Pardon if my problems aren't terribly clear to start off with, I fear that my knowledge of computers is fairly limited. But to the issue at hand:Several days ago I bought the game Age of Pirates: Carribean Tales simply because it was relatively cheap and I had played its predecessor (Sea Dogs) without a hitch. Of note here before I go on is the fact that Age of Pirates uses Starforce, the dubious anti-hacker software that many deride. I thought that I would give it the benefit of the doubt, however, but my issues only began AFTER I installed the Starforce software needed to run the game.
Anyway, after installing the game I proceeded to attempt to open it but the game instantly began to display a blue-white squiggly screen (a form of the blue screen of death if you will) that never changed, but did play the background music. During this stage I was able to alt-tab out of the game and noted that it was offering an error message along the lines of "such and such a Nero file (a trial CD burner program that I gave a whirl a while back) is unable to execute". To save myself some hassle I simply found the remaining Nero files and deleted them, yet the error message never left.
I then reformated my system, mainly because it needed it and because that's one of the few things I know will work on these issues. Sure enough, after getting everything else up and running, the game worked without any error message whatsoever, though again it gave me the squiggly blue screen briefly before switching to the actual game screen.
Unfortunately I'm now faced with a horrific situation: some of my games (and programs) are working, without any issues, while others (apparently randomly chosen) present the blue screen and never load (or actually play the game music but never switch visuals). Worse yet, they not only show the blue-screen, they also lock up completely and force me to manually restart the computer, meaning I'm unable to see any error messages. As I am in graduate school I don't have time to randomly test dozens of games, but here are some specifics:
-Red Orchestra, a WWII game downloaded on Steam, works fine.
-Half-life 2, also on steam, works fine as well.
-The demo for Medieval Total War 2, downloaded off of a PC Gamer demo CD, works well.
but:
-Gametap, a program containing many games (for a monthly subscription) won't even load the basic log-in interface before blue-screening.
-I tried installing Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy (because it installs quickly) to test this some more but this game also blue-screens (though it plays the music in the background).
I fear that I am completely lost here. I'm not terribly computer literate and there seems to be no correlation between Gametap, a third-party program, and Jedi Academy (a CD installed program) not running as opposed to a demo (also installed via a CD) and another 3rd party program (Steam) that do run. I have uninstalled the AoP game and removed all traces of Starforce that I could find using both the official uninstallation device and some manual tips, but it hasn't helped (though it is possible that I've missed something in the registry files, even though I found nothing after several checks). As all of the Nero files were removed after reformatting I doubt that this is the issue, particularly when one considers that I used Gametap successfully only minutes before installing the Starforce software.
If I can in any way be more specific please feel free to ask. Any ideas or suggestions would be immensly appreciated.
Thanks.
For ease of use:
AMD Athlon 64 Processor 4000+ 2.41 GHz, 2.00 GB Corsair RAM. Windows XP.
DFI Lanparty UT NF4 Ultra-D. Geforce 7900 GT.
