Vista - bioshock problems

Hi,
I have a new pc that I purchased after getting specially built as a games
machine.
Since it arriving Ive had nothing but trouble running games. FTS seem to
give me the most problems. I know that Vista doesnt supposedly like DOOM 3
and Quake( it wouldnt even acknowledge the dvd after installing Quake) but
other games like prey and now bioshock are crashing.
What happens is, as im playing the game, and this happens on each game in
the same way, so its not the games as such, they freeze after maybe a few
minutes or half an hour depending on the game, and then the screen goes blank
leaving me no option but to reboot and then get the option to go into safety
mode if I want.
Prey is intolerant and gives me blue screen in a window. Doom3 lets me play
for a while when I make it windows xp compatible and run it as an
administrator which I do for most games.
Company of heroes runs fine but did crash once. Also on the later levels of
command and conquer3, 'that' crashes when the action and amount of vehicles
and buildings on screen got cluttered, but not when I play the earlier levels
with less activity on screen. My specs should handle the demands im placing
on it. PES 6 goes for a while, but will grash eventually.
Most disappointingly of all, after paying £30 for bioshock and it needing my
pcs specs to run, it only lasts about a minute before it goes wrong aswell.
This was soooo disappointing as I thought that a Vista ready game would be
fine......
Ive read lots of theories on the subject of vista and nvidia compatibility,
but a friend of mine has pretty much the same specs on his machine, including
Vista and prey runs fine.
Ive tried taking away the latest security updates I receive online as that
seemed to make things worse when I installed them.
My specs are:
athlon 64 x 2 dual core processor 3800+2.16 ghz
2 GB of ram memory
nvidia geforce 8800 gts 640 mg graphics card
MS Vista 32 bit
hard drives 160gb +80gb on other
Can someone come up with any solutions as Im at my wits end. Ive always
preferred the pc to the consoles as Ive always felt that it was a better
platform, but xbox bioshock never does this to its customers as it would die
a death in no time.
Ill try anything. Im even thinking of having Xp installed on my other hard
drive as I don't think my OS and Nvidia card like each other....

for one i would increase the memory snf then the processor

as a games machine that spells bottle neck
you can get a 5600+ processor now for under £100 inc delivery (in the uk
anyway)
no point in compromising that graphics card

my specs are
am2 5600+ x2
4gb xms2 ddr
2x8600gt sli
and play all games comfortably

FXT
www.vistareadygames.com

Sorry to hear you are having troubles. I think you may want to talk to the
guys who made it, or check through it looking for all the cr*p usually
loaded into systems.

I wanted you to know that Doom 3 and Quake 4 work just fine under
Vista-32bit and even register themselves in the games-explorer. I don't need
to run them as admin at all. I have heard there were early problems with
display drivers and getting the OpenGL to work but I have a Radeon X1900 and
have had no problems - and fast framerates though I usually play at 1024x768
(my system has a 4.4 Windows Score). I am having trouble with 3d sound as I
have a soundblaster audigy and they currently don't support EAX/3d sound via
the way id games work (other games work fine). The 8800 is a good card, you
should be getting decent framerates in the games.

Another thing to check for is if your CPU is being eaten up by processes.
Start the task manager (right click on menu bar) and select the processes
tab, if you have just the desktop running (nothing much going on) you should
see about 5-7% utilization. If its more than that, check the list to see
whats eating your computer. I ran into a situation where the indexer was
pegging my cpu at 100% all the time and my gaming was suffering for it.

Hope that helps!
Mark

Have you tried the latest Nvidia Beta drivers (September 10, 2007)?

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x86_163.67.html

They state "Improved compatibility for Bioshock" in the Release Highlights.

Also install this hotfix, if you have not done so already (it is not an
update available on Windows Update, so you will have to manually download
and run the installer).

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940105

According to Nvidia, at least, the above hotfix "resolves abnormal
application behavior such as crashes and extremely low frame rates when
running some 3D applications at very high graphics settings". Nvidia also
recommends the compatibility updates, received through Windows Update:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/windows..._hotfixes.html

"illustrator" <illustrator@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:639E32FA-B422-4D96-8DF6-D85FF6218E78@xxxxxx

"Foxy T aka Mrs Dodgy" <fxt@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:e0MFkSg9HHA.1416@xxxxxxNice post there Foxy, you realize you managed to post nothing of use to this
guy, no suggestions to fix his problem, only that he may be suffering from
"bottleneck". This isn't a hardware forum, it's a gaming forum, he's asking
why his game is crashing, if you feel faster ram or a faster CPU is going to
fix his crashing problem... well lets just say I don't think that will fix
his problem, but if you do maybe you care to elaborate?

You could at least tell him that while this may slow down the game a little
it shouldn't cause it to crash and he should probably make sure his drivers
for the motherboard, video card, and sound card are up to date. Try running
the game as an admin (though I've never had to do that with Bioshock), and
try killing background applications that you're not using before starting
the game.

I've played Quake 1 through 4, Doom 1 through 3, and Prey amongst several
other FPS (Source games), and never really gotten any crashes.

Could be software, if you're overclocking your CPU or video card, turn that
**** off for testing, see if that helps.

Good luck,
A.

"dean-dean" <dean-dean@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:29525562-4E88-4929-9E28-DFB2A11AF7B9@xxxxxxDean, I tried that last night, not sure if it fixed anything, but Bioshock
did seem a little smoother. Can't think of any game off hand that run or
have stopped crashing, but good advice none the less.

Thanks,
A.

Thanks for reply,

Ive got all updated drivers you suggested so I took off other apps like real
player and divx threw away all my trash and uninstalled some games I dont
play now. Then I played it on directx 9 and since then it gives me best part
of an hour b4 crashing, which is something. Dont know what Mrs Dodgy means by
'bottlenecking'(?)

"Andy [YaYa]" wrote:

"illustrator" <illustrator@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:6248E480-ABEA-4023-B8A2-4B9EC42FF652@xxxxxxHe means that your Video card will run faster if you have a faster CPU, or
your CPU could run faster if your RAM was faster.

Basically he is saying, that in HIS opinion, if you spent more money on some
part of your system you'll get more speed. Basically all computers have a
bottleneck, your CPU might be slower than what your video card or ram can
handle, or your video card is too slow for your CPU, etc.

The slowest component of your computer is called the "Bottleneck" (BTW, the
hard drive is usually the slowest component in your system next to your
CD/DVD drive) it's what hardware nuts tell you is wrong with your system
expecting you to be able to afford to through another $1000 into your system
for an extra 2-3fps. Upgrading your hardware may not fix your crashing
problems though, but it might if you have faulty hardware. Might run a test
program like MEMTEST86, PC-Check, or whatever.