Vista - Having graphical issues when running certain programs

Hi!
First posteeee. I'm having an issue when i try and run certain applications, tried running the 2 spore prototypes, a couple of online games and also (a little more esoteric here) a piece of software designed for scanning through 3d Xrays! (dads a dentist with some cool tech). In all cases when i try to run them a window opens for the program but theres no graphics inside. I dont mean its like white blank, i mean its just see through to the desktop. If you could give me some advice that would be brilliant, im on all the latest drivers for everything.

Intel Q6600 3.0ghz,
Asus 9800 GX2,
8GB Corsair 800mhz ram,

any other info you need give me a message,

Cheers in advance, Martin

Hi, rawky33A, and welcome to the forums.

Does the machine lock up or anything like that? Have you opened a Task Manager window to see what it going on in terms of the executable process(es)?

hey, nope, no lock up whatsoever, im getting the "particleman*32.exe" file running and being memory hungry but its taking up a smidgen of my 8GB. Have no idea whats causing is, the pc still runs in the background just with a enpty window in the middle. Heres the link to the program, its safe, comes direct from maxis, can someone see how it runs on another x64 machine so i can try to narrow down the problem

chers
martin

p.s also can someone reccommend an x64 compatible usb wireless dongle for me, my belkin one is on the fritz and im wanting to burn it!

Can you please explain that in more detail? First off, I have no idea what particleman is, and second, not really sure what you mean by "memory hungry" but saying it is taking a "smidgen of your 8GB"....

I am not being obtuse on purpose, but before I can suggest a fix I need to know what the problem is exactly....

i understand. sorry for being a bit vague. right, particleman that i was using as an example is one of the prototypes that EA/Maxis developed in order to see how particle physics would evolve in an environment. Its quite a high powered program to run and i would imagine takes up a lot of processor runtime. Therefore i would assume it would be programmed to run on a 64 bit machine (if this assumption is stupid i apologise, im pretty damn good with being a "computer guy" but when it comes down to the technicalities im a bit lax) Anyway i use this program as an example as it is freely avaliable for others to download see the link here.

When i click on the executable for particleman vista opens two windows, these windows are blank, or more precisely see-through, the desktop is clearely visible through both of them. Since my first post i found that if i ctrl-alt-deleted while these windows were up and entered task manager, graphics were displayed in a window but only in screenshot form, i.e there could be no interaction with the program itself, almost as if the program had hung.

This has happened to me with quite a few programs now, GameTap for one but subsequent conversations with their technical support say that the program is not 64bit compatible. I also had a 64 bit compatible free game i had downloaded which experienced the same issue, i cannot remember the name of said game but it was a programmable fighting game, i.e you set the tensions in the muscles before starting the fight and when you clicked start the characters moved as you had programmed them to.

With regards to "memory hungry" i mean that when i look in task manager when particle man is running i see it rapidly using more and more physical memory the longer i let it run for.

I hope this has been helpful, im sorry if again i have left out information but please reply to the thread with any requests and i'll write back ASAP

Thanks again

Do the forums report any memory leaks with particleman? If, "more and more" memory is being used, then that suggests a leak.