[DragonSpawn]

Not an issue buddy. You are under no obligation to help me anyway, I appreciate the mere fact that you give me some of your valuable time.


Anyway out of a pique of interest this morning after my reboot, I decided to simply press launch the game on fullscreen. It launched without an issue. I had this once or twice before. Which leads me to suspect whatever the issue is, it isn't a permanent one. It's a come and go basis.

Also upon starting windows this morning I had a "MS found an error, etc.." message which prompted me to send the report to Microsoft. I have the details here:

BCCode: 1000000a BCP1: 00000016 BCP2: 0000001C BCP3 00000000 BCP4: 80502392 OSVer: 5_1_2600 SP: 2_0 Product: 768_1






Also I'll do that driver thing when I have a bit more time this evening. Also I normally remove drivers via device manager, should I do it that way? Or is there another alternate way you advise that I'm not aware of? I also seem to have a folder with older drivers in my C/Nvidia folder, I assume since that one is not installed I have to manually go there and rightclick/delete that one after I uninstall the current drivers?

[DragonSpawn]

Ok I tested it a few more times. It launched cleanly in fullscreen mode everytime so far. So I created a system restore point, I now have three system restore points spanning the past 5 days of sessions where the fullscreen starting of a game worked. If this follows the traditional pattern of the other two times though....if I restart the PC, next session it will return to crashing, until a couple of restarts later or god knows why it'll work again all perfectly for a session.

I'm going to in the absence of finding a solution right away keep creating system restore points at the various sessions it for some odd reason worked. Mayhaps with some luck I'll find a pattern.

Although the last two times it worked the PC started with a windows error message (Which only started after the first time I did a system restore to the first time it worked. Oddly enough after that restore I could launch them in fullscreen, but of course, after I turned off the PC that night, by next morning the issue was back). So unless I feel like system restoring to any of the three existing points whenever I want to play fullscreen I'll keep looking for the cause. -.-

[Dalo Harkin]

It's definately a driver issue - You can use the add/remove programs for the drivers aswell as device manager but they still leave little bits all over the place and these can cause problems - hence what you have - from now on whenever you install the new drivers use that DRIVER CLEANER to do is as you will get a COMPLETE removal.
you are better off just checking that the ones in the C:/NVIDIA are gone, its if there is more than one in that location you can have major issues.
as for us helping - thats what we are here for
Oh by the way I checked and there should be 2 6 pin cables going into the GPU

[DragonSpawn]

Is this the necessary way to do it? Or can I simply skip the safe mode and do it in normal?


nVidia:
1. Unplug nic card or modem from net or disconnect
2. Remove nvidia from add/remove programs
3. Reboot into safe mode (F8 during boot up)
4. On reboot into safe mode WinXP SP1/SP2 will auto detect and install drivers. Just let it do its thing. If you can cancel out of the auto install hardware wizard then skip the rest and run Driver Cleaner! If you can NOT cancel out of auto detect wizard then...
5. Navigate to device manager->display adapters->highlight nVidia and click uninstall or remove but don't reboot
6. Disable any AntiVirus Software (If you don't disable is than it could give trouble)
7. Run Cab Cleaner (not needed, but recommended)
8. Run Driver Cleaner
9. Empty recycle bin and reboot
10. Install the new drivers

[Dalo Harkin]

You can do it in normal mode but it is better in safe mode so that nothing compromises the removal of the drivers.

[DragonSpawn]

I just did the driver cleaner. Got rid of all NVIDIA driver shiz,....then rebooted and slapped the newest driver back on. Then rebooted again. Then tried to start a game in fullscreen,...and it crashed like normal.

Although at all the reboots this time I did not get a MS error message prompting me to send a report to Microsoft. Albeit is it a coincidence or was something in the error message that perhaps allowed me to start the game last time?



PS: So what is next? Audio driver cleanup?

[DragonSpawn]

Also remember I did a system restore point to last time it worked 3 hours ago before the driver cleaner action. Is it dangerous for system stability for me to restore to a spot with different driver settings (the last spot is/was the unclean one with the driver residues from previous driver updating)?

[Dalo Harkin]

Did you check that the graphics card has both the 6 pin connectors in it?
If its crashing at full screen - its:-

DRIVERS - checked
POWER - hard to check
GPU MEMORY - hard to check

I know it sounds daft but can you try using an earlier driver if you can access one.

and just to check you aren't overclocking anything are you

[DragonSpawn]

Not overclocking.


How do I check the pin thingie without opening the box? Is it visible from the open side of the box? Since I lose my warranty if I open the box. Before I do that, I think I'll email the service of the builders of the box and see if they tell me to do that.


Also remember I said I ****ed around with the audio drivers early on? By installing a shoddy USB headset with it's own audio drivers, then mistakenly uninstalling realtek, then hastily reinstalling realtek when noticing I had no sound, then later uninstalling the headset, etc.. Might the issue be in the audio drivers and not the video card ones?




Also can it really be the power? Wouldn't it crash then when I play it for hours at max settings (on the rare random opportunities it does launch fine without BSODing)?

[DragonSpawn]

Something very odd. I just tried launching the game again with fullscreen..............it worked. So it didn't work 5min ago but this time it did. I didn't do anything in between, I didn't open another program or reboot or nothing.


So whatever it is, it's erratic.

[DragonSpawn]

Ok tried it a 2nd time. Launched. Tried it a third time in a row...crashed.

[DragonSpawn]

Took a flashlight and looked into the box from the outside without opening it. It seems as if the 8800GTX has both pins in. Since there are two cables side by side which seem to plug into the card.

[DragonSpawn]

Okay it launched again. This time I decided to alt-tab from the launched game. That worked. I launched teamspeak to talk with a few people. However when I tried to maximize it again after alt-tabbing it collapsed. Think the fact that I started program that uses audio drivers caused the crash when I wanted to maximize it again?

[DragonSpawn]

Ok I just launched it with teamspeak already on before launching it. The launch failed and I crashed.



I then next time decided to launch the game without teamspeak on. It launched perfectly again. I then alt-tabbed and it crashed me.


So judging from these tests I should not alt-tab the games. But still after the driver cleaner it seems to me the amount of successful launches to fullscreen increased by easily 75%. However crashes seem to occur as a rule if I have a program that requires audio drivers (such as a gaming chat tool such as teamspeak) running or if I alt-tab from the game once it launched fullscreen.

These info's helpful?

[Dalo Harkin]

Thats thrown me - who made the PC - you may have to get in touch with them.

[DragonSpawn]

Apparently it was a fluke or so. Since now again despite not doing anything I can't launch the games in fullscreen anymore. It's sporadic as hell it seems. Ah well thanks for trying anyways.

[Dalo Harkin]

the only think that I can think of that would cause something like that is a corrupt OS - or the memory on the GPU is bad

[Goku]

Hello Sean. I think the problem is with the fact that you are using TeamSpeak. Can you please uninstall it and then try to start the game?

-- Goku

[DragonSpawn]

I've had another thought. Could my Acer screen's drivers be the issue? I never updated them. And I used to use the screen for my old computer which used an ATI card. Any possibility this could have an adverse effect?


Also I'll uninstall teamspeak and try it in a bit again and bring back the results.

[DragonSpawn]

I ran another interesting test.

I started the game in windowed mode. The standard window is 640x400.

1) So I started playing the game at max settings with 640x400 to see if stress to the system causes anything. No, everything goes smoothly.

2) I open the console in the game, put in "setres" and expand the window. I go to 800x600. Again I play at max settings to see if any stress causes issues. The game played smoothly.

3) I put in setres again and do 1024x768, again all goes and plays smoothly.

4) Then as a last thing I put in the resolution of my desktop, 1280x800. It crashes immediately. It doesn't even allow me to join a match to stress it, the sheer fact that I in the menu changed the resolution to the same as the desktop, which would theoretically make the 1024x768 window fullscreen size. It went boom and did the usual BSOD and reboot.