Few problems...

[halomaster]

I have a HP pavillion XP, with media edition, ATI Radeon X1300 video card, 64bit duel AMD processers, a new 320 Gig hard drive (previous one crashed.. no reason...new one is only a month old), and a 430 watt power supply.

when i got the new HD, i installed the video drivers, and have windows update all caught up

(one thing with the drivers for the video, i tried updating them through the website.. but i get half way through the update and the update freezes, not the computer.. the update, and wont ever move again)

It has a problem

Any time I play any games..
it will eventually (not everytime though) go to a black screen and freeze up, it wont ever restart by it self though, i have to do that manually,
the wierd thing is, half the time it freezes, it will not go black untill about 30 seconds after the mouse doesnt.. then it goes black and will stay black for about 30 more seconds and recover..
but the other half of the time it will just stay black and the sound will be repeating the last 1/4 second of what was playing, if you know what i mean.
thats the main problem, when i play HALO PC it wont freeze up but every other day or so, but if i even TRY half life 2, it wont let me get 40 seconds into the first mission!

another problem is when i try deframenting it, it will get about 60 percent done and always say "dragmentation could not be completed, click on the list for a details of files" and i click to see the list, and its black.. no files.

Id really like some help because its really get me angry with all the black screen's i see in a day. thanks for your time.

oh and it never had any problems with the old harddrive.. untill it just didnt work one day.
i have spysweeper and norton system works, and many anti virus programs.. its not a virus to my knowegde.

[TT4Titans]

Well first you only want one Anti virus on your PC as far as adware and spyware put all you want.

Second when possible stay away from ATI cards get NVidia chip video cards.

Go here and download this driver.

http://drivers.softpedia.com/progDownload/ATI-Catalyst-Download-13997.html

Go to control panel in safe mode (hit F8 as it boots) if not switch to classic veiw go to add remove programs remove the radeon you got.if it isn't in there go to system - hardware - device manager and uninstall from there.

After that reboot install the driver you previously downloaded.

Now for the Defrag thing.

If you have a XP disc put it in and when it pops up for install exit. Go to Start Run type

SFC <space> SCANNOW

Also go to My Computer right click you HDD should be C: then properties then tools click Error Checking - check now.put a check mark in both boxes click ok a box will popup click ok and reboot.

You can also run defrag in safe mode.

[halomaster]

Ok i will do all that after i post this, maybe this will matter, maybe not.. but i have control catalyst center.. and i over clocked my video card and that seems to make it last longer.. i can play for about 30 minutes without it crashing.

[ProgrammersTalk]

it can be caused by anything, but your problem is most likely caused by hardware incompatibility... (if there's a word..?) so check your hardware whether it's compatible with motherboard, and try to change your PSU :)

[halomaster]

I couldnt find any Radeon Drivers.... only NVIDIA in add/remove program and device manager... so what should i do now?

I have an old 2002 HP Media center PC in my room, i use for TV that never had problems with the video... should i use that video card? If that is an option id rather have it as a last resort.

*EDIT* i tried running Half Life two in a window, instead of full screen, it crashed but it exited instead of being non repsonsive, then a message appeared it reads

"The instruction at "0x181e2218" referenced memory at "0x181e2218". The memory could not be "read".

Click on OK to terminate the program"

Im guessing thats not good, and then another pop up came, i clicked ok on accident, but it said something about DirectX9 and not working properly.

[TT4Titans]

Take the NVidia out and install the one i posted the link to.sounds like you either loaded wrong driver or loaded one of each.the link i posted is to your video card.

[halomaster]

it says the NIVIDA driver is for the Network Bus Enumater, i dont think that is the driver i want to take out... Or is it? Other then that i cant find any video drivers... only video codecs..

I have the Driver CD for my video card... and thats what i used to install the drivers, i dont see how they could be incorrect.

[halomaster]

*edit*

I found a uninstall shortcut for the drivers under the program files for ATI, and i installed your Link, but now, NONE of my games work, they dont even boot, it says "starting half life..." then it goes away and nothing happens. What should i do now?

[TT4Titans]

How much system memory you have?

If that driver didn't work reinstall the one that came with it.

[halomaster]

I have 1 Gig RAM

I tried installing the drivers from CD, and it installed, but nothing changes, when ever i turn on my computer it says new hardware found. Once a pop up came that said "ATI Drivers not found or not functioning properly, Please install the correct drivers". None of my games work, i get a fatal error message every now or then.

This computer has gone from bad to worse, im thinking i should just say screw it and bring it to best buy. What is your take of this?

[ProgrammersTalk]

here, try to follow this step:
1. delete ddriver or whatever connected with that graphic card
2. restart PC
3. install it
4. restart it
5. play

see what happen

[TT4Titans]

Something isn't right with it. Could be that you got a bad video card it shouldn't be giving that much trouble. If you took the video drivers out under safe mode and reinstalled them this shouldn't be happening. Go into BIOS I think it is F10 at boot look for Video and make sure it is set to AGP.

[halomaster]

Well, i just got it back from geek squad, and as no surprise to me, they only made it worse, they put in a brand new nVidia PNY Verto GeForce 8500GT, and they said it fixed the problem and my defragmentation problem. it didnt

Now it loads halflife 2, but half way into the first mission, it now freezes up when ever it tries to load a certain section of the map. My other games still freeze up. And it will rarly let me minimize while ingame without black screening for good, I keep getting this error message though.

It reads:

"The instruction at "0x181e2218" referenced memory at "0x181e2218". The memory could not be "read".

Click on OK to terminate the program"

JUST like before. it might be a different code, but i know same everything else.

I got a blue screen a couple times that said something isnt working, and its dumping physical memory, and some drivers arnt working, something like that.

Plus i can do SCAN DISK or DeFragment completly, without it saying it could'nt be complete for no apparent reason.

The drivers for the new Video card are in the computer, but still have problems. what could it be now??!

grrrrr....................geek squad.......................