Games won't play

Hi everyone,

Lets see just how good you are, as the overclockers forum couldn't solve this.

I have a pc, i7, 6gb 1333 ram, 1gb ati 5770 vapor x. previously I had an Nvidia 8800gtx 768mb.

I have removed all of the nvidia stuff by uninstalling it and trawling through the registry as I had a .dll file that was giving be grief.

I have even removed phsyx as apparently it is / is not compatible with ATI.

Now, i can work on my pc all day, write letters, do assignments, work in flash for websites, browse the net and email, but as soon as i play any games they just will not let me play.

Even the simplest and less resource hungry game going will not play.

What happens is this: use pc most of the day, and it does not matter if i reboot or not, go to run the game. it makes like it is going to play, then drops back to the desktop with the game running in the background and cpu usgae 100% on I assume 1 core.

If i shut the game down via task manager - cpu usage is normal.

I have run a virus scan and spybot - no problems there.

Any ideas - oh masterful gurus?

 

Well it sounds like you know about removing old drivers so lets just assume thats not the issue right now.....Do you have another graphics card you can pop in there (not nvidia obviously) and see if that is the issue? or another computer you can try that card on? I would see if its a hardware issue like that. Also, just try reinstalling the latest catalyst drivers from ati's website.

http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx

 

No I don't have a spare pc or access to another pc or another card.

I have the latest drivers from ATI - I am trying the beta versions as the 10.2 had the same problem.

As I said - I can fire the pc up and write you this email no problems.

 

What OS are you using?

What games are you trying to run?

"Trawling" through the registry can pose more problems than benefits, I have an ATI4850 and the PhysX stuff doesn't seem to pose a problem.

The "official" ATI 10.3 Driver is out now, choose your OS:

http://www.amd.com/uk/Pages/AMDHomePage.aspx

The modern drivers overwrite and remove the older drivers. No need to go registry scrubbing anymore.

If and when I want to remove older drivers (like in your example from nVidia to ATI) is just use CCleaner. I have used that for 3-4 years without a problem, including the "safe" reg cleaner.

 

running a tool like driver sweeper will help remove all remnants of nvidia drivers.
I would remove all ati drivers as well, and install the new ones.
These are the steps i would take:
1 Run driver sweeper and remove nvidia and ati video drivers (watch out for nvidia chipset drivers, if your chipset is nvidia)
2 reboot, run the sweeper again (cant hurt to make sure theyre all gone)
3 reboot, install new ati drivers.

when all is said and done, it would help to run ccleaner's reg cleaner.

I do these steps even when just updating video driver versions.

 

1. Vista Ultimate 64bit

2. Games: ut3, crysis, nfs undercover, bejewled 2, dungeon siege, fallout 3, etc

I have the official 10.3 driver.

 

done that in that order.

 

Right.

I have uninstalled the ati drivers, i have run driver sweeper twice to make sure all ati software is uninstalled and then run ccleaner 3 times for the same reason.

I have installed the very latest ati catalyst package and phsyx

I still have the same problem. Come back Nvidia all is forgiven.

 

thesmokingun makes an interesting comment have you updated the mobo "chipset" drivers. I have seen others "inadvertently" remove the video chipset drivers and end up in a messy place. Moreover have you checked "Device Manager" and or Windows updates to see if there is a "component" driver missing.