what's going on ?

[Count Huginn]

Hi guys...new here. Thought i'd share my problem with you, maybe you can help. Ok here goes.
The point is, a can only play 2 games on my pc, the rest just dont work.
4 games do exactly the same thing. When i start one of them, the logos appear as usul, but when it loads for a sec,to show me the main menu,it just goes to my desktop...and thats it. Says absolutley nothing. These games are: TES3:Morrowind, TES4:Oblivion, Half-Life 2:Episode One, Ship Simulator 2006.
The Funny thing is, when i ran HL2:E1 the first time, it worked...i played about 3 hours, with max graf. But the other day, it just didnt work, I didnt even shut the cpu down that night.
Equally funny thing is with Oblivion. I could play as much as I wanted, but after I did a format (witch I was forced to do, due to the boot error, probably a boot sector virus), just does not work.
Btw, I have all the latest drivers: VGA, mobo, dx9. havent updated my BIOS though. I have actually had it for 9 months and i have been forced to do 4 formats.
Sorry for the long post. My english isnt good eighter. So any thoughts ? :confused: Im kinda bummed out by this. :( . Actually pulling out my hair in fury.

CPU:
AMD64 3500+
GeForce 6600
1 GB DDr ram
nForce 4
550 W

[UkGamer]

hmm some nasty types of virus can still survive a format so you should do a full virus scan if you haven't already.

You could also check the directX thingy , go to start > run > type 'dxdiag' and press enter. Then go to display tab and run the direct3d tests, you should see a spinning cube with a green x on it. If not then you should follow some of the windows helps to find the problem.

[PrntRhd]

Did you ever run the manufacturer tests on the HDD to check the condition before resorting to formatting? A clean bad drive is still a bad drive.
Does your PC meet the specs required for the games?
Are all these games legal copies?

[Count Huginn]

I Have tried numerous times with different anti-virus programs. They all show 0, no infections. DxDiag test shows that everithing is ok with DX9.
No i have never ran the manufacturer tests on the HDD. My pc does meet the min specs, and the requested specs. And yes, the games are legal copies.

[chrisling]

If I didn't wrong, currently you are running Windows XP. Without Service Pack being installed, you won't get DirectX 9.0c. If you are being with DirectX 9.0b, that should be the problem in supporting those high preformance games. In 'dxdiag' test, is it DirectX 9.0b or DirectX 9.0c? Meanwhile, you suppose to update your DirectX since now DirectX 9.0c latest version(June, 2006) is released. You can download it in thiswebsite (http://www.filehippo.com) if you want.
There should be some available troubleshooting in the gaming website, try have a search... :)

[Count Huginn]

It shows DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904).
And for that matter you are correct, I dont have even SP1. Maube that is the problem, but how does not haveing SP1 or 2 influence what games I can play? SP1 installs some critical files that these high performance games need? And I dont remeber if I had any Service Packs installed before, when i could play Oblivion.

[chrisling]

No, it won't affect the running of the games. What I meant is you won't have DirectX 9.0c if you didn't have SP1 or 2, unless you had updated it.
Try observe on your cpu usage after you had openned your game, even it shows nothing in your Windows. In the task manager, see whether got .exe process of your game running or not. Really weird about this...

[Count Huginn]

Tried with Morrowind. When its loads at the beginning, the mem usage goes up to about 54 000 K, and then it suddenly dissapears from the processes. And offcourse, it dissapears from the taskbar aswell. I'm sure that other games go like this aswell. Yeah, it is really strange. Oh and btw, when I put my cpu together and started installing Windows, I couldnt even put XP, it just didnt work, got 2k instead. Had some trouble with it too. My HDD is Maxtor 300 GB.

[chrisling]

I couldnt even put XP
May I know what this means? You want to reformat your pc with Windows XP? Or other thing you wish to do? Can you list out the error when you try to 'put' Windows XP?
I think there should be some gaming supported system file been corrupted cause to these problem. If you dare to give up your data, try reformat your Windows and I think its a better choice for a gamer to approach a better performance pc (just reformated pc definitely will be faster).
Other way is wait other experts to help you on this problem. Many suspicious about your problem... :(

[mjc]

One quick question...have you, like PrntRhd asked, run the diagnostics?

If you've had to do that many formats, so soon, I'd be suspecting a physical drive problem.

The other question...are they all legal (retail) versions of the games? If they are cracked/downloaded versions, that may well be your problem...either infected, corrupt or just some form of copy protection kicking in.

[jlreich]

I agree run the hard drive diagnostics. http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=29081

MJC, Count Huginn indicated a few posts ago the games are legal. :)

[mjc]

I should have emphasized the ALL, because with some forms of CP, one 'bad' game will trigger it for everything...

[LadyGrey]

HDD seems to be the first choice I would look at but then RAM going bad could be another option maybe. I play Morrowind and Oblivion on my lower end system and once in a while I'll get a CTD. I just do a reboot and alls well. I do run my defrag program more now as Oblivion and Morrowind seem to like an orderly drive.
LGhttp://www.pcguide.com/ubb/wink.gif

[Count Huginn]

Ok sorry chrisling, when i typed put instead of install, seeing that your a master in English. Ok the thing with XP was, that it installed ok, but when I rebooted after the installation and just before the XP logo should appear... it reboots again and so on. But after a 1000 installs I finally got XP Home to work, I was, ofcourse, very happy. But what i realized was, that when i launced an app ( any app ) XP just jammed and I had to shut it down. Now Im running XP Pro, works fine ( well, the games don't as you now ). Here is the list of the games that do work:
Condemned: Criminal Origins, NBA 2006, FIFA World Cup 2006, Half-Life 2, FlatOut, Serious Sam 2, Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, Hitman: Blood Money.

[Count Huginn]

A guick thoght. Could Starforce drivers be the cause of this problem? I have GT Legends, it uses Starforce 3.7. Ive heard that SF is a really f****d up thing and has cased several different problems to CPU's that has it installed.