support forum.

[Doom_Dude]

Indeed it does Kaiser. :p

191mb of ram is enough to play Alice and Half-Life. I know Alice will run on 64 MB RAM and Half-Life even less (32mb methinks). Castle Wolfenstein requires 128mb.

You may need to upgrade your video card drivers and update direct X.

Ok we want you to figure out what your CPU is so download this cpuinfo program and run it.

ftp://megawad@server1.thefourwinds.net/misc/cpuinfo.zip

[Looney]

If its a Pentium III its a 500-550 mhz

Do as Doom_Dude said, update Video drivers and Direct X, sounds like stacking problem. May be time to replace the CPU.

[Lord Kaizen]

I have Direct X 9. Doesn't the video drivers come with the graphics card? How do I find out about the swap file? I'm sorry. As you can tell, I don't know much technical stuff about computers. :o

I ran the program. This is what it says:

535.5 MHz

CPU: Intel Pentium III
Model: 'GenuineIntel' Family 6 Model 8 Stepping 1
L1-cache: 16K (4-way set associative, 32-byte line size)
L2-cache: 256K (8-way set associative, 32-byte line size)
Memory: 156 MB/sec transfer rate


I will also add that my computer is a Hewlart Packard with an on-board graphics card. I have disabled the card, but still no improvement.

Because my computer doing this to me, I have stopped buying newer games. Most of the games I buy now are older games that I find on E-bay.

Doomsday, glQuake, Quake 2, Forsaken and Alien vs Preditor run perfectly.

Oh, and Half-life freezes even more when ran in software mode. But this doesn't happen when I play the original Doom and Quake engines.

[The Undertaker]

Video drivers are always being updated so go here (http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp). Swap file is prolly set to default no limit size. Sounds like it might be a good idea to reformat if you ask me.

[Tyberious]

upgrade your ram to atleast 256MB, your GFX card to maybe something around a 5600 Ultra or a 5700 or maybe a 9600 (never get anything that says SE and XT for nvidia and for ati never get anything that says SE and XT's are expensive so I don't advise them. Upgrade your processor (around atleast 750Mhz I recommend 1 Ghz), upgrade your dirvers (to the latest, not betas!), update windows (microsoft windows update at microsoft.com), update all of your games with patches (if possable).

Hopefully this will help, also what is the processor heat ( for example mine used to be 120* F which is blistering hot, that case didn't ahve any exaust fans nor any fans to bring in cool air, my sisters pentiun III runs around 75 to 80* F with a nice extremely low grade athlon cooler and a custom heat spreader I epoxied on.) Hopefully everything works out.

[Planky]

So I got a memory upgrade and is now up to 191 MB

Did you get the original ram replaced, or did you just have another stick of ram added?

[Lord Kaizen]

@Planky

Just an extra one was added.

@Tyberious

I just updated my card a few weeks ago. It is a Geforce FX 5200. How could over heating be causing this? Like I said, this usually only happens when I play certain games. I usually turn my computer off at night, but sometimes I leave it on to download stuff off the net or defragment my hardrive and it never freezes during this time. If it was over heating wouldn't this happen more often?

But sometimes it will freeze while I'm browsing the net or when playing an MP3 file... I have never actually updated windows, maybe that would be my best bet... I guess I'll try that and see how it goes.

Thanks to all!

[Lord Kaizen]

Heh, well...my problem seems to be caused by heat. I hear this also can cause "Illegal operation" and "Fatal Exception" errors, which I get alot. Most likely it's generated by my 3D card. I may have to install a slot fan. Besides my comp is full of dust and cobwebs so the vents are probably clogged.

[Looney]

EEEEwwwwwww Yeah that dust acts like a blanket, holds in the heat very well. I clean my box out about once a year. Now that I have a clear sided case, I can see I will be doing it allot more often. :p

[Doom2Hell]

if i remember correctly, Fatal exception and illigal opeation errors are caused by computer trying to access recources its not alowed to, or are not there, or are already used... and trying to do something that simply cannot be carried out, respectively, ive never heard of HEAT causeing fatal exceptions/ill ops, course theres something you learn everyday.... however id have to lean towards software for your ill ops/page faults or fatal exceptions.... i would try yanking the OLD peice of ram and running the game with only the new one, see if it will run without crashing. And its always good to clean out the old PC, blow that sucker out *bliss*

[Lord Kaizen]

It says that heat can cause all that in HP's tech support site. Just about everything that it said heat problems can cause my computer does.