Hi all:

I decided to post this here in the off-chance that someone might have the patience to read through and offer a suggestion I have yet to try.

I have a decently powerful self-built system that should be able to handle any current games out there in their mid to upper range graphic settings. Here is my abbreviated list of specs:

P4 2.4 Ghz
1 GB of PC2700 RAM
ATI Radeon 9600XT video
SB Audigy 2ZS
Windows XP SP2 (Home Edition)
Norton Antivirus (disabled for installation and gameplay)
Direct X 9.0c

Basically, about half the games I try to play on my machine wind up with what appears to be the same problem: screen lockup early on. By “screen lockup”, I mean that everything just freezes onscreen like a snapshot with total loss of input ability and the only way for me to get out of it is to reboot. Sometimes, if a sound is in the middle of playing, it will “freeze-skip”—other times the sound just gets cut off with the freeze.

In games where this occurs, it’s usually either right at the beginning menu screen (I always get through any intro videos with no problem), or occurs shortly after entering the game itself (usually within a few seconds of starting). When I get this problem, I always try to subsequently turn down the graphic settings as low as they can go to see if that helps—it doesn’t. Also, it rarely freezes in the exact same place for a game with each try—sometimes it goes a little farther before locking up, other times it’ll lock up as soon as the menu appears. But it’s always pretty brief. Adding to the confusion is the fact that some games perform flawlessly.

Here are some recent games where the problem occurs:

Simpsons
Thief Deadly Shadows
Evil Genius (Demo)
Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War (Demo)

Contrast the above list with some recent games that work just fine on my machine:

Painkiller
Doom3 (even at 1280x1024 and the “High” Graphic settings, this game worked well—no problems)
Tron 2.0
Star Wars: KOTOR

I mention these, because they are intensive processing games and I play them at very high graphic settings with no problem. So it appears that if I can just get by whatever condition causes a game to freeze early on, I wind up having an enjoyable experience with no worries.

I’ve contacted customer support on all the games that don’t work, and after going through the SAME steps for each (disable antivirus, disable firewalls, update your drivers, uninstall/reinstall, drop graphics, remove sound), they all inevitably wind up throwing up their hands and saying there’s nothing more they can think to do.

But there’s obviously a reason for this—I just can’t find the pattern or pinpoint the source. Given Creative’s crappy driver support (you have to basically remove every hint of the soundcard to truly update a driver), I’ve long suspected that the interaction between the Audigy card and the problem games is the culprit--but the fact that going into code and turning sound and music off doesn’t make the problem go away casts doubt on that theory. I also recently dabbled in turning down the hardware acceleration for sound in the Direct X Diagnostic tool, but that did nothing either.

At one point, I thought I might have a memory problem (since my memory purchases were typically generic), so I “upgraded” my memory sticks to name-brand quality. No change.

I should mention I had the same problem with XP SP1 and other Direct X versions--the problem appears to be independent of these.

Any remaining suggestions would be helpful. Could this be a motherboard issue? And how the hell can Doom3 work well, but the Simpsons can’t? It makes no sense. This basically makes my game purchases a crap shoot and it’s frustrating as hell—especially when my machine exceeds even the recommended requirements of the latest titles out there.

Thanks in advance.

If you were having this prob with all games I would check for loose heatsinks or fans that arn't spinning but having some work and some not is extra crazy. I would blame the XP compatability wizard thing but those games that don't work arn't very old. You might as well try running them in win2k compatability mode just to see if that changes anything.
Are you able to run 3dmark01 and 03 fine? Try running a prim95 maxpower/heat torture test also just to make sure it isn't a hardware problem.

What driver version are you using for ur vid card? and are you using that new catalyst control panel?
The catalyst control panel (much like sp2) breaks more than it helps.

<A HREF="http://www.folken.net/myrig.htm" target="_new">My precious...</A>

Thanks very much for the reply folken.

3dmarks run fine. I have not tried the prim95 test, and I was also thinking along those lines as well, so I'll defintiely give that a shot.

The driver for my vid card is the latest 4.9 (I replaced the beta version with the official one now out). Yes, that includes the new Catalyst, but the truth is that I was having the problem even with 4.8 (and no catalyst) before I switched to the Doom3 patch.

Aside from tweaking the performance/quality slider all the way over to performance over quality as a test, I haven't done much with the new control panel anyway.

Last night, I completely removed my Audigy sound card drivers, physically removed the card from the machine, and uninstalled Norton Antivirus. Then I tried to run some of the problem games. Only Evil Genius would run without a soundcard, and the problem didn't seem to be fixed. I then reinserted the Audigy w/ latest drivers, and left Norton uninstalled. No luck. Ah well--I'll check prim95....

UPDATE!

I installed the new motherboard last night, and now everything works flawlessly!!! Not bad for a $40 mboard solution!

My only guesses at the actual problems with the original mboard are as follows:

1. Some minor flaw/defect/damage with it that only some games exposed.

2. The components I am using (vidcard, cpu, memory) were all at the uppermost limit of what the board was designed to handle--perhaps the combination of these extremes was too much for the board. And once again, I didn't overclock the system.

3. The new board requires a 12V connection along with the standard ATX power connection--the old board didn't have such an extra power connect. Maybe the old board simply couldn't supply enough power to the components under certain conditions?

None of this explains why Doom3 worked just fine (perhaps it's a tribute to their tight coding and/or vid power utilization?), but the important thing is that all games and demos now work smoothly. I played the Warhammer 40K demo on the highest graphic settings last night without a hitch--and that was with Norton Auto-protect AND my firewall on.

Thanks to those who tried to help--not sure if this is in the appropriate forum any more, given what the solution was.

Still--I hope this fix might help others in the future when there are no further explanations.