Hi D-A-L,
Recently I've been having issues playing nearly all games on my pc. The titles I have an issue with include, Final Fantasy XI, Diablo 2, The Elder Scrolls 3:Morrowind, Day of Defeat, and even Civilization 2!!! Once i load these games up it plays for awhile and then crashes to desktop. In the instance of Civ 2 the computer restarts completely. The only game that works is Team Fortress Classic running on Steam. I have the GeForce FX 5200, Athlon XP 2200+ running at 1.8 ghz, and 512mb DDR. Any help you can offer me would be great!
-Jamison

That's too bad Jamison - this could be caused by anything. When and what was the last driver you altered on your PC? Make sure you get hold of some anti virus software and try downloading and using Ad-aware / Spybot just to make sure it's not a virus / bug. Check hard drive space, make sure you have enough room for swap files on your drive - some of those games would work otherwise.

Let us know how you get on.

Argh. That's all I gotta say
I recently formatted(about a week ago) and installed all current drivers. My hard drive has plenty of free space on it and I've run ad-aware and mcafee, yet my problem still exists . Any chance this could be a hardware issue?
-Jamison

I suppose it could be a hardware problem, maybe memory or something but I doubt it. Hardware problems tend to cause lock-ups more. So HL1 works OK using the Steam engine - doesn't DOD also use Steam and yet this game crashes to desktop? Try and think of a connection between the games that are crashing... try changing the Windows resolution a couple of times before starting a game. A lot of those games u mentioned support EAX - do you have an EAX supported sound card?

Oh yeah something else you might want to try is to use the DirectX diagnostic tool just in case something shows up.
Click Start, then Run, then type ""dxdiag" and then use the tabs at the top to move and test each individual option (I think there may even be a "Test All" button you can press to quickly test everything)

I tried running the tests in dxdiag. Everything came out ok. As for the EAX sound card, I use onboard sound off of my mobo. Not sure if that supports it. Any idea how to check? Recently I've been attempting to play Project Entropia(a game that used to run just fine for hours) and it's been either freezing up or causes my whole computer to reboot. I'm planning on buying a whole new machine soon but I'd still like to clear up this problem so I could still use this one. Thanks again.
-Jamison

Sounds like this may be a problem with components overheating. Does your video card have a fan attached and can you check to make sure it's spinning while the computers on...

Ultimaatum

I have the same damn problem. My system is P4 2,8Ghz, 256MB RAM, GeForce FX 5200. This problem could be related with the video card. I have the feeling that my problem started after installing directx 9.0c. Could this be a conflict between GeForce FX 5200 and directx 9.0c ?

please read the posting rules before posting your problem

could you start a new thread of your own and somebody will have a look at it as it is most annoying when you high jack somebody elses thread thanks

have a look at this link for compatability issues with directx 9.0c

http://www.nvidia.com/page/fx_5200.html