Strange game crashes

Hi,

I bought a new laptop last week, and I'm having lots of trouble trying to get any games running.
What happens is the game starts okay, then after about 10 seconds, it freezes for a short time, the screen briefly goes black, then it comes back and the game runs okay for while (varying from 5 seconds to a minute). The game then either freezes completely (no response from anything, but a still 'image' on the screen), OR the screen goes blank but the game still seems to be running (ie, sounds still work - you can hear footsteps if walking etc).

I've tried:
- Reinstalling standard/updated drivers
- Installing Omega drivers
- Lowering AGP speed (not sure of correct term) eg like from 4x to 2x
- Disabling sound
- Using low-res/quality (seems to run a little longer, not much)
- Underclocking (in case it was a heat problem)
- Turning down hardware acceleration

My laptop is a Compaq Presario B3820AP (I don't think these are available in the US).
Relevant specs are:
- 1.7GHz Pentium M
- 512MB RAM
- 128MB ATI Mobility Radeon 9700
- DirectX 9c
- Windows XP Pro SP2
- Omega 2.6.12 Drivers

The games I've tried are Half-life 2, Star Wars Republic Commando demo, Jedi Knight 2 demo.
Jedi Knight 2 seemed to have the least problems, but would still freeze for 5 seconds every 10 seconds.

The strange thing is that before they crash, the games run at quite good framerates, even at higher quality settings.

I haven't had any non-game problems, btw.

Any help would be most appreciated, this is really starting to drive me crazy..

Mark

 

Hi Mark,
I have a similar problem ... I have Sony VAIO VGN N27 GH ... I play Delta Force Land Warrior game however, I can play the game without any problems on my Laptop, but when I try to play the game on server (multiplayer), it crashes and gives me sysdump.txt messages. I have tried to open port 17478 which is required to play this game online, but seems to me something else needs to be done or I am not doing something correct which is resulting into crashes.
Someone please suggest what could be the problem. My request, please answer Mark's query first as he started the topic.
Regards,
Silvia.

 

Hi, anyone knows a solution to this problem? Please suggest, I am waiting for help. Give me some tips, just recommend anything, may be something can help.
Silvia

 

Do you have the latest patches available for the games installed? Also, is your GPU supported by the games you are trying to play? And are you sure the latest drivers you have installed are stable?

Good luck.

 

MeMyself: You might want to bump up your ram, shut down other resource hog like Antiviral programs and try different ATI drivers.

 

options:
if running vista, right click the LW icon, go to properties, compatibility, and click run as winxp sp2

second part:
get update from DFBarracks.com, and then the second from Novaworld.com in the LW/TFD forums
then google LW von patch
install all of the above, and youre good to go