Halo "continue" causes reboot

[daverme]

I'm a newbie to games. I got Halo as a birthday gift from my grandson, cuz it's HIS favorite X-Box game and I don't have an X-Box. (Yeah, I'm an OLD newbie!) It would not play at all because of insufficient resources. I replaced the VGA card with a Radeon 9200 (AGP) and now the game will play. The grandson played it once and saved when he was done for the day. Now, when we start the gane and say "continue", the PC reboots. Happens every time. If I reinstall Halo, it will run once until I save and quit, then the problem returns. An ideas? The system is:

Gateway mobo purchased from eBay. Don't know the model but can find out.
P-III 800 MHz
192 MB RAM
Radeon 9200 128 MB (AGP)
Win 2K, SP 3
VGA drivers are those which came with the card.

[joeyroland]

Hey there,

I have the same card. Though I never had the exact same problems, I did happen to get a reboot when I finished playing.

Anyway, four things you may want to do.....

1. Go to MY COMPUTER and right-click. From the shortcut menu, select PROPERTIES. When the System Properties Windows appears, select that tab called ADVANCED. Then, when on that tab, select the option near the bottom - STARTUP & RECOVERY. After clicking on SETTINGS, uncheck the box that says "Automatically restart".

What will happen is the next time you experience this issue, instead of rebooting, you will get a Stop Error message, also known as the "blue screen of death". If/when you get that, jot down the message and, more importantly, the driver listed. That will tell you the cause of what's going on.


2. Go online to your card's website, www.ati.com, and download the newest drivers available for your card. Install them and reboot.

3. Then, find our the make/model of your motherboard. Go to the manufacturer's website and download the latest AGP drivers for your motherboard and reboot.

4. Lastly, after all this is said and done, you may want to go to the Run prompt, in the start menu, and type in DXDIAG and then select Run. THis will bring you up to the DirectX Diagnostic tool. Go to Video or Adapters, (whatever it's called), and perform the DirectDraw and 3D tests.

Good luck and post back if you should need!


:t

[bob05]

Do you have the newest patch installed?: http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/1/6/416cd169-d8c4-42a1-8a31-7d1e2d34e13a/patch1.0-1.04.exe

[daverme]

Thanks folks. I'll give these a try. I appreciate the input ... Dave.

[nakoom]

I wanted to create a new thread, but this one was similar to my problem, so I decided to just post here...

You see, like I said, I have a similar problem, but Halo works just fine for me. And I don't have problems with any of the save and continues on my games. What my problem is is that I'll be in the middle of a game, AoE, AoE2, StarCraft, the campaign editor, SC:BroodWar, and NFS:U, and my computer will either 1)freeze, or 2)reboot. I used to get the 'Windows Has Recovered From a Serious Error' message when this happened, and only when this happened, but since I updated XP Pro to SP1, I never get the message, which could possibly contain information that would help you guys help me find out what is going on with my system.

I've asked my friends about this problem, and I've had answers like "It's a virus.", "It's just hardware problems.", "It's pirated software," and even "Your computer just sucks." I don't believe it's any of these. 1)I have Norton Internet Security 2003 with Norton Antivirus and it's fully updated. I automatically download virus definitions and scan weekly for program updates and also scan my harddrives weekly for viruses. 2) I'm pretty sure it's not hardware problems because I bought new RAM and video card, and it also doesn't happen to every game. 3)It is not because it is pirated software because what I install and play from is not pirated. I have legitimate copies of my games. 4)My computer, while not the best, does not suck. I have 512MB Ram, AMD Athlon 1.20GHz processor, a GeForce4 MX 420 64MB video card, a WDC 20GB hard drive, and a 160GB Maxtor harddrive and all my drivers are updated. So, it isn't because my computer sucks....

Sometimes though, I wont' even be playing the game, I'll have just opened it and it will freeze, reboot, or something similar. I have looked while playing the games, for a specific action that sets off this behavior. It never happens at the same time twice. It just...happens. This rebooting/freezing is getting annoying and I would just like a little help here. I want to know what could be causing this problem and if one of you knows, how to fix this problem.

Here are my system specs in case you needed a little bit more info on my comp. I used SiSoftware Sandra so I didn't miss anything.

Processor(s)
Model : AMD Athlon(tm) Processor
Speed : 1.20GHz
Model Number : 1200 (estimated)
Performance Rating : PR1596 (estimated)
Type : Standard
L2 On-board Cache : 256kB ECC synchronous write-back

System Mainboard
Bus(es) : ISA AGP PCI USB SMBus/i2c
MP Support : No
System BIOS : PTLTD - 6040000
System Chipset : ASUSTeK Computer Inc VT8363/5 KT133/KM133 System Controller
Front Side Bus Speed : 2x 100MHz (200MHz data rate)
Installed Memory : 512MB SDRAM
Memory Bus Speed : 1x 133MHz (133MHz data rate)

Video System
Monitor/Panel : Philips 105S (105S1)
Adapter : NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 420

Physical Storage Devices
Removable Drive : Floppy disk drive
Disk Drive : Maxtor 6Y160P0 (152.7GB)
Disk Drive : WDC WD200BB-00AUA1 (18.6GB)
CD-ROM/DVD : HITACHI DVD-ROM GD-2500 (CD 24X Rd) (DVD 3X Rd)
CD-ROM/DVD : Memorex 52MAXX 2452AJ (CD 148X Rd, 52X Wr)


MultiMedia Device(s)
Device : Game Port for Creative
Device : Creative AudioPCI (ES1371,ES1373) (WDM)

Operating System(s)
Windows System : Microsoft Windows XP Professional Ver 5.01.2600 Service Pack 1

Once again, any help would be appreciated. Especially if I could get the error message to come back so I could post what it says...I think that would help a lot more than my explaining would do...

[bob05]

Is your computer being properly cooled? Freezing sometimes is a heat problem.

[rmanet]

All great advice and I agree with Joey Roland but with one video card I also disabled the second serial port in the BIOS to get the video card to another IRQ, solved the problem after all else was done. Some cards don't like to share IRQs with certain devices.

I'd also install directx9.....

nakoom - start a new thread please

[nakoom]

Okay, I'll start a new thread. I just posted in this one because most board moderators don't like to have too many threads, so, sorry...