New Puter, Games crashing!

[Acehi69]

I just built a new system for a friend;

AMD Athlon XP 1700+
ABIT KR7A
256 Mb PC2100
Leadtek GF3 Ti 200 128Mb
SBLive 5.1
WD 60 Gb HD
Running 98SE

Here's the problem, while playing games;
Ghost Recon, NHL 2002, RTCW
the game will crash and kick back out to windows. My first answer to this was new drivers for everything. So after downloading and installing drivers, it still kicks out after 5 or 10 minutes of gameplay.
What could this be?
Should I reload everything and install DX 8.0 instead of 8.1?
Could I be having a RAM problem? ( New System, Bad RAM?? )
Any insights would be helpful
:confused: :confused:

[Ammok]

I always suspect heat on the vid card when this happens. Or overclocking it, which again produces heat.

Try one, remove all overclocking on mobo and card

try two, get more cooling into the case by whatever means is available. I know I get laughed at, but when i had this problem, i took the sides off my case and pushed my ten inch desk fan in at full rpm. Then I played a game, no crashes. Switch it off, crashes so prob was heat. I had to undo the overclocking on the card to get it to run properly.

If you eliminate heat as a problem, then you can concentrate on the other issues.

[Acehi69]

It's not overclocked at all. Right out of the box. We used a RAM tester program that said "bad address at xxxxxx". I contacted MWave about getting a replacement, now I have to send it back to them and let them test it before they'll give me another.:confused:

[dawgtuff]

Try disabling or lowering the sound acceleration(control panel/multimedia) and play the game. If this works, you may have a sound or codecs issue.

[Acehi69]

Thanks Dawgtuff,
I tried lowering the sound acceleration and it doesn't kick out to Windows any more. Will this affect anything if I just lowered it 1 notch on the slider control?
Also, he's using Norton system works and it tells him that his DDR ram has a bad address. If I no longer have problems with running games, should I trust Norton and send the RAM back to MWave ......(2 to 3 week turn around YUCK )

[dawgtuff]

If you have 2 sticks of ram, remove one and run Norton. If the bad address doesn't show up, you pulled the right stick. Then try the game without the stick and disable Norton before playing. Also, disable anything that's running in the background except Systray and Explorer.

[Acehi69]

Only one stick of PC2100 256 mb. And getting another RAM over here is really expensive just to see if the one I have now is bad.

[dawgtuff]

Contact Mwave and tell them what Norton is reporting. They'll probably give you an RMA to return the stick. Did you try putting the stick in another slot?

[Acehi69]

I've tried it in all 4 slots. Same error. My dilema is, after I turned down the sound acceleration, everything works. Games run fine. Norton still reports the error. Do I want to do an RMA to MWave and be without a computer for 2 to 3 weeks?

[rpw1871]

Recently had the same problem with an amd athlon, but using a asus mainboard. Games would only play for a few minutes then shut off or even lock up. By adjusting settings we could get more time but the processor would still o\h and eventually lock up the pc. We eventually solved the problem by flashing\updating the bios and changing settings. As for the memory address,,,,,,???/??
I don't remember what setting we had to change, but if you think this sounds similar I can find out.