DirectX Dilemna

[swellfella]

Games are hanging, sputtering, and crashing to dsktop. Games I have previously played for yrs with no problems. Unfortunately, I can't pinpoint
exactly when it started. Two in particular: Enigma: Rising Tide and Full Spect Warrior. [There are others, as well as some that are OK. In at least two cases, I waiting a reply from the Dev's.]

I meet the min sys req in all cases. Interestingly, after a game freezes, I notice advances features in DirectX [DirectDraw, 3D, AGP Acceleration] are grey-ed out. Is this a result of the problem or cause, I dunno.

There is no spy- or mal- ware issue, drivers are up to date. No hardware conflicts are evident. What would cause a game to develop running hassles after none for so long. I have been having a ongoing tif with my installation of DirectX tho. I had to uninstall and re-install it lately, but this was after the troubles stated above. .

I guess the question is where would you begin looking if faced with the same problem? I asked myself maybe the [B]CDROM is too slow, but its the same one I've been using. Maybe the discs, naw I bought a new copy of E:RT with the same result.

Refresh rates, I thought, after all the games run OK for a minute or so when they run, then freeze. Certainly, hd size in no issue, I have two, one in 30 G and the other 20 G. I fooled around with differnt graphic settings and such, but still, the games still act up.

Does anybody have any ideas? Anything I have overlooked that might cause this type of behavior? I miss my stuff!:greencry:

[STi FlyBy]

Overheating?

[eCK0]

Buy a can of compressed air and spray the dust out of your computer and video card. You may need to take your video card out of the computer for this. Make sure that you ground yourself and are not working on carpet when you do this.

[M46NU2]

Hey!!! I got this problem with NFS Carbon, I tought it was my pc but maybe not, the game just disapear from the screen, I can play for hours or just five minutes but suddenly the game freeze and then it suddenly dissapear from the screen, and all seems normal again, no black screen or error messages just back to the screen.

[Dograzor]

I suggest heat... clean your pc would say.....

OR your GPU is giving up after years.... check on that too....

[Random]

Virus or spyware?

Does your PC have enough free memory to run the games efficiently?

The problem sounds to me like you don't have enough RAM or something is taking up way too much system resources.

I suggest you do a full virus scan and check your PC for spyware, also make sure you have no unnecessary programs running in the background such as, IMs, P2P, Media programs. :)

[acal3000]

Virus or spyware?


I suggest you do a full virus scan and check your PC for spyware, also make sure you have no unnecessary programs running in the background such as, IMs, P2P, Media programs. :)

Yeah that is very true. I don't like to have too many programs loaded when I run games. Having P2p programs opened is one of the worst. Playing a game while someone in the background someone is downloading some of your songs. Hd get loading like crazy and the game just get unplayable. Or the in the case in the antivirus is something simiilar having programmed full scan option is another thing that crap off the games perfomance a lot too. If you have them enabled and you play a lot it would be a good idea you disable them in your av options menu

[Random]

Yeah that is very true. I don't like to have too many programs loaded when I run games. Having P2p programs opened is one of the worst. Playing a game while someone in the background someone is downloading some of your songs. Hd get loading like crazy and the game just get unplayable. Or the in the case in the antivirus is something simiilar having programmed full scan option is another thing that crap off the games perfomance a lot too. If you have them enabled and you play a lot it would be a good idea you disable them in your av options menu

AV isn't as much of a problem as they used to be, PC's have become better and AV's are more refined to use less resources, so I tend to leave my AV on while i'm gaming.

As you say P2P is most defintly the worst, last year I think, I was using a variant of Limewire, I installed it and went on a game and noticed my performance was alot worse than usual, I checked my Performance in Task Manager and it was using 150Mb of RAM and 75% of the CPU, they whole reason I was using it was because it was aparently less resource hogging than normal Limewire!

[acal3000]

AV isn't as much of a problem as they used to be, PC's have become better and AV's are more refined to use less resources, so I tend to leave my AV on while i'm gaming.

!

I didn't mean disable the whole AV. I actually let AVG most of the time running the I run games I don't like to disable it having a permenent connection. What I meant is disable the automated scan function (the one every certain periods of the day at a sheduledd hour scan the whole pc for viruses hours when that is runnning that and a game is running too the whole pc turns completely slow (or at least that happened to me) I disabled that at the the AVG option menu but I don't disable the whole Real time protection when I'm playing