freeze ups in games

[snark]

ok, my computer freezes up in games made in about 1999 and onwards (mostly fine with fallout, but not fallout tactics...), especially in menus, but is fine in the demos of half-life 2 and doom 3. It's done this ever since I bought it. it runs fine until suddenly freezing, then usually beeping and going black after a while. sound begins to loop. It's a pentium 4 2.0 ghz, 512 mb RAM, geforce 4 mx 440, running XP home edition. I've tried updating the graphics drivers but that's made no difference. it would be a perfectly decent machine if it would only work! OH THE HUMANITY! I don't know that much about making these things work. Should I update the motherboard or something? I'm terrified of doing anything to the BIOS...

 

[SOcRatEs]

Flash Bang!!!

Welcome to TechSpot!

I still get the heebee geebee's
flashing the bios......it's really pretty simple,
just be patient and don't turn any power to
comp off during the flash cycle.
This may be what you need to do,
though you may want to look into a newer
video card before flashing your bios...also
make certain the new bios applies to your problem,
don't flash it unless you have to!!!

G"Luck

 

[snark]

thanks for the advice, but how do I find out if that is the problem?! I don't think I can afford a new graphics card atm. Maybe it's a hardware problem. should I break her open and wiggle the graphics card around or something?

 

[nuttycomputer]

I'm having the same problem with Star Wars Republic Commando and BattleFronts...
I suspect Direct X9c to be the culpit..
I feel if since I updated to this new DX I've had problems with games...
I ran DXDiag last night and found I've now lost my 3D aceleration hardware, So I removed DX9c and I'm going to try DX9b which was working fine last year with my games...

Try using a older DirectX version see if that helps you...

Regards
Nuttycomputer

 

[nuttycomputer]

http://www.dvhardware.net/article1658.html

For Direct X9b

Regards
Nuttycomputerhttp :bounce:

 

[snark]

thanks, but i bought it a while ago and it's had the problem ever since, so I don't see how it could be DirectX.

 

[nuttycomputer]

Ah well it seems the older version of DirectX wont work at all with my Star Wars games...
Ah well back to DirectX9c, maybe I had a corrupted file... :dead:

 

[Herbster63]

Hi snark just read your post and wondered wot beeps ya got when ya started,depending on the bios the beep codes tell you wots wrong with your puter or narrows it down to a specific area, you can probably search on google once you know ya bios. I have a book here with a few beep codes in it hope this helps if u already havent fixed the comp .
regards herb