stuttering and a grey vertical line crash - 4890

[samus_2010]

as the title says this game is running quite bad, seem to be more bad running games on my graphics card than good lately...

 

anyway yeh i get into the game at first and there is quite a bit of stuttering, it seems like spikes, and every so often the camera will spin in another direction.. first mission after i entered the large lobby downstairs from the room you start in, it crashes with grey vertical lines, i try control alt delete and nothing, it just makes the screen go black instead, 10 seconds later i hear some gun shots.. and then after that ofc i hard reset my pc

 

i turned most of the advanced settings to low/off and put it to 1024x768, this is the setting it had crashed on as i had originally put the settings down to stop the stuttering which obviously didnt work >_>

 

i would appreciate it if i could get real help instead of the "overheat/driver" fanatics, i know for a fact it is neither of these

[Deadly_Nightshade]

What are your specs?

[samus_2010]

What are your specs?

 

e7400

hd4890

2x2gb 1066

 

nothing overclocked..

[The Guildmaster]

Hi Samus,

 

A couple things to try:

 

- If you don't already have them, try updating to the latest ATI drivers. You can download them from www.ati.com.

 

- I know you mentioned the issue about overheating, but as it's described, it does has similarities to what happens when a computer isn't ventilated enough, a fan has seized up, etc. You might pop off the hood of the case while it's running and see if any fans aren't working, or if there's a lot of dust in there.

 

- Turn off anything else on your computer that may be running. IM clients, anti-virus software (at your own risk ), e-mail programs, browsers (especially browsers when they have multiple tabs open - they chew up a lot of memory from your computer) and anything else you can shutdown. Look at your task tray and hover over the icons there to see if any of them are unnecessary while playing games.

 

- Do you notice if your computer's hard drive light is pretty much solid when playing? That will definitely cause chunkiness because it usually means that the game isn't getting enough memory so it is swapping to the hard drive.

[samus_2010]

Hi Samus,

 

A couple things to try:

 

- If you don't already have them, try updating to the latest ATI drivers. You can download them from www.ati.com.

 

- I know you mentioned the issue about overheating, but as it's described, it does has similarities to what happens when a computer isn't ventilated enough, a fan has seized up, etc. You might pop off the hood of the case while it's running and see if any fans aren't working, or if there's a lot of dust in there.

 

- Turn off anything else on your computer that may be running. IM clients, anti-virus software (at your own risk ), e-mail programs, browsers (especially browsers when they have multiple tabs open - they chew up a lot of memory from your computer) and anything else you can shutdown. Look at your task tray and hover over the icons there to see if any of them are unnecessary while playing games.

 

- Do you notice if your computer's hard drive light is pretty much solid when playing? That will definitely cause chunkiness because it usually means that the game isn't getting enough memory so it is swapping to the hard drive.

 

im running vista home basic 64 bit.. and im not turning off any programs that i feel are essential to my computer remaining "ok", especially anti virus, i know it has helped with some random cases in the past but im sure that this time this very distinct lockup is not caused by rogue software, i do already have the newest ati drivers, they never help, and im always running with the side of the case off, had recently cleaned out the dust a few weeks ago and re applied AS5 on cpu, and as for the hard drive light.. well sure, there is a LOT of loading in this game, as a lot of people have reported the stuttering, i did get it to stop a little by using the smooth frame thing but i still ended up crashing eventually..

 

just one more thing i could never quite rule out.. northbridge.. could that ever cause this crash if it was overheating or something?

[darrenecm]

Hi Samus,

 

A couple things to try:

 

- If you don't already have them, try updating to the latest ATI drivers. You can download them from www.ati.com.

 

- I know you mentioned the issue about overheating, but as it's described, it does has similarities to what happens when a computer isn't ventilated enough, a fan has seized up, etc. You might pop off the hood of the case while it's running and see if any fans aren't working, or if there's a lot of dust in there.

 

- Turn off anything else on your computer that may be running. IM clients, anti-virus software (at your own risk ), e-mail programs, browsers (especially browsers when they have multiple tabs open - they chew up a lot of memory from your computer) and anything else you can shutdown. Look at your task tray and hover over the icons there to see if any of them are unnecessary while playing games.

 

- Do you notice if your computer's hard drive light is pretty much solid when playing? That will definitely cause chunkiness because it usually means that the game isn't getting enough memory so it is swapping to the hard drive.

 

Another thing you can try once your PC has been running Alpha Protocl for a while is to quickly reset your PC and enter the BIOS. If you're unfamiliar with BIOS then it's probably best to not try this as you can mess up your PC if you change anything in there. It may also just be your gFX card overheating, though I'm unsure how you can check its temperature.

 

Most BIOS menus these days have a Hardware section that allows you to check the temperature of such things as the mainboard and CPU. Check the figures here. Anything over 90 degrees for CPU hints at a cooling issue and as Guildmaster suggests, you may need to at least clean the intake and exhaust grills of your PC case, or even open up the case to check for dust on the CPU fan and, if you are comfortable opening up your case, clean that.

Edited May 30, 2010 by darrenecm

[samus_2010]

Hi Samus,

 

A couple things to try:

 

- If you don't already have them, try updating to the latest ATI drivers. You can download them from www.ati.com.

 

- I know you mentioned the issue about overheating, but as it's described, it does has similarities to what happens when a computer isn't ventilated enough, a fan has seized up, etc. You might pop off the hood of the case while it's running and see if any fans aren't working, or if there's a lot of dust in there.

 

- Turn off anything else on your computer that may be running. IM clients, anti-virus software (at your own risk ), e-mail programs, browsers (especially browsers when they have multiple tabs open - they chew up a lot of memory from your computer) and anything else you can shutdown. Look at your task tray and hover over the icons there to see if any of them are unnecessary while playing games.

 

- Do you notice if your computer's hard drive light is pretty much solid when playing? That will definitely cause chunkiness because it usually means that the game isn't getting enough memory so it is swapping to the hard drive.

 

Another thing you can try once your PC has been running Alpha Protocl for a while is to quickly reset your PC and enter the BIOS. If you're unfamiliar with BIOS then it's probably best to not try this as you can mess up your PC if you change anything in there. It may also just be your gFX card overheating, though I'm unsure how you can check its temperature.

 

Most BIOS menus these days have a Hardware section that allows you to check the temperature of such things as the mainboard and CPU. Check the figures here. Anything over 90 degrees for CPU hints at a cooling issue and as Guildmaster suggests, you may need to at least clean the intake and exhaust grills of your PC case, or even open up the case to check for dust on the CPU fan and, if you are comfortable opening up your case, clean that.

 

as ive already said.. my pc is quite clean.. and i just asked if the northbridge could ever cause this crash by overheating, so please stick to the topic at hand

[Citats]

I've been having the same issue.. have also been having it with BFBC2.

 

Things I've tried so far.

 

Updated drivers

Uninstalled Physicx

Changed resolutions

Tried fullscreen and windowed

 

But still every time I start up I can play for about a minute maybe two before it will graphics crash and need a hard reset. This happens in menu or in-game.

 

Some people think it's because the game isn't running/detecting the right Directx version.. as that was there fix for BFBC2 but I have yet to confirm that.. will do so momentarily.

 

EDIT: Okay yes that issue fixed my crashing for BFBC2 but they don't seem to have a directx version setting in the ini files for Alpha Protocol.. so hopefully Obsidian will fix this or some other fix comes out asap.

Edited June 1, 2010 by Citats