Vista - Varius games crashing--Need help please

Every time I play a game (in this case, Left 4 Dead, Fallout 3) it always ends up crashing. It either just exits out of the program by itself, or the game freezes up. This is getting extremely frustrating, as my computer SHOULD be able to play these games without much trouble.

I am running Vista Home Premium 32bit, and my computer model/hardware: Gateway GM5626 with Intel Pentium Dual-Core Processor E2180, 500GB hard drive, 3 GB DDR2 Dual-Channel Memory, and a Nvidia GeForce 8500 GT Video Card.

P.S. I also put the games in their lowest settings possible, and they still did this. If anyone knows how to fix this, I would love you forever.

Hi LordKagen,

The firsr thing you need to do is check to see if you have the latest video drivers for your card. Also note that you don't exactly have a performance video card there. Depending on the resolution you're playing at, you may not be able to get much out of the card. So keep that in mind.

At any rate, like I said before, check to see if you have the latest video card drivers for your card.

Yeah re-installing the proper drivers was one of the first things I did.

Umm....any recommendations for a new card then?

I'm an ATI man...so 4850, great price to performance ratio. Great card

Newegg.com - 4850

Alright, I'll consider that.


However, my friend has a worse card than me, and still can run the game on the lowest settings without it crashing. Just about everything he has is way worse than what my computer is equipped with. The only difference--he has XP. So I think it may be more than just my card....=/

Is there anything I should do with my settings before playing games? (besides turning off UAC, I already did that.)

Hey LordKagen.

I don't think it is anything to do with your card, or updating it, your card is decent enough to play those games without issues.

I see you are using 32 Bit Vista. Vista gets involved in DMM (Direct Memory Mapping) a lot more than XP does.

You can try a couple of things though:

1) Run the Game using Admin Privilages.
2) Disable DEP - go to your boot.ini and Replace the text that says /NoExecute=OptIn
to --> /NoExecute=AlwaysOff, unless you have an Intel Chip in which case you have to Disable it in the CPU configuration.
3) Try these two updates from Microsoft:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=938194
How to improve the performance and reliability of Windows Vista if you cannot upgrade to Windows Vista Service Pack 1

Thanks so much guys, but none of this is working. The things won't install, or they don't help.

God, I wish I had XP.

Hi Lord,

Depending on your card, try the update links as follows:

Nvidia
Drivers - Download NVIDIA Drivers

Amd
Graphics Drivers & Software

DirectX Runtimes
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

I have the latest updates to my drivers, but thanks man. I'll reinstall them and see if it helps.

No Worries.

let me know buddy