Games freezing with scrambled screen

TomB1988 · October 28th, 2009, 05:40 AM

Hi there,

Whenever I attempt to play any Source-Engine based games (Half-life 2, Team fortress 2 etc.) Within a minute of playing (usually instantly) the game freezes with a scrambled screen and a repeated sound playing. Usually it just hangs here so i have to restart manually, but one time it gave me a BCCode of 116.

My GFX Card is a GeForce 8800GT, I have updated the drivers TWICE, once with Dell's suggested drivers (from early 2008) and once with Nvidia's suggested drivers (from may 2008) both of which didn't work.

Is there a diagnostic utility I can run to check the card is operating properly? I am going to test it on a few other games to see if they work.

Cheers in advance,

Tom.

**GroundZero3** · October 28th, 2009, 05:42 AM

What OS? What are your specs? How old is the card? What power supply do you have?

Does it freeze when you play any other games besides source games?

TomB1988 · October 28th, 2009, 05:46 AM

I knew I had forgotten to include some info, here you go:

OS: Vista 32bit
Processor: Q6600
Ram: 3Gb

The card is about a year old. This is actually a replacement card I got last summer when the fan on my old 8800GT failed.

I'm not sure of the PSU, but the card has been working perfectly (no problems at all) for over a year. This problem has only come about in the last 24 hours.

I am going to try out some other games now.

Oh, and thanks for the quick reply!

TomB1988 · October 28th, 2009, 06:20 AM

Ok quick update:

I tested a game called TrackMania Nations, and the same problem occured here, within 5 seconds of being in the game it 'froze' with a scrambled screen. I want to point out here that I can spend all day navigating the menus of these games, its when I actually enter the graphical part of the game that the crash occurs. Also this time I had windows media player on in the background, and the music didn't actually freeze, it just progressed VERY slowly, so the computer isn't entirely hanging.

I hope this info helps, could you suggest what I try next?

Cheers.

**GroundZero3** · October 28th, 2009, 07:03 AM

Have you checked the fan on this video card?

TomB1988 · October 28th, 2009, 07:07 AM

Yes, it is working fine. Yesterday I opended up the case after a crash and blew all the dust out. The card didn't feel that hot to touch (when the fan on my old card died it was too hot to touch). I could check the temps on the card just to make sure, is there a well-known utility to use?

Cheers.

**GroundZero3** · October 28th, 2009, 07:10 AM

If I remember correctly the nvidia drivers should have a temperature monitor, if you go into the nvidia software it should be in there

NVIDIA DRIVERS 5.05.54.00 or maybe this?

TomB1988 · October 28th, 2009, 07:24 AM

Ok mate got it installed, the GPU is idling at 63 degrees celsius. Good or bad?

TomB1988 · October 28th, 2009, 07:41 AM

I set up the program to log the temperature of the GFX card every second, then ran Team Fortress 2. It crashed instantly as soon as I entered the game. The log shows a beginning temperature of 62 (when I started the log) and it rose to 63 (when it crashed). Also this time when it froze, then screen actually turned off as if I had unplugged the HDMI cable.