screen freezes after 1hr of playing

[kennyk]

I've got a Gateway 1ghz Pent 3, 128 mb memory and a GeForce2 video card. After playing for about an hour in H2H, my screen will freeze for about 1 second then unfreeze. It keeps doing this whenever there is alot of action going on, till I reboot my system, then it's fine for another hour or so. Anyone have an idea on how to fix this? Thanks in advance for any help.

[spiffykraits]

Originally posted by kennyk
I've got a Gateway 1ghz Pent 3, 128 mb memory and a GeForce2 video card. After playing for about an hour in H2H, my screen will freeze for about 1 second then unfreeze. It keeps doing this whenever there is alot of action going on, till I reboot my system, then it's fine for another hour or so. Anyone have an idea on how to fix this? Thanks in advance for any help.

Sounds as though you are running out of memory. Best bet is to fit more RAM, 256MBs would be better, 512MBs better still.

Make sure you have a LARGE swap file enabled -it should be 3X the size of your RAM size or more, and that you defrag your disk regularly will help. If your disk is full so that the swap file has no space to expand, get rid of unwanted programs, so that your disk cache has enough space to work with.

[K-KEN]

Does the GeForce 2 card have a cooling fan on it?  If so, is it running?  My old GeForce2 had a cooling fan and that processor does get hot.  Like you said, it occurs after about an hour and the heat may cause it.  That could be a cheap fix too.  Just saying.

K-KEN


http://www.cutthroats.com/

[bockko]

if the hang up occurs very repeatedly I would suspect some program kicking in, like windows update, email check, or some other resource hog. I get blasted at about 9:18 pm every night for my anti virus download. Lasts about 30 seconds, but can be a pain. See what programs are running, perhaps that is your culprit.

[DAVENRINO]

I guess that makes a pretty good case for turning off all that auto BS.
DJ229

[spiffykraits]

Just a thought after reading this thread again, check in bios that you have enabled enough "agp aperture" for your GForce2 Card. 64MBs is default usually, if you have more memory on your vid card increase it to 128MB. Setting it extra large in relation to the card memory won't increase performance, in fact it might be worse, so don't make it much above card memory size.

In your control panel.system. performance settings also make sure that you have a minimum setting for your swap file that is at least 3.5X your RAM size, you can leave maximum at all usuable space as per default.  If you haven't the free space to get this much for minimum get rid of extraneous programs. Make sure your fan systems are clean on the vid card and case in case this a heat problem.

More memory fitted to RAM would help.

[WhiteHawk]

Where do u chk the sweap file?

[spiffykraits]

Originally posted by WhiteHawk
Where do u chk the sweap file?

It's similar in both XP and Win98/98SE and ME, ------->

Start button, then Control Panel, select System, then Performance tab in win98/ME and then Virtual memory; Performance and maintenance for XP, then the advanced button for XP Home or Pro.  You will see it.

A minimum setting is advised of 3.5X the ram size for games (DirectX takes approximately 35MBs to load) for those with less than 512MBs of ram. You can specify a minimum setting, and Windows will reserve this space on your hard disk for virtual memory. Normally the maximum setting is set to the free space available.  If you specifiy min and max the same size a fixed swap file is created that doesn't shrink or expand, and won't fragment.

However if you are running Win98SE or ME and have 512MBs of physical RAM fitted (not virtual memory) these OSs will only use a maximum 512MBs of memory and fitting any more is redundant.
However XP OS will use more than 512MBs if available, as this OS will accept more than this limit.

For win98SE/ME those with 512MBs of physical ram fitted, can add a line to the System. ini that tells Windows to use all the RAM first before using the swap file as this runs the system faster than swapping out memory to the hard disk swap file, it goes under the 386enh header. Note that you should retain the swap file when this line is added and not disable the virtual memory settings, leave these at defaults. i.e Let Windows manage the swap file.   Add this line to system.ini anywhere under the 386Enh heading after saving a backup.

[386Enh]
ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1

WARNING! This modification to system.ini is ONLY for win98/SE/ME users only and NOT for XP or 2000. Changing the digit to 0 will return the system to normal swap file usage.