hello folks,
if anyone out there can help me with the following, i would be really grateful... my machine spec's are as follows...
Athlon XP 1800+ (1.53 GHz) processor
512Mb of 266MHz DDR RAM (a single 512 stick)
MSI MS6390 motherboard
Leadtek Winfast A250 GeForce 4 Ti4200 graphics card
SoundBlaster Live! Card
running :
Windows 2000 Professional Service Pack 2
Via 4 in 1 drivers version 4.43
DirectX 8.1
Nvidia Detonator 40.41
and i have been having trouble... oh yes...
my problem is this :
when running 3D games (some games, but not all games... System Shock 2 was rock stable... but Deus Ex and Giants: Citizen Kabuto consistently faulted...), the machine will sometimes crash... sometimes almost right away... and sometimes not for ages... the screen goes black, and whatever sound was playing when the crash happened is stuck in a repeating loop about a 10th of a second long... this is the most consistent error... although sometimes (not often) the whole machine resets (for variety, perhaps?)... either way... there is no recovery... no dropping to the desktop... no blue screen... it's not even getting that far... it just goes down in a screaming heap...
this was a terrible problem with Giants: Citizen Kabuto, and i remember that it went away (or greatly reduced in severity) when i installed the Nvidia Detonator 40.41 drivers for the graphics card (was previously running 29.42)... however, since installing Deus Ex, the problem appears to be back... other games will produce this failure as well... indeed, almost every game i have loaded has created this fault at some point, but some more readily than others...
i have had the graphics card replaced... i have replaced my RAM from 2x128MB DIMM's to 1x512MB DIMM... neither of these made a difference that i could see... the problem was worse before i installed Detonator version 40.41... but i really would like to make it go away... i would like that very much...
could it be overheating?? or not enough voltage to the AGP bus??? my copy of PC-Alert says my CPU is at a consistent 70 Celsius.... and that the 3.3v voltage rail is running about 3.18 ~ 3.21 volts... is that low enough to wreak this kind of havoc???
can anyone help??? please???
--r.
