system crashing during first person shooters - Video card?

[fleavis]

My system crashes when I run first person shooters.

The screen will freeze up and wavey lines will appear on it, and occasionally I will hear a high wheezing sound. Does this mean my video card is fried or is there some other way I might fix this problem?

Thanks so much for any advice you guys could give.

[snodogg21]

all i would know to say is check for updated drivers for the card, for the other more knowledgable people on this forum, to help you they are gonna need more details, make of card, motherboard, games that crash etc

[fleavis]

I updated all the drivers. It's a Geforce2 Ultra 64 meg card...

[mrrobotto]

What os are you running and do you get any error message or anything when it crashes. You need to be a little more specific.

[fleavis]

whoops, sorry.

I'm running WinXP Home with 1.2 athlon and 512 ddr ram.

I don't get any error message at all.

i've tried setting the settings on the lowest and matching my desktop resolution to the resolution of CS. it doens't help, although when i played regular halflife i got to play for a minute or two before it crashed sometimes if i matched up the resolutions (although i also got to play a short while when i didn't match up the resolution)

[Magua]

Try opening up the case and pointing a household fan into it, then run the game. Might be overheating.

[BipolarBill]

Uninstall the video and sound drivers completely. Reinstall updated versions.

People completely miss that games produce sounds too - and just as aggressively. I guess we humans are visually oriented, eh?

[fishybawb]

The "wheezy" sound might be a clue here. Open the case and check that the graphics card's fan is still spinning properly - an overheating GPU is likely to cause the display corruption you describe.

[fleavis]

actually the wheezy sound comes from my speakers. but i'm going to uninstall and reinstall the hardware in my computer and see if it helps.

[Magua]

If it comes from the speakers Bills solution will probably do it.

[Cee-W]

Also reinstall DirectX. DirectX and Detonator drivers are funny like that. Some people say install DX 1st and then video drivers, others say video drivers 1st then DX. Good luck, and check your audio drivers also.

[fleavis]

windows XP comes with directx 8.1 and my graphics card doesn't support DX9, so i'm just going to reinstall the graphics/sound card drivers.

[BipolarBill]

I would still install DX9 on the chance that your DX files may be corrupt.

[fleavis]

nope, doesn't work.

i also tried running it in windowed mode but in windowed mode instead of freezing my computer, it just restarts as soon as the level is about to load. =(

[cuelebre]

What game/s are you playing??

Did you check for "patches" from the software company??

Also read any info related in the Txt. files of your CD, sometimes they will give "clues" to what can be the problem.