[The Keeper]

I have an annoying problem with games;
Whenever I try to launch a game, a black blank screen pops up (quite usual when launching 3D accelerated games) but then game will be minimized and CPU Usage is 100%. Trying to switch game back to full screen has no effect, black blank screen pops up and then minimizes again. Then I have to close game by closing it's process.

This has happened with almost every game, I was playing Bridge Commander a few days ago and it worked normally (I was playing it because it was the first game I found to be working back then) but today I couldn't launch it. Damn it.

What the hell is going on? Now I have just one game that works.

I tried to reinstall detonators, current version is 40.72.
XP is with SP1.

Any help would be appreciated. It is not too long ago when I reformatted my OS partition and my system is working quite fine... I am not too interested in reformatting OS partition again.


Another problem is with desktop icons, just noticed a few days ago that all my desktop icons does have boxes around their labels, although I have "Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop" activated. What the hell? Is something overriding this setting?

I was backupping my stuff from OS partition when I thought of this place, hopefully you can help me.

And I thought I had seen every goddamn problem with XP so far... still it manages to surprise me. But no way I am going back to W98!

[reno]

That is really weird...what kind of system are you running?

[The Keeper]

Hardware cannot be an issue here, since some of the games are working. I've been using same drivers for a while now, I just noticed this issue with most of my games when I was bored and looking for a game I haven't been playing for a while.

*sigh* I guess I am going to reformat my OS partition anyway today or tomorrow...

It has not been even month since I reinstalled my OS... This sucks.

SPECS OF RIG!!! SPECS OF RIG!!! SPECS OF RIG!!!

[The Keeper]

Specs:
WinXP (SP1)
GF3Ti200
640 MB 133MHz RAM
AMD TB 1,2 GHz
MSI K7T Turbo (VIA KT133A)


Latest drivers are in use for every device I have. Except now for GF3, I downgraded detonators to version 30.82, games seems to be working now. But I still have desktop labels problem.

Somehow desktop background list selection only shows bmp's in preview window. Twice I had had a bitmap background under a jpg background, which I had noticed when logging off. <-- Yes, two backgrounds enabled at same time. JPG background on top of a BMP background.

I remember having a similar issue when I had W2k and active desktop was enabled... Any clue?

[The Keeper]

Looks like the gaming problem was not solved after all... it's back. At least occasionally.

And I am out of ideas what may cause this.

Edit: Oh yeah, almost forgot to meantion that re-registering Fax and Picture Viewer's dll solved desktop background's preview window problem, backgrounds now shows up in preview window.

But labels still has boxes around them, even if "Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop" is enabled.

[Kelsenellenelvian]

Try switching to the game thgought the taskmanager and if you have directx 9 that is probably the cause of this problem it was doin the same to me so I would switch using the task manager or even try starting your games in 600/800 resolution. One of these should fix youor problem.

[digitalwanderer]

It might be a longshot, but if your refresh rate is set too high for D3D games it could cause what you've described. (In rare occasions, I'm reaching a bit.)

[The Keeper]

I am not touching DX9 until it is final, so my DX is 8.1.
I haven't had the problem with games for many hours now, it seems to be random after I downgraded detonators. At least it does not happen always as it did with 40.xx.

Refresh rate is 85Hz in 1024x768 which I am using if possible, it has been working fine for many years now.

Today, after one of my games minimized, I tried to maximize it to full screen as I usually try, to my surprise it even worked. That's frst time it worked after this problem appeared. Previously the game was minimized, with CPU usage at 100%.


Two problems which seems to have appeared at same time, my feeling about this is .
It could be possible that they are related...

[bionicdonkey]

try running it in compatability mode

[reno]

Your graphics card could be overheating, because of dust accumulation in your case.

My Geforce runs way hotter with the 40.xx drivers as compared to 29.xx and below, like in "burn your finger when you touch the back of the chip" instead of "really warm back of chip".

I dunno, maybe you just have a strange combination of hardware? (That KT133A chipset can't be helping much)

[The Keeper]

Compatibility mode... games have been working fine previously, this problem is new.

And my hardware has been same for many months now. Believe or not but my MSI K7T Turbo is exceptionally stable and good mobo.

I'll check if my GF3Ti200 is overheating...
In my knowledge if graphics accelerator is overheating, first symptoms are same as in overclocking; artifacts in graphics.
I've been playing two games for many hours and didn't notice any artifacts in graphics, excpept one once but that was rather a bug in the game itself.

[Xploited Titan]

If you wanna look for artifacts use Artifact Tester, some artifacts are almost invisible for the eye....

Otherwise, I can't really help you....

[The Keeper]

Xploited Titan, I know the program. I'll try it sometime.

I just formatted my OS partition and installed XP again.
Desktop label-problem is gone, so that was probably a messed up setting in a registry or something.

I will report back later when I know whether game problem is still present or not.

[reno]

Well, most of the time when my card overheated (in a crappy case before this one) it would just spontaneously reboot my system, temp probes on that poor thing were registering 62C!!

Make sure your case is nice, clean, and free of dust!

[DallasStar]

how much have you been overclocking ?

[The Keeper]

-My case is quite clean of dust right now.
-I don't overclock.

And it seems that the problem with games is gone as well.
At least all my games have been working fine so far.

[reno]

That's the power of Jeebus!

[The Keeper]

Originally posted by reno
That's the power of Jeebus!

What? Format has a name?
Mighty Jeebus can solve all your problems!

Nothing else to report...

[reno]

Jeebus? But I don't even believe in Jeebus!

I love the simpsons

Format is fun, I love having two drives because I can backup to one, format the other, and move all my personal files back! muhahaha!

[The Keeper]

I have sad news.

The problem is not gone at all. My guess is that it is a hardware problem, either it is my monitor or video card. I don't know which because I have no other monitor or video card to test in this rig.

And it is not games alone, one of my game installers launched a trailer which is an exe and a fullscreen application, it got minimized too and I couldn't maximize it.

Reboot seems to fix the problem, usually.

I even installed W2k (formatted OS partition of course) and the problem is with W2k too.

DX diagnostics gives me following message when trying to use D3D test: "You cancelled the test by pressing a key". I guess it's diagnostic's version of minimization problem.

-Overheating/overclocking is not an issue.

-PSU is good enough for my rig.

-I plugged off the fan on my GF3Ti200 for less than a minute when booting my rig, to hear how much the small fan causes noise. This was while booting the rig and and turned the computer off before windows started loading and then plugged fan back on. The card was not even warm yet. I did this some weeks ago, presumably a while before the problem appeared.

-There's been weird sounds from my monitor while it's been on standby mode. It sounds like it get's turned off and on, similar sound happens when monitor returns from standby mode normally. It's been doing this for a month or so.

It's either the monitor or the video card, monitor is now about 4 years old 17". Or then is is a program I install every time when installing an OS, although I don't think so because such programs have not caused any trouble before.

And this "minimization"-problem just suddenly appeared, so I have no clue what may have caused it.

Any suggestions?

[Xploited Titan]

About your monitor: it might be that you forgot to configure ACPI, which might shut down your monitor when going in stand-by modus...........

For the rest: what are the patches you installed, which drivers, which software, etc.???

My computer sucked for some time on software basis, but it seems XP stabilizes itself with some time, I've encountered no more problems ....

[The Keeper]

About your monitor: it might be that you forgot to configure ACPI, which might shut down your monitor when going in stand-by modus...........

Nope, that's not it.

For the rest: what are the patches you installed, which drivers, which software, etc.???

Hmh, that's going to be a big list... But as far as I know, none of the drivers and software I am using now have been causing any problems for me in the past.

-DirectX 8.1 for W2k which I am now using, will install XP back soon
-VIA 4in1 4.43 for my MSI K7T Turbo (VIA KT133A) mobo
-VIA USB 1.10 filter drivers
-Detonator 30.81 for my GF3Ti200
-Latest drivers from Creative and Surround Mixer and AudioHQ from Compaq's latest Audigy/SBLive software package for my Audigy
-Realtek 5.05 drivers for my Realtek network card
-iTouch 2.15 drivers/software for my Logitech Internet Keyboard
-MouseWare 9.75 drivers/software for my Logitech Cordless MouseMan Optical
-Adaptec ASPI v4.71.2 drivers
-PowerChute Personall Edition v.1.2 software for my APC UPS

As for software; Norton Internet Security 2003 and WinRAR 3.0.
Also, I use RefreshForce 1.10 to force 85Hz in games. I have not even launched the program after I installed W2k, so that's not a problem.

My computer sucked for some time on software basis, but it seems XP stabilizes itself with some time, I've encountered no more problems ....

I have had some problems with XP and 2k too, but I always managed to find the problem and solve it. This time I am completely lost. And this problem stays even if I format my OS partition and install XP or even W2k.

----------
As a side rant... What the hell can be wrong if even simple trailer can't run? I mean, I have been watching DVD, avis and mpegs in full screen but this trailer does the same as my games? The trailer is exe though and does not run in windowed mode...

Perhaps the trailer and games will again work after reboot... or not. Who knows...

[Xploited Titan]

I'm sorry, this is beyond my limited knowledge, I can't help you...

Just one advise: don't mess with registry... I mess with it all the time to block the cydoor (spyware part), but as result I had to re-install XP, I think I'm gonna decompile it, maybe I can shut cydoor down forever.......

[The Keeper]

Yes I know messing with system registry is dangerous. But I usually know what I am doing when doing changes to the registry manually. That is not howewer a problem here, as you probably know anyway.

Would be nice if I had a second monitor or video card laying somewhere so I could test it and see if it has any effect to the problem. I am not so lucky though.

By the way, you probably want to try this program to get rid of any spyware: http://www.lavasoftusa.com/

Today I am going to install XP back, this time I will install only necessary drivers and programs. At least this way I can be pretty sure if it is really a driver or software problem. It's good that XP does have pretty good native drivers support...

[The Keeper]

You're not going to believe this...

I think I have found the source of "minimization"-problem...
An update to Norton Internet Security 2003...

Well, I have been using NIS2003 for long time now without any real problems, until this strange problem appeared. Today when installing drivers and softwares one by one and testing dxdiag D3D after each reboot. Then I found out that the problem appeared after I installed and updated NIS2003.

So, now I am using F-Secure AV 5.40 and ZoneAlarm Pro 3.1. So far so good except there are some bugs in ZA, hopefully they will be fixed in the next version...

So, if the problem does not appear again, then NIS2003 was the source of it, or more specifically; an update to NIS which was applied through LiveUpdate.

[Kelsenellenelvian]

The only problem that I have with NIS is in conjunction with windowblinds some of the NIS windows won't fully load it was easy to get around I like nortons too much to just "switch" to a different one.

[The Keeper]

I haven't ran into any problems since I stopped using Norton Internet Security 2003, which is a good think.

You can only imagine how reliefed I am, it wasn't a hardware problem after all. *knocks wood*

I think the guys over at Norton should test their patches more carefully to make sure they don't cause side effects like this...

[reno]

Fixing your refresh at 85hz isn't good...if a game tries to run and your monitor can't support 85hz at a certain resolution, this EXACT thing will happen to you.

Get refresh force, it sets your refresh rates at the maximum allowable by your monitor, and only needs to be used once, and never runs after that. Could help if the problem comes back.

[gibbon565]

Try taking of SP1 as it caused nothing but problems for me like games crashing etc