PLEASE HELP! - Display and sound problems!

[MikeWalker]

First of all I am new to this site, but would like to say I am very impressed.

Anyway to the point, I have just last week bought a brand new comp, a 1.4ghz AMD Athlon Thunderbird, with Geforce 2 Mx400 64mb and a ECS K7S5A Mobo, pretty impressive, but I am having severe problems!

Whenever I play a game, two of the worst being Unreal Tournament and Deus Ex, the monitor clicks to change resolution, like it should so Im told, but often an error beep sounds, and the game crashes into windows with the message: GENERIC, Display Changed, leaving the game in the taskbar! Sometimes you can still play the game after a few repetitions of this, sometimes it doesn't even crash into windows, but when you exit the game, the errors are still there in abundance! My monitor driver isn't the windows generic one, so I don't know where that came from, it is a Nortek Cube 17. If anyone has any idea how to fix this, pleases let me know, because it is very annoying as you can imagine!

Another problem is with the sound in games, it only appears to be a problem with newer games, probably only directX games, and only seems to affect the sound effects rather than music, the sound starts of crackly, or not there at all, then eventually begins to sort itself out and become clear, but then the same thing happens everytime you progress to another level or start a new game, each time, it seems to be when the computer has the most to do, like loading something up, but with my computer being of high spec, it should easily cope! I don't know if its the soundcard, which is onboard the K7S5A not being compatible with DirectX or what, again, please help me, I would be most grateful!

[Bovon]

Welcome to SysOpt

Someone will be along shortly to try to assist you, I don't have any answers myself...but you may want to list some of your 'extras', like how much ram is installed, and anything else that is installed in the machine. The guys that are familiar with many of these glitches will need to know what all you have installed...What OS are you using too.

[MikeWalker]

Thanks, good idea, I will elaborate:

I have 512MB DDR, I am using WIN 98 OS, I have a 17 inch monitor, 40GB 7200 Rpm IBM Hard Disk, 12x DVD rom, probably not relevant but nevertheless, 580 watt speakers. Thats the most detail I can think of, off the top of my head anyway, if someone can help, but they need more detail, please ask, cheers!

[SPEEDO]

Welcome to sysopt.

Have you tried changing the resolution manually to what the game requires?
And do you have the latest version of directx installed?

SPEEDO

[MikeWalker]

When first playing a game it would do that anyway, as my desktop is set to 800x600, and the game is often defaulty different. Even after configuring settings in the games to the same (800x600) or higher, eg because it is a 17" 1280x1024 it still clicks to change res, and brings up this error, it is very weeird!

Also, at first I did not have DirectX on, as it was just WIN98, but the games installed DirectX 7, and I have later upgraded to 8, but the problems remain. I was thinking maybe if I could completely uninstall DirectX, then put 8 on, it may work, as at the moment it is really using the games version, but with 8 over the top. However it won't seem to let me uninstall! Thanks for your help, I will have another go at changing the resolutions.

[MikeWalker]

When first playing a game it would do that anyway, as my desktop is set to 800x600, and the game is often defaulty different. Even after configuring settings in the games to the same (800x600) or higher, eg because it is a 17" 1280x1024 it still clicks to change res, and brings up this error, it is very weeird!

Also, at first I did not have DirectX on, as it was just WIN98, but the games installed DirectX 7, and I have later upgraded to 8, but the problems remain. I was thinking maybe if I could completely uninstall DirectX, then put 8 on, it may work, as at the moment it is really using the games version, but with 8 over the top. However it won't seem to let me uninstall! Thanks for your help, I will have another go at changing the resolutions.

[SPEEDO]

I don't think that you can uninstall directx!

If you go to the motherboards section there are a few other people having similar problems!

SPEEDO

[This message has been edited by SPEEDO (edited 09-06-2001).]

[pudgemaster[FLEX]]

Hey:

I had a similar problem with UT on a very similar system. Make sure you are using the newest GeForce drivers from Nvidia. Also, (I've never heard of your monitor so I don't know how old it is) try running the games in lower resolutions with lower detail and try to pinpoint where it stops working. Also, make sure your running 4x AGP with at least a 32 MB aperature in the BIOS.

As for your sound problem, my guess is that the problem lies within the integrated sound. I picked up a SB Live Value card and that fixed everything with the sound problems. (Just make sure to disable the the onboard one in the BIOS if you do pick up a new card.) While I can't say exactly what causes the "sound outage," my guess is a new soundcard will work for you.

I hope I helped.

[MikeWalker]

Oh dear!

Oh well, I was thinking of reinstalling Windows anyway, I now have Win ME, which I was thinking of installing instead of 98, but a few people have told me ME is rubbish for games, and if anything to get 2000, as it is a lot better. What do you think?

Cheers, Mike.

[Bovon]

Mike, I am not a gamer, but before you upgrade to Win2K, be sure to check out which games will or will not run under this platform. Win2K is built with NT technology, which is different from the Win9x platforms, and many Win9x applications will not run under Win2K. Just a heads up there in case you didn't know.

[deanomanuk]

As for the sound problem can be caused by installing an older version of direct X over a newer one.

Video resources are being cut back during game play to free up processing.

Start-Run type msconfig, and untick unnescesary programmes running in background under startup tab, word Excell etc.

Start-programmes, right click unticked programmes and create shortcuts to desk top, if it works leave it like that.

[ChanslerBei]

Here's a pretty good site for finding NT/2000 compatibility.
http://www.ntcompatible.com

[MikeWalker]

:D Just thought I oughta let you guys know I have now solved the problem! Thanks for your help.

What I did in the end is completely remove windows from my system, to ensure all traces of direct x were rid of. Then installed Winodws ME, n Direct X 8, and everything is working fine. Just aslong as I don't let games install previous versions of Direct X over 8. (Touch Wood)

I did however still have the old sound problem with that game called Deus Ex by Eidos, but I solved that by selecting Game compatible device, in the list of compatible drivers for my soundcard in Multimedia in COntrol Panel, n that seemed to have done the trick!!!

Thanks again, Mike.