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General discussion

Games Crash To Black Screen

by mrguppy Feb 11, 2006 6:45PM PST

Morning computer genius chaps (and chapettes?)

Have a conundrum for you.

Most games i run on my pc run lovely, but a couple crash intermittently to a black screen at random points (after say 15 mins of play). The games are compatible with my system etc, and run fine until the random crash (the screen freezes, then sometimes the ATI graphics card trys to reset itself with a vpu recover, whatever that is?- i have to restart the computer in each case).

Have tried a couple of simple things like - reducing the acceleration on the graphics card, changing the screen resolution to the minimum, doing a selective windows startup from msconfig

Background on the system im running is:
Windows XP
ATI Radeonn 9800 graphics card.
I have the latest version of direct X

Any help you can offer would be REALLY appreciated.

Thanks!

Discussion is locked

2 Posts
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Guppy, Things I'd Start With..
by Grif Thomas Former Forum moderator Feb 12, 2006 2:12AM PST
First, because your issue is frequently heat related, take the cover of the tower and blow out all the dust from inside with compressed air..Make sure everything's clean and all fans are functioning..Then point a house fan at the computer inards and run the computer like that..See if the problem goes away..If it does, you need more cooling.

Next, if you don't have all the most recent driver updates for both audio and video, please do so by visiting the manufacturer's website. It will definitely make a difference.

Next, because unnecessary start up programs and junk files on the computer can cause conflicts and unneeded drain on the system, please follow ALL of the procedures in the instructions below. It may take a while to finish all the steps, but it should help the machine run smoother.

For Windows 2000/XP, ignore the first couple of sentences about checking "resources" and the "Performance" tab in the link below but follow the rest of the procedures including the "Services" links at the bottom to eliminate unnecessary start up programs..

How To Shut Down Unnecessary Start Up Programs

Because the links for the "Services" are no longer functioning in the link above, use this one:

Services Guide For Windows XP

Next, clean out the junk files:

How To Clean Unwanted Files From The Hard Drive

If you're also running Service Pack 2 on the machine, try tidying up a little by using the link below:

Cleanup After SP2 Installation
http://aumha.org/win5/a/sp2faq.php#after

After following all the procedures above, run Error Checking/Chkdsk and Defrag to optimize the hard drive:

How To Run 'Error Checking/Chkdsk' On Win2000/XP

HOpe this helps.

Grif
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uh thats what i was gonna say...
by YellowDucky1981 Feb 13, 2006 6:12AM PST

Man, that was basically the perfect answer, I had something likw 10 % of that ha. Good job

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