My buddies system and XP

[TUK101]

My buddy has a 600 athlon processor, and 256 mb of ram. He just added a Radeon 7500 processor, and an audigy xgamer sound card. Since he has done this, when playing intesive games the system will just up and shut down the game on him. It has done this in Motocross Madness 2, and in Starcraft when online. I used to have the same problems with my Celeron 800 system as well. I remedied the problem by going back to 98, but he does not have that luxury, as he does not have a 98 disc. Any suggestions as to why this keeps doing this on us/him? He did not have the problem before adding the new hardware, and has also done the telephone in thing and got a new registration number from Microsoft. He has updated all of his drivers, and the new cards seem to be functioning properly. He even tried a complete reformat of the hd and still has the same problems. Any help on this will be appreciated. I am starting to think that maybe his cpu just does not have enough poop to run XP? Am I wrong?

 

[mbigna]

A 600MHz should be more than enough to run WinXP. I'm running it on a PII 450. 256MB of memory should be fine, too. Though, I certainly wouldn't go with any less.

I don't play Motocross Madness much and don't have Starcraft on any of my machines. But I would suggest that you try one of the compatibility modes in WinXP to emulate Win98 and see if that clears things up.

 

[TUK101]

He has tried setting the compatability mode to 98, but still the same problems. I did some checking on his comp, and it seems that XP thinks that he has two monitors. I tried going into safe mode and removing the second monitor, but it wont let me. I also tried removing it in regular mode, and showing hidden devices, and it still wont let me. He only has one vid card, (Radeon 7500 with latest drivers). It does not show the monitor in the system properties, but only in the video settings screen. It shows the second monitor as a default monitor, and wont let you set the color depth above 8 colors, 640X480. When booting to Motocross Madness 2 it shows a selection of 2 vid cards as well, one being on the second monitor. I think that the problem is that when playing the game, or any other game it tries to run on the monitor that isnt there, and has no good settings. Has anybody else had this problem in XP? I have had the same problem in 98 before but was able to remedy it through removing the second monitor in safe mode. Any suggestions will be appreciated.

 

[RZA]

1) Do your rigs have an integrated video? If yes, I think it's possible to turn them off in BIOS - this could remedy it...

2) Did you EVER have two vcards at once?

3) When your bud reformatted, there already was ONLY the Radeon? An still there are two displays?

4) Sorry for my ignorance, but isn't Radeon dual-head?

 

[David]

1) Compatibility Mode
Try uninstalling the game, and running the setup program in win 95/98/Me/2k mode and also running the game in win 95/98/me/2k mode.

2) Hardware
Check the card, see if there is a jumper or anything on the card for dual head or something. Is the card dual headed?
Do you have the latest drivers?
Turn off any integrated graphics on the board. I _think_ that it is unlikely that a 600 Athlon will have onboard graphics, the Classic Athlon boards were mostly AMD 750 or VIA KX133, I don't think either had onboard graphics.

Try running the system without the Audigy Sound. Do you have the same problems?
Try the same with the graphics - try a different card.

 

[TUK101]

OK, guys, thanks for the feedback. He does not have onboard graphics. I have been down that road as well, and its a bumpy one. I do believe that he may have a dual head card, but I have ran dual head cards before without these problems. I will have him check to see if there is a way to disable the second monitor. And as for wanting to know if he has ever had a second vid card? No, not on this install. He did the reformat just because of these problems. I will also have him do a reinstall of the game, but the problem is not just with this particular game, its with all games. Some just take longer than others for the game to dissapear, but regardless, they dissapear in time. Really, I know what his problems are, its the same as I had...........Its freaking Windows XP Xtra Problems Operating System. I have not had near the problems myself since going back to Windows 98, its sad that a OS that is almost 5 years old is more reliable than Microsofts brand new OS. You would think that they would have figured it out by now.