Radeon 9700 Pro, 512k RDRAM, IWill P4R533 MB.

Here's the story. About a month ago Joint Ops was running flawlessly. Then I stopped playing it. I just got busy. During that time, I believe WinXP was updated to the SP2, and last week I installed a Contrller card and added a third HD. (Maxtor 250GB) I decided to play Joint ops this past weekend and as soon as it started the actual game, (not the menus and game select screen) it locked up and went to black screen.
The next day Doom 3 came in the mail. Same thing. I have reinstalled my video and sound drivers, then did a full reboot and updated to SP2 and updated my MB, video, and sound drivers and that didn't help. Finally, I did another reinstall and updated just my MB, video and sound drivers, but DID NOT update XP to SP2.

could the Controller card and new MB be causing this problem? Could I just have had a piece of hardware wear out?

the only other time I've had lock up was when playing Planetside, I ended up having to use the ATI Omega drivers instead of the Catalyst drivers, and I also had to underclock the video card. Then either the game or the drivers got updated and I didn't have to do that anymore.

I have tried both the Omega and the Catalyst drivers but I haven't tried underclocking only because Joint Ops has already worked flawlessly before.

Any ideas that can point me in the right diretion would be appreciated. Hell, any direction would be nice b/c I've tried all I know to do.

Take out the hardwares(your third hd and controller card) one by one and test it if its causing the problem or not

It could possibly be an IRQ conflict but not sure

P4 3.0ghz
eVGA 5900SE
OCZ 1gb CL2

AMD 64 3000+
ATi 9800 Pro
Samsung 1gb CL3

Last night I removed the controller card, and my small (original HD) I hooked up my second HD as my master and installed a new copy of WinXP and made my new Big HD my Slave drive. (I only have 2 HD's now.) Then I installed all the new drivers and all existing patches (including WinXP SP2, and the new ATI Catalyst drivers) I was essentially working with a new comp, as in no garbage or junk scattered around the HD or registry.

I had even worse problems with Doom 3. it wouldn't even go the menu and sometimes made the screen all pixelated and dropped me to the desktop, where the pixelization was still present so I couldnt' read the error message and had to hard reboot.

Here's the crazy part, I rebooted, and went to sytem device manager and removed my video card. Then I did a reboot and when it came back up windows said it found new hardware and automatically installed the drivers for my Radeon 9700 Pro, (apparently whatever version of the drivers that were in Windows XP) and now it works flawlessly. I was even able to increase the screen size and bump the quality to good without noticeable dropoff in quality. i'm goin to try Joint Ops again tonight.

Apparently, I must have automatically updated my video drivers when I installed the HD or when I bought Doom 3(I ordered it and may have gone ahead and checke for any newer drivers for my video and sound cards, I must have been in "up date mode" And I know that usually keeping your drivers updated is a good idea. But not with the damn catalyst drivers. I say if a game works, and that is your main use of your comp at the time, LEAVE IT ALONE! I should have tried Doom 3 first, to see if it worked before changing anything on my computer.

DAMN THE ATI CATALYST DRIVERS!

But the new Omega drivers didn't help either, possibly because they were based on the new Catalyst drivers.

you have three HDs make sure you have enough power supply...at least 400W...

~evans~

MSI K8T-Neo FIS2R
A64 3400+ @2.2Ghz
1GB SimpleTech PC3500 Nitro
ATi X800 XTPE
Maxtor 250GB SATA HDD