Whole computer fried

[karsekov]

ok, im not sure if there is any coming back from this one:

Ive been lurking in the shadows for this game for nine months and have been just as disappointed with every delay as anyone. I told myself that i'd get the retail version but i cracked last night and got the DD. I installed it, started playing it for 2 mins and was browsing through the troop equip screen when the game crashed and all of a sudden the comp was restarting. i thought "that was weird", then started the game again and got to the menu, then the monitor went black and said "no input detected" all the plugs were intact, the sound for the game was still on but no response to the monitor.

I was forced to manually turn off the comp. Upon starting again while the comp loads up with those command lines etc before the indows logo appears, its just nothing but solid block of the letter "a" with the French accent acute ontop all across and down the screen. then theres other jibberish, none of which is english. I recognise a few characters such as the mathematical signal "summation" but thats it. When windows does load up its in safe mode with no way to change.

Im running XP SP2 on a pentium 4 3.0ghz 1.25GB ram GEforce 6600 and all the latest drivers. I Have tried restoring to a previous checkpoint but that hasnt helped. Do i have any options other than to completely reformat? because i so dearly do NOT want to have to reformat.

[Erik Rutins]

I'd be extremely surprised if the game actually caused the computer to restart. That sounds more like a hardware issue that may have been triggered while the game was running. Do you play many other games that stress your hardware at all? I'd be concerned about heat issues and power issues primarily, either motherboard/CPU or video card level, given that you experenced a spontaneous reboot followed by this sort of behavior.

Unfortunately, hardware does fail and it can happen at any time without a direct causal relationship.

The first thing I'd do is open the system up and see if all the fans are working and if anything seems unusually hot while running if this happened to me.

[karsekov]

ok, id only just turned the comp on when this had happened and it had been off for several hours prior. i have since left it off and just turned it on now to find the problem has corrected itself in the fact that windows has returned to normal, however ingame the screen "flickers". It did this maybe twice before it crashed the first time, but now it is constantly happening. Just an outlined black box maybe half the size of the screen appears and the image "shudders" inside that box before it goes back to normal, it is happening for fractions of a second a few times per second. I have tried turning AA off as seems to be a bit of a cure-all for others, but to no effect.

[karsekov]

all the fans are working fine, nothing seems to be heating up so i decided to give it a go. The screen was flickering a few times, then all of a sudden the game "tabbed out". it became a black box about the size of the reduced windowed internet explorer and was only black. It wouldnt let anything superficially replace it either as in it was always ontop and it wouldnt let me exit either.

[PhoenixD]

Crashes CAN make the computer restart- Windows XP tries to hide its Blue Screen of Death by having the computer auto-restart when one is triggered. Everything else that happened probably isn't related to ET.

[karsekov]

and the non-responsive box that appears and wont let me play for more than 2 mins?

[karsekov]

ok, as you can imagine this is making me quite irate, the issue from my first post has now recurred and has "infected" other games on my cpu. As to whether it is UFO or hardware thats the issue i think it to be quite the coincidence that i have had no problems with my cpu until i installed and played UFO ET for the first time.

[Marc von Martial]

This might very well be simply just a bad coincidence. Could you please post a DirectX dialog file. I would like to check your hardware.

Fans running does not mean that your computer gets enough "fresh air". What you describe seriously sounds like a voltage issue or a problem with overheating. Over heating can be caused by such simply things as dust. Dust on RAM, CPU fan, motherboard etc.

I would even more say it is caused by overheating since you say that after some time the computer boots up normal.

[piperone]

karsekov,
 
This sounds like you've fried your video card.  I had an ATI 9800pro exhibit the same behaviour as your machine.  I mucked with drivers, tried to make sure dx9 was really dx9c, etc.  Came to the conclusion that it was on it's last legs.  After replacing the video card with some other card everything was fine.
 
I have a 6800 in another machine.  BFGTech.  It wasn't 3 months old when it simply decided to die.  No warnings, just turned it on one day and it was toast.  Luckily, BFGTech replaced it for free and have been running it ever since.  However, I can tell you that the 6800 runs HOT and if it gets too hot you'll get interesting results.  Such as flickering, snow, DTD or just plain lock up.  Rather than invest in a new case with better cooling I run with the side of the case off and a house fan blowing on the GPU.  You can monitor your GPU temp with the driver software and set thresholds.
 
It could also be your mem, but my guess is it's your GPU.  I have had all sorts of weird coincedences happen to me with my computers.  I think you hit one with the game.  I dont' have the game BTW.
 
dh

[MartNick]

No input detected, implies its a video problem. Are your drivers up to date? Although older more stable drivers may solve it also. I had to go back several versions of NVIDIA drivers to get one of my games to run.

Also what sort of monitor are you using, flatscreen? Your monitor refresh rate may need adjusting as LCD flatcreens usually run at 60MHZ. Maybe update your monitor file needs updating, don't just use the old Microsoft plug and play driver, your monitor manufacturer will have its own files as well.

Good luck, hope this helps.

[ghostryder]

Being a hardware tech- I also say your vid card has overheated. The game simply pushed it over the edge.
 
The 6000 series of Nvidea cards suffer from poor engineering. The mounts are the culprit- and the termo-compound seal cracks with even the slightest handling. Every card I've seen except those manufactured by BFG have shown signs of this right out of the box. - Your need a new card and I'd advise to stay away from any 6000 series, especially the 6800- I have crates of dead ones here.
 
for low and Midrange price points i favor ATI as they give more bang for the buck in that price point-and are engineered far better in this regard- at the upper end Nvidea holds the crown- and also if you plan to game on Linux Nvidea again is a better choice as thier drivers are open source and easier to get going in that OS.

[evilferretvictim]

Your card obviously overheated and may have literally fried itself. For some reason UFO:ET makes my laptop GPU run pretty damn hot.