Cannot play any 3D games, system hard locks

panzerkwpanzerkw New York City
edited January 2007 in Hardware
I have built a new system in the hope of getting a nice gaming rig but I find myself not being able to play any of these cool games.

System specs:

AMD Athlon64 3500
Abit AN8 Ultra with latest bios
420W Antec Truepower power supply
2GB RAM (OCZ)
Maxtor 160GB Drive
XFX Nvidia 7950GT video card
Audigy sound (I do not use the realtek audio daughter card because I could not get it to work)

Whenever I try to play a game that uses Direct X, the system hard locks. Hard Life 2, Red Orchestra, Flight Simulator, all hard lock the system almost immediately after loading.

I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling all of those applications.

I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling both the motherboard and video card drivers.

Windows itself works fine. DXDiag reports no problems. The Power Supply worked perfectly on the previous system.

ANY ideas what the deal is with this one?

Comments

  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited January 2007
    Have you checked the memory?
  • panzerkwpanzerkw New York City
    edited January 2007
    How would I check it? It's brand new...

    I tried running Half Life 2 again and played it for a little while without problems. Then I tried running Red Orchestra and again it hard locked.
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited January 2007
    Check your memory with memtest

    Doesn't matter if it's new. Memory can be bad out of the box, or it can go bad in a hurry if it's defective. Can't hurt to check it.
  • panzerkwpanzerkw New York City
    edited January 2007
    I downloaded memtest and installed it on the floppy disk.

    I restarted the system and it started loading from the floppy, then the screen started flashing a bunch of 4 or 5 character strings one after another interminably with my floppy drive clicking quickly. Is that how it the test is supposed to work?!
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited January 2007
    not really. It's supposed to go to the blue memtest screen just like the screenshots in that article. Try another floppy (i've seen that happen with a bad disk before) or try making a bootable CD.
  • botheredbothered Manchester UK
    edited January 2007
    panzerkw wrote:
    I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling both the motherboard and video card drivers.
    Have you just reinstalled the (same) graphics drivers or have you tried others?
  • panzerkwpanzerkw New York City
    edited January 2007
    bothered wrote:
    Have you just reinstalled the (same) graphics drivers or have you tried others?

    I used the same ones, the ones from the Nvidia website

    Prime: I've used 3 floppies so far and the same problem. I'm out of floppy disks

    Unfortunately I don't have any software that can burn an ISO image unto a CD
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited January 2007
    this is what I use:

    http://isorecorder.alexfeinman.com/isorecorder.htm

    it's free. Right click on the iso file and "burn to cd".
  • panzerkwpanzerkw New York City
    edited January 2007
    Installed that isorecorder.

    Now my system starts hanging when I insert an empty CD-RW disc. It's not able to explore it and I don't get the pop-up anymore asking me what I want to do with the blank writable disc. Goddamit!! Won't anything in this m'fer work?!

    Could there be anything else causing this problem that doesn't involve the memory?
  • KentigernKentigern Milton Keynes UK
    edited January 2007
    panzerkw wrote:
    Audigy sound (I do not use the realtek audio daughter card because I could not get it to work)

    What was the problem with this?
  • panzerkwpanzerkw New York City
    edited January 2007
    Kentigern wrote:
    What was the problem with this?

    I installed the driver, rebooted, and the card didn't work. No sound through any port. Volumes were at max. It should not take a great deal of tinkering with a sound card for it to simply work. I noticed that it has jumpers, but I can't find anything regarding the proper settings for those jumpers.

    I used my sister's laptop to burn the memtest CD and had it run a test for the rest of the night. 4 passes and no errors.
  • Sledgehammer70Sledgehammer70 California Icrontian
    edited January 2007
    Sounds like a fubared Windows install. Is it a fresh install?
  • panzerkwpanzerkw New York City
    edited January 2007
    Sledgehammer70 wrote:
    Sounds like a fubared Windows install. Is it a fresh install?

    See here:

    http://www.short-media.com/forum/showthread.php?t=53568

    My windows installation was a very frustrated process. But I eventually got it work. I still have nagging problems with restarting the computer (hard disk detection fails 75% of the time, cold booting works all the time).

    Half Life 2 now works along with Day of Defeat and Counter-Strike. I'll test City of Heroes after work. Red Orchestra still hard locks when it reaches the main screen.
  • Sledgehammer70Sledgehammer70 California Icrontian
    edited January 2007
    I am willing to bet it all has to do with the windows install.
  • panzerkwpanzerkw New York City
    edited January 2007
    Sledgehammer70 wrote:
    I am willing to bet it all has to do with the windows install.

    I would think so too if had I not reinstalled windows 4 or 5 times before it finally worked. I can't get a "straight" windows installation process because of the restart problems and Key issues.
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited January 2007
    dude, you have hardware problems. It might be the motherboard. It's possible that it is a BIOS setting or settings, but it sounds more like a bunk piece of gear.
  • Sledgehammer70Sledgehammer70 California Icrontian
    edited January 2007
    primesuspect wrote:
    dude, you have hardware problems. It might be the motherboard. It's possible that it is a BIOS setting or settings, but it sounds more like a bunk piece of gear.

    Could be that also :(
  • panzerkwpanzerkw New York City
    edited January 2007
    Sledgehammer70 wrote:
    Could be that also :(

    I'm willing to dump this lemon of the motherboard if that's the case. What should I go with? Keeping in mind my socket-939 3500 CPU, DDR RAM and my other components listed above.
  • Mt_GoatMt_Goat Head Cheezy Knob Pflugerville (north of Austin) Icrontian
    edited January 2007
    I say get an Asus or DFI board. I have had great results with both. You may want to try upping the mem voltage and scale back memory timings prior to another fresh install. This has worked for me when Windows doesn't want to cooperate.

    If you get another board, don't get anything with a VIA chipset for any reason!
  • panzerkwpanzerkw New York City
    edited January 2007
    Tonight I had a evening of gaming without any problems. All my games ran great.

    The only thing different with my system is that I took off the side panel, so the system is wide open. Such a big difference, and I don't get why
  • shwaipshwaip bluffin' with my muffin Icrontian
    edited January 2007
    heat.

    What are your temps with/without the side on?
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