PC crashes when leaving/ switching from games

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m1ck97

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Feb 5, 2005
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Hey, I'm new to this forum, I have a problem with my pc and was told to ask here. I'm not too sure what section to stick this post in as its game and hardware related!

This has happened to multiple games including americasarmy, half life 2 and battlefield but has seemed to have stopped on all but my americas army game.

I have recently upgraded my pc from a AMD athlon XP 2000+, GF4 MX440, 1gig DDR 2700, ASRock K7VM4.

To a AMD 64 3200, Nvidia 6600GT, 512mb 3200, Abit KV8 Pro.

I just swapped my old 160gig hard drive to my new setup, and updated all the drivers. But when I try and play americasarmy and either switch back to windows (alt, tab out of game) and then alt tab back into game, my computer restarts. This also happens when I quit the game. This problem also occured to my half life 2 game, but since then it hasnt happened again.

What could be causing the problem? and why? any advice given would be gratefully accepted :)

Thanks in advance Mike
 
This is a known issue with AMD 64 systems and the Unreal engine. It is related to Data Execution Prevention, (DEP) which is built in to service pack 2. You have to disable it via the ini file. Check google for instructions.
 
Did you install your motherboard chipset drivers? What PSU do you have?

Also, does it only restart when you exit the game, or will it restart in the middle of the game sometimes?
 
yeah all my mobo drivers are installed! It only restarts when leaving the game or switching back to windows half way through playing!
 
Couple of things to think about.

You didn't mention whether or not you reinstalled Windows, you just said updated drivers. Anytime that you change a mobo it's always recommended that you do a full format and reinstall (there are things that you can do to prevent this so, if you have done so, please disregard). This will take care of any lingering drivers / software conflicts that may be lurking around.

Make sure that you have chipset drivers updated. Make sure that the old chipset drivers were completely uninstalled before the new ones were installed.

Likewise for the video drivers. Make sure that the old ones were completely removed before installing new Dets. Play around with Det versions as well. Maybe the new ones aren't happy with your current setup, try some older ones. Alternatively, maybe try the latest version if you don't already have them.

Fully reinstall DirectX. Especially if you have done a mobo upgrade. And then, for the hell of it, run all the fun little tests that dxdiag has in it.

Some games don't like to alt-tab.

Perhaps reinstall AA and see if that helps.

It sounds to me like the game is having problem returning control of the video card to Windows. But it could also be sound related, etc. Short of all of this is you're going to have to do some playing around, probably with everything, to track it down.
 
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=182&st=20

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/archive/index.php/t-40407.html

You are not disabling DEP the proper way. You HAVE to disable via the boot.ini, NOT BY CHANGING THE PROPERTIES. I GUARANTEE you the problem is solved once you figure out the proper method to disable DEP.


A possible workaround is :

In the boot.ini file (hidden
in the root of your boot drive) you can remove the "/noexecute"
switch from your boot options. This will disable DEP completely
 
EDIT: ok... so i managed to edit my boot.ini, but instead of restarting i now get the following error.

Code: 
A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

Blah blah blah (if this error has not happened before check hardware is fitted etc)

Technical information
***Stop: 0X000000 (0X9D082240, 0X0000002, 0X0000000, 0X805IEC1C)
 
Instead of deleting the file, make sure the noexecute looks like mine:
clipboard010qb.jpg
 
i had the exact same problem and finally fixed it today :) my problem was just with lineage 2 but im sure my fix will work for you. go into safe mode (can do by msconfig in run and then go to boot.ini and select the safemode check) delete your video driver in safe mode and reboot. get the omega drivers 1.6177 at http://www.omegadrivers.net/ simply go to nvidia gf at top of page select os and d/l. Run those, reboot and you should be good :)
I tried 5 different sets of drivers to fix mine and the omega driver was the only one that worked
sorry if this post seems too specific in telling you to do certain things... wasnt sure how much computer knowledge you have since you said you are new to the forums
 
Thanks for your reply - I formatted my computer yesterday only to find i had the same problem. I'll try that omega driver tonight and give you the results.
 
yeah, definately post your results. i had never had a problem like that until switching from ati to nvidia with this game
 
I'd recommend against the omega drivers for Nvidia....while they certainly work, I've found that the official drivers from Nvidia are able to accurately detect the video card that you have, and are more optimized for newer video cards than the omegas are.
 
I tried the omega driver and the boot.ini again but once again i had no luck. So i decided to install the 64bit version of windows XP and installed the 64bit graphics driver. This seems to work :D Thank you all for your help!!
 
Well i found that this 64bit version had alot of incompatablitie problems... so i resinstalled my 32bit version again and managed to fix my problem...

As you said I needed to change my boot.ini but instead of changing it to /NoExecute=OptIn or /NoExecute=OptOut
I needed to change it to: /NoExecute=alwaysoff
so it now looks like this:
Code: 
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=alwaysoff
 
yeah... thanks for your help, without you guys i'd still be ripping out my hair ;)
 
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