Mate's PC hanging on exit of some games

[MarcLister]

Posting a thread on behalf of a flatmate. He's having problems exiting some games. The games work fine when they start and he plays them. He can alt-tab into Windows and all is fine. The problem starts when he exits the games. The PC hangs, no keyboard input is acknowledged and although the mouse icon moves he can't click on anything. He gets the busy/timer icon when he tries to do anything with the mouse.

I thought it might be a RAM problem but he has recently upgraded his RAM and his processor. Is there a chance that something was wrong with the old RAM as well as the new one? Perhaps not the same problem but something wrong nonetheless? The only way to get the PC to work again is to force a reset of the PC using the reset button on the case.

The affected games are Kelly Slater Pro Surfer, Oblivion, Tiger Woods 06 and Pro Evo 5.

His PC specs are: AMD SD 4000, 2 gig RAM, 7800GT latest nVidia gfx drivers. A WinFast/Foxconn NF4UK8AA mb again with latest drivers. He is running XP Pro 32-bit.

He is going to reinstall Windows to see if that will fix the problem. I doubt it will. I'd like to get him to run a mem test. I've got MemTest86+ 1.65 on my PC. Should I get him to run that? How long would it take?

Does anyone have any idea what the problem could be?

 

[Steve09]

Yeah it happens in some games which are like RAM dependable.
I have 1gig of RAM.
Call of Duty 2 for instance exits and everything is responsive and nothing hangs.
Battlefield 2 however, once exited, it hangs for like 15 seconds because that is RAM dependable

 

[OpenToSuggestions]

this happens to me when i have used the no-cd exe (so i could keep the game cd in newer condition), but now i just use the game disk and it works ok. is your mate using a no-cd patch on these games (hope they aren't copies tut tut )

even with the game disk oblivion stops responding on exit freqently, or when i alt tab out and try to maximise the game windows the game crashes. i too am lost at this

 

[pegasus1]

Cant see it being a memory thing with 2 gig on hand, then again if it doesnt unload the DLLs....
Try goin into task manager and having a look at what processes are running and what is hogging mem or cpu.

 

[MarcLister]

Thanks for the help guys. Apologies for not replying earlier but Internet access to my student flat is down. Checking the forums from the Uni library atm.

pegasus1, if the keyboard won't accept any input how can we check the Task Manager?

 

[pegasus1]

Thanks for the help guys. Apologies for not replying earlier but Internet access to my student flat is down. Checking the forums from the Uni library atm.

pegasus1, if the keyboard won't accept any input how can we check the Task Manager?

Good point, im sure it can be done just cant remember how, have you tried resetting the Bios to default?

 

[MarcLister]

Good point, im sure it can be done just cant remember how, have you tried resetting the Bios to default?

When he installed his new processor he had to take the battery out of the motherboard thus resetting the Bios to default settings.

 

[El Jimben]

Could this be due to page file being too small?

 

[MarcLister]

Could this be due to page file being too small?

Hmm could be. I will ask him later. He is at the gym at the moment.

 

[pegasus1]

When he installed his new processor he had to take the battery out of the motherboard thus resetting the Bios to default settings.

That on its own wont reset the bios unless he left the battery out for some time, can you confirm that he reset the bios using the CLEAR CMOS procedure as detailed in the MOBO manual.
Reading the post again id say that a program is hogging the resources, once he exits an effected game he should bring up TASK MANAGER and see if any progs are running that shouldnt be (ie the game still).

 

[MarcLister]

That on its own wont reset the bios unless he left the battery out for some time, can you confirm that he reset the bios using the CLEAR CMOS procedure as detailed in the MOBO manual.
Reading the post again id say that a program is hogging the resources, once he exits an effected game he should bring up TASK MANAGER and see if any progs are running that shouldnt be (ie the game still).

I will ask him what he did with the bios.

And again, he can't do anything with the keyboard. No keyboard input is accepted so how can he do this when he exits one of the affected games?

 

[Tonytank]

a long shot but some of my games, modern ones like battlefront 2, just cause and the such, crash on exit because i have azureus running in the system tray (the torrent program) the screen is often block with some weird garbbeled artifacting, but aslong as azureus isnt running, its fine...


i think its cus im running azureus in a mode where its qiute cpu intensive...

who knows...

 

[MarcLister]

a long shot but some of my games, modern ones like battlefront 2, just cause and the such, crash on exit because i have azureus running in the system tray (the torrent program) the screen is often block with some weird garbbeled artifacting, but aslong as azureus isnt running, its fine...


i think its cus im running azureus in a mode where its qiute cpu intensive...

who knows...

Now that is good! Chris uses Azureus so that is a question well worth asking him.

 

[Tonytank]

glad i could help chief

let me know how you get on