ok, most of my games crash 5-30 min. into playing them, such as max payne 2, NOLF 2, Halo, Call of Duty, etc. I used to have a GeForce 3 then i replaced that with a Radeon 9800 pro and they still crash all the time, i also replaced the power supply as it was not powerful enough to run the Radeon...what could be causing this? i have updated all my drivers and i don't know where to go next, thanx for any help

My best guess is a heat problem; the computer gets too hot after a certain amount of time. Do you have anything overclocked?

The easiest way to test this hypothesis is to remove the computer case, turn a room fan on the computer, and try playing your games.

If it is a heat problem, you may need to add fans or better ventilation to your case.

Perhaps others will have alternative theories as to the cause of your problem.

Best Luck,
Bob

When you say crash, how does it crash? Do you get a blue screen, or does the game just freeze up? I used to have this problem big time in many games and the game would just freeze. I was running Windows 2000 as well, and a year later went to Windows XP. I never had this problem again. The previous poster had a good point saying that it could be a heating problem. You can install software that will keep a watch on your CPU core temperature. I have known a few people where a brand new system will overheat even though it was set up with the fan that came from the CPU retail package.

Try doing this: go to google and download like 2 free memory testers. Run them and see if your computer restarts itself or freezes within the same time that it would if you were playing a game. Try that out and write back if it worked or if ur computer restarted.

My suggestion would be deffinatly ignore the first guys response. That is the WORST advice I have ever heard. If you open the case and turn on a room fan on the open computer you are going to blow so much dust and hair, and maybe even smoke into the pc internal components. You could risk a system board failure, and every other PC component ruined. I had a friend who also knew nothing about computers, like the one who posted that message. He had attempted this fan idea. I told him the same warning I just told you, and in a year his system board, hardrive and floppy drive all broke. If you want some GOOD advice, dual boot a second OS. I will place them in order from best choice for games to worst:
WinXP
WinME
Win98SE
all others are not good for games.
I had 2000 on my pc along time ago, and had the same problem. Eventualy after atleast a month search. I found a website that showed what games are supported by which OS. I will tell you that Win2000 HATES games, it never wants to play any high performance 3d game. You could search google for the OS game compliance list since I lost the link, or take my advice and dual boot an operating system to run games, then run the rest on Win2000. Or an even better idea, buy XP and solve the problem altogether. It will fix it for sure.

P.S. Please don't do that stupid fan idea, you'll ruin the PC, or atleast greatly reduce its life span!

go to bios, set agp mode lower, and test this

ok, i'm thinking it's probably windows 2000, so which should i get? windows xp home edition or pro? i checked in bios all the temp. and they are ok, so i don't think it's a heat problem...

Give me a break...

Your friend ran his computer with cover off for a few minutes and it broke the whole machine? Even the floppy drive was ruined from a little dust? Holy crap! Must've been some dust. Magic radioactive dust?

And it broke within a year of that, so that must've been the cause? Maybe it was a lot worse than the inches of coal dust I used to blow out of the computers at the mine... You know, once I removed the air filter from a car for a few minutes, and sure enough the car broke down within a year. Jeez.

I've never seen inside a home computer that didn't have dust and hair. And a LOT more dust than you'd get in a few minutews with a fan - even computers that had never had the cases removed.

And could you include a little more drama in your next post please?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now the operating system could be the cause of the problem. Many games are certified for Windows 2000, some aren't. If those games aren't listed to run with 2000, then dual-booting is an excellent idea.

I have read of some older games not working with XP properly, so you might want to consider 98SE if you paly a lot of older titles. I'd stay clear of Me.

The thing is, Halo and Max Payne ~are~ compatible with Windows 2000. Call of Duty isn't. And I have no idea what NOLF is...

Best Wishes,
Bob

Hi. I have no idea why people say Windows Me sucks.. is it because you don't know how to use a good gaming os or what?

i am using windows me, i have no problems with it. it runs fast, easy to use, its much more *stable* than 98se, not only that but it supports more drivers & games than XP or 2000. don't know about you guyz but i think Me is one of the best os for gaming~ XP & 2000 are pretty good too

Ok, to start with, I would like to post a message for Bobthearch. Ok, first off, you say:
"I've never seen inside a home computer that didn't have dust and hair."
Well, thats the purpose for the case. If so much dust gets in there when the case is sealed, imagine how bad it would be if you removed it. I'm not sure that you know alot about computers, and I am curious why you have wasted mine and everone else's time with such a rediculous suggestion. An ounce of PC knowledge would tell you that one single particle of smoke can ruin a hdd disk or a cpu. Then you say:
"You know, once I removed the air filter from a car for a few minutes, and sure enough the car broke down within a year. Jeez. "
I'm sure I shouldn't waste time explaing this, but, OBVIOUSLY the PC probably won't break immediatly after removing the case, but hooking it up to a fan for an extended period of time, (in my case, my friend did it for a year and smoked by it) then it is going to pick up so much dust, and if you are a smoker, then it will be 100X worse. Also, if you have a minute, pick up a PC book and put down the car magazine and learn about the effects of dust on a computer, and how smoke decreases the lifespan of a computer. It amazes me that someone who knows nothing about what they are talking about would blert out such an incompatant answer.

Esp is right, there isn't anything wrong with Windows ME. It didn't take much popularity because it maintained the same GUI as the predisesors. It wasn't easy enough to use for the vast majority of PC illiterate people. Windows ME is a great improvement from 98 and 98 SE, it fixes almost all application memory leaks, and is much, much, more reliable.

KIRK, ok. Get Windows XP HOME. People think because of the fancy name XP Professional that they need it, because it is better or something. In reality, the difference is this. In Home you can have one processor (99.9% of home computers only have one) With Pro you can have 2. (most application are written for only one) Also, Pro was designed for business, so security is set higher than ease of use. So Pro offers a few benifits, but I don't know of a single user who would benifit from them. You really shouldn't waste the money, XP Home is designed for Home users, Pro is designed for businesses who need good security policys. If the guy at the store heckles you, or if you run into someone who doesn't know what they are doing like BobtheArch here, don't listen to them. Xp Home is all you need, it will fix all of your problems. :)

Kirk, here is an excellent link that shows ALL of the differences between XP home and pro

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/howtobuy/choosing2.asp

Just select the link, copy it, then paste it in your browser. It should answer all your questions. Let me know if you need additional info.

XP is more stable than either 98 or XP. Does it still having trouble with some older games? Perhaps those issues have been addressed by the service packs... Many people dual-boot to avoid compatibilty issues with older software.

If you go with Me, here is a link with good info on how to keep it from crashing so much. The page was put up by a guy who's one of the regulars over at the Me forum. (Many of the items discussed here are the same problems that 98 has.)

http://www.burzurq.com/forum/trevtweak.html

In general, I find 98Se more stable than Me. I have 98Se on a desktop and Me on a laptop. It could just be the nature of laptops that make it seem less stable, but you'll find a lot of folks that think the patches and add-ons that make Me an 'upgrade' from 98 also make it less stable. Personally, I also find that 98 runs more stable without adding all of the MS patches and updgrades.

It's just my opinion based on what I've read and my own experiences. No one can say for a fact that this OS is better than some other OS - there's too many variables.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ian,
Your friend took the cover off and left it off for a year? Man, that ~is~ dumb. That's nothing like what I suggested. I don't think removing the cover for a few minutes to test for overheating will have the same effect. If the machine is overheating, there are Real and Effective long-term solutions.

Testing for overheating the way I described has been suggested many times on these forums by many different people.

As far as smoke, yes it's terrible for computers. The particles are much smaller than dust and can really get into the component interiors. I don't think a case protects much against it either.

Hope you all have a nice day. I've got to get back to 'work'.

Best Wishes,
Bob

I agree Bob, removing the case and hooking up the fan to it for a one time test is an idea, however, my friend who did this left his hooked up for a year. He smoked atleast a pack a day while playing on the PC with the fan hooked up. That is why I assume that all the problems my friend had were directly linked to the fan solution. I do agree with the test, but as a solution, I think it is ridiculous. I also see your point about 98Se and ME are relativily similar, and are both good Os's, and are impossible to say which is better. But in this cause, Karl has over a gig of RAM. So he cannot run 98 with that much RAM. Off the top of my head, it will only accept 1g or 512mb don't remember, either way 98 won't be able to handle the power of that PC. I imagine with the info provided that his harddrive is relativly large, and so to save time and complications, installing XP would be better. Windows 98 (FAT32) Can't handle the massive storage of todas Hard drives, you would have to search for the manufacturers third party software to install to provide the support to run the harddrive under 98. I stick with my original answer. Windows XP Home is by far the best choice. Windows ME second, and last Windows 98SE.

Kurt, to give you some background on your problem. Windows 2000 uses a different method of reading drivers (the programs that run your hardware) Microsoft did this in an attempt to make the creation of drivers easier for manufactorers. This way they could write much smaller driver files, so they could fit on a floppy. Also, the newly revamped way would also help reliability, because 2000 has set commands for the drivers to use. When you run a high performance game like the ones you play, Win2000 will create an emulator which runs the game. The emulator was designed to handle all the devices that don't read the Win2000 format of device commands. The emulator was junk, it doesn't always work, sometimes it does, and it will run for awhile but it tends to crash, or close games for no reason. Microsoft never corrected the emulator to run like it should, it was an attempt to make the 2000 OS backward compatible. That is why when you run your games, they will work for a bit, then shutdown. Don't get me wrong 2000 is a GREAT OS, but it is only great for running programs, not games. So the only way I know of to fix the emulator problem is to install a better OS. WinXP Home.

Bob, sorry for being so rude about your suggestion. There is no excuse for my rudness, I guess I get mad when people give bad advice. I thought you were saying to do the fan idea as a solution. Anyway, sorry.
Also Kurt, if you need any addition help, or want any more advice message back. I added this post to my computing.net, so I will check back to assist you.

See, we don't really disagree all that much. :)

I didn't take into account the amount of RAM listed. Other OSes, not just Windows, have trouble with that. And the hard drive likely to be on a machine like that would be a pain in a$$ with Windows 98 ~or~ Me. Can you imagine 120GB, filled with a single partition, and crammed full of mp3 and movie files? How long would it take 98 to defrag That mess?!?

Also, I noticed that he has two processors. Older operating sytsems wouldn't be able to take advantage of that.

In Kirk's last post he figures it's not a heat problem anyway. But it did seem suspicious that whatever game he was playing, it always quit after a length of time.

As far as XP Pro or Home, I have ~no~ opininion.

-Bob

Oh, my bad Kurt, if you have two CPU's in the PC you need XP Pro to run them. Sorry I didn't realize you had 2 cpu's. Pro can run that, Home can only run one.

wow, i'm very suprised at all the help i'm getting here, thanx alot guys....it is true i have a dual processor machine, so does that mean if i install windows xp home, the computer will be crap or run really slow? i'd rather stay away from windows xp pro coz it sounds like windows 2000 pro, which the guy who built the computer for me said is the best for a dual processor machine....HOWERVER, i have NO idea how to utilize the power of 2 processors...so i'm kinda stuck here, i really don't want to have to spend $200 on xp pro and find out it's just as bad at running 3d games as win 2k pro

also, i've been reading some reviews and am a little worried about xp....it sounds like people are having compatibility problems....anyhoo, here are all my specs so you know: CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) Processor 1.5 GHz (2 CPUs) 1024 MB
Mobo: Tyan Tiger MP Phoenix ServerBIOS 2 Release 6.0
Soundcard: Soundblaster live
Video: Radeon 9800 pro
OS: Win2k pro Service pack 4

Ok, well. Im going to give you some of my opinions on your situation. First of all 2 cpu's is pointless. The only time you actually use both is when programs are specifically written to utilize both of them. 99% of computers have only one CPU, that is why 99% of software isn' written to utilize 2 CPU's. Also, the cost for a system board and the 2 cpu's was probably very expensive. Why did you go with 2 cpu's anyways? A good agp 8x video card, fast cpu, and fast FSB would be more than sufficent for any gamer or graphics designer. Second part of the bad news, PC's that are built by a tech tend to have compatability issues. Compared to computers that are built by a manufactorer that has designed the hardware specifically for that computer. You will have more problems with the home built PC than you would with a bought packaged PC. That is really bad news because I am sure you have spent alot of money on what you have now. If you want to use both CPU's, you have to go with XP pro, if you want to use one you have to use XP home. My professional opinion is that if you scrap the extra CPU (that isnt being used) and settle for one cpu, go with Home and it will run games fine. I want you to do something first before you decide. Goto www.freeware.com and search for Sandra, download and install it. Run the program and check the CPU program. This will let you view how much of your 2 cpu's you are using. I will bet that if you run a number of your common programs that only one cpu is even ever used! That should convince you. Let me know the results...

ok, here's some stuff i found out with sandra, first off, it says my mobo is too hot, 2nd my bios is over 3 years old, which sandra says is too old...lastly, my page file is too big...could any of these be causing unstable game performance...also, i don't know how to check if i'm using both cpu's...it just tells me the specs

Your games probably crash because of overheating. Replace your CPU fan/heatsink. Arctic Silver is also a good thermal compound, so I suggest that you use that.

I really think it is the operating system.
Here are a few websites to check for game compatability.

http://home.comcast.net/~kagamix2/xp-compatible/2000list.html

http://www.blackviper.com/WIN2K/games.htm

Also, try going here to download the latest directX which may help.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=141d5f9e-07c1-462a-baef-5eab5c851cf5&displaylang=en

I think it is important to rule all possiblities out before buying anything. I have had this problem with my Windows 2000 computers, I imagine it is just the OS. Check the links for compatabilty between 2000 and your games you play. Also try installing the most current DirectX. I dont think your PC is overheating. Let me know if this fixed, or if you have more questions. Keep me posted.

yeah, i don't think it is overheating either, and i'm not sure but maybe it is the game itself...halo is the game i've had most of the trouble with lately, it just crashes in the exact same spot as always, plus those links you sent me don't have any games that i have, i play newer games like max payne 2 halo, etc.

ok, basically, all i need to know is if i can still run win xp home ed. on my computer even though it has 2 cpu's...i really don't care if i only use one, i just want to know if xp won't work if i have a dual processer machine

Good question. Unfortunatly, I don't have that answer. If I were you I would post a message in the forrum asking people. If you can do it, then I would say sell your extra CPU as it retails $200-$300. That would pretty much pay for XP Home. But only do it if it will work. I know there is a place to check for system board compatabilty. A list that will show if your board is compatable with XP or not. I would lean towards it would work, but only support one processor, but I don't know. Repost a new meesage, or search for a copatability list (perhaps the manufactors website?) Good luck!