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So i hooked up my computer at a friends house to play some World of WowCraft cuz his computers CPU died. I have a Athlon XP 2200+ with a 1536MB of ram(gig and a half) and a ATI Radeon 9550 AGP card i think its a 128MB card. Vista has run fine on the computer. but when i start WOW it will sometimes make it into the game and crash it would bluescreen then restart and sometimes just crashes before i log in to get to the character list. I was wondering if anyone can help me figure this out. i did a lil research and saw some Vista Problems and also saw driver issues with ATI Catalyst 7.3 and tried removing the Catalyst Control Center and just running of the driver with the hotfix and removing the Visual C++ Redistributable package that was installed with it cuz that was one of the solutions ive seen. i thought at first it was my graphics card but a friend uses vista home premium(same as i) and has the exact same card and he says it works just fine. Any suggestions? Help is greatly appreciated

Well the main reason I think you cant run it is from the videocard, Try doing this:


Go this this website:
www.systemrequirementslab.com and run the test for [Game]

If you get recommended you system might be running too much programs so go to Ctrl + alt + delete and delete all the useless stuff like MSN, AIM, Itunes or anything you dont need while running games, Also Do Not delete anything under System, Local Service, Network or Taskmgr.exe / Explorer.exe

If you get a minimum pass then upgrade your system to the stuff it needs ( videocard, RAM or something else like that )

If you fail do the same for the minimum pass results

Hope I helped


Also if you have Xfire turned on, turn it off... Most game crashes are from Xfire

Thanks man that did help. So far ive met all recomended settings but the video card. but the vid card does meet recomended settings. However i think my problem lies elsewhere now that im thinking about it. I dunno if my power supply is any good. I have a 300Watt PSU and im running a DVD burner, 1 40 1 20 and a 80Gig ATA Drives. i dont think my computer is getting enough power or something. Yesterday i had to unplug a drive because my friend tried playing music in Media Player and Vista started crashing and restarting. I dunno what do you think?

Again thanks for the site its a big help and a cool site to use in the future

certainly the PSU.. what brand is it? what's the voltage on it?

these reboots usually occur when the system doesn't have enough power or when the GPU overheats (check temps?)

Actually im not sure. theres just a sticker on it that says 300W. the other stickers have been peeled off it looks like. i got some Minidumps but not sure what to do with them

Does Vista work with any games?

It was my understanding that as a different OS, it wouldn't work with XP games. It didn't work for GTA for me when I tried.

i suspect a heating issue. have yall try taking your pc case off and check if the inside contain massive amount of dust?
or does your friend pc has a decent cooling system inside his case? =]

Try the following:

Get some compressed air with the spray attachment ( they sell them at almost all computer / technology stores like Bestbuy or even a corner store could have them! ) then spray inside your videocard & RAM slots, Make sure to take them out 1st! , to clean out any build up.

After that download SpeedFan so you can check your tempatures when Idle ( Just sitting around not doing any gaming ) and after you get off a game after playing it for awhile.

Tell us both Tempatures to see if you're having really bad heat issues


Your PSU could be the #1 problem, Most people do not really think about the PSU when it comes to gaming... It's more important then the Videocard itself!

If it's only 300w then that's probably the reason, 1st tell us the temps then we could help you pick out a PSU!

Well. im not really sure if it is overheating or power supply. The Power Supply is pretty old. And i always keep the inside of my computers dust free. i took my friends computer apart the other day and got all the dust outa it. He has a Celeron 2.0 Gig CPU and i discovered there was no heat gel or whatever that stuff is thats supposed to be on the bottom of his heatsink connecting it to the CPU so i put some on for him. As far as my computer if it is overheating i'm going to replace the CPU fan soon.

And about XP games not working on Vista. from what Microsoft was trying to do is make Vista a gaming platform to work with Xbox 360. So it wouldnt be much of a gaming platform at all if it didnt support XP games. Most games if they cant handle Vista and where built for XP usually can be patched from my understanding. plus my friend is running WoW on Vista as well as a bunch of others and has no problem. he has the exact same graphics card as me so i know it should at least run. dont know about how well but it shouldnt crash and restart the computer constantly.

Scan for viruses then?

Go here: http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic58138.html and follow all the steps!