Halo & XIII game probs with new PC?

My bro in law recently had a PC built but is having probs playing Halo & XIII?

When he plays either game it goes through the start up screens OK but when it gets to the main menu, the screen goes blank and slightly flickers, if you move the mouse you can hear the options being highlighted on screen but you cant see whats going on?

He also has Call of duty which plays like a dream so does anyone have any idea whats wrong with Halo or XIII? They both work on my PC.

His system specs are:-

Windows XP Pro
Athlon 2.8
Geforce FX5200 256mb DDR Graphics
1 gig memory
2 Sata Raid 80gb Harddisks
Gigabyte motherboard

Cheers Spoon

 

no offense but i cant see how you play COD like a dream with a 5200

Try updating the games if you havn't yet and update the 3d drivers (just released a few days ago) from nvidia.com. Also Halo is EXTREMLY graphics intense so dont expect miracles.

 

hmmm... i have Halo to and it plays just fine on my comp and i have a GF4 4200Ti but for the blank screen i dont know what to say on that cause it has played well with all the drivers that i have use and updated since it has been out...... and all my settings are set to max with nps at all

 

I have a 5200 Ultra and halo ran like that for me too. I just reinstalled 3 time and finily got it to work. it is still jumpy though. I am going to upgrade when all the new cards come out.

 

have you tried alt/tab to desk top then alt/tab back to game?

i had a game that was encountering similar problems.
i believe removing sp1 got rid of it.
but doin that keeps u from havin to alt/tab.
but it didnt really bother me.

also another thing it could be it screen resolution being different from in game res.

 

I dont know who makes X111 but there is a video codec problem with Halo and some other microsoft games i encountered this on my sons Zoo Tycoon
heres the link for the codec
http://www.ligos.com/indeo.htm



the other option is turning off intro video should be a setting in the game for this if not you should be able to edit your Halo ini file with notepad in zoo tycoon theres a line saying playmovie=1 change the value to 0 save and exit