TechSpot - PC Technology News and Analysis

I have a pretty high end Dell Inspiron 9100 w/ an ATI Mobility Radeon 9700. Problem is my computer locks up when I play Command & Conquer: Generals and Doom3. No warning messages, just freezes. I have the latest drivers Dell has to offer, DirectX 9.0c, all the game patches, but nothing seems to be helping. Is it driver problems or could it be something else? Any possible solutions?

I'm assuming you have all the latest drivers and BIOS and everything is plugged in properly.

If so, it appears to me that Windows installs its own AGP drivers when Windows is first installed. Some of these are incompatible with ATI cards. You have to find the drivers that came with your motherboard and chipset that allow Windows to recognize IDE and AGP. So much for plug and play.

First, uninstall ATI's drivers from control panel/add/remove programs. When the program asks you to reboot for changes to take effect, do not reboot. Then uninstall the drivers that came with your motherboard and chipset. When the computer asks you to reboot for changes to take effect, again, do not reboot. Instead, reinstall the drivers you just uninstalled. In my case, I'm using an ASUS A7V600 motherboard and Via 4in1 drivers. After the Via 4in1 drivers are "re" installed, it's safe to reboot when asked. Then reinstall ATI drivers. Then reboot when asked. Now you should be good to go. The problem in my case was that Via did not overwrite some of the Windows drivers that get loaded by default when I installed Windows. However, when I uninstalled the motherboard/chipset drivers, it also uninstalled the drivers that Windows put on there.

I know this works because I did it by accident a year ago, but forgot what I did -- then I remembered.

Good luck.