PC will only run Half-Life 2 for a few seconds!!

[DevilMayCry42]

I just built a new PC, and installed my games (Rome: Total war, Medieval 2 Total war, Half-Life 2 GOTY edition, Halo).

I run Medieval 2 total war, and i get (i think its called) image artifacts. Giant streaks of random colour, usually brown/black going across the screen. they seem to happen without much pattern, but its only within the battles. Also, i can only run the game on pretty low resolutions for it to be smooth - and i have an 8800GTX!!

I open up HL2, and it will all be fine for about 5 seconds then it starts messing up, with colours flying everywhere, bits of the menu that should be showing flying everywhere. I Alt+Tab to the Task Manager, and then go back to the game, and it runs fine....for a few seconds.... WHATS GOING ON!?!?!?

My specs are:

Core 2 Duo E6600
EVGA 680i mobo (with bios updated with the hotfix)
EVGA 8800GTX
2GB Kingston RAM (800 Mz) (only one gig in - the other stick is faulty, gonna have to send it back for a replacement)
600W Xion PSU
250GB Western Digital SATA drive (3gb/s)

on a side note, I can see on the little task bar thingy in the bottom right of the start bar, a "safely remove drive" icon. when i click on it, it lists the partitions on my hard drive... Im confused.....

[directhex]

what OS?

[ajbrun]

I take it you've installed the latest graphics drivers?

[DevilMayCry42]

Im running on XP Proffesional 32bit

I did update the graphics drivers before i started playing anything!

[abeacock]

Sounds like a graphics card issue to me, either overheating (is the fan running correctly?) or overclocked too high?

Is it one of those pre-overclocked EVGA cards?

[DevilMayCry42]

Nope, its a plain vanilla flavoured 8800GTX

I checked the temps while running Medieval 2 total war, it was about 67-68 celcius. When i read some online reviews before buying it, that was the norm......

I havn't overclocked it, according the all the reviews i read, it should max out most settings at 1600x1200 w/out overclocking..... none of my components are OC'd yet, i wanted to see how the game would run at stock speeds...

Could it be that the acual card is faulty and i have to send it back??? i seriously hope not - I just got it running and it was supposed to be my Xmas present!

[abeacock]

I'm not familiar with the PSU you've got, but can it deliver sufficient amps?

This thread talks about power requirements of 8800s, not sure if there's any clues in there:
http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=99604

[DevilMayCry42]

It delivers enough power, i checked it before i bought it - 2 12V rails at 22Amps each...

[kalniel]

Something is definitely faulty.

I would start with drivers - fully clean out old ones with driver cleaner pro and install new ones.

Update DirectX to the latest release.

Make sure all windows updates have been applied.

Check out any Bios and motherboard updates.

If that doesn't help, and you really want to avoid sending any hardware back, reinstall windows from scratch.

Finally if software doesn't help, it's really very likely to be hardware. Firstly try to eliminate components by testing in another computer or swapping out for something else. IMO it could be one of either the GFX card, PSU, motherboard or RAM.

[Waka]

There were two fairly chunky patches to HL2 - have you applied those?

W.

[DevilMayCry42]

I thought that Steam automaticallly updated the games before you played them....

I installed direct X 9c on my machine, Put my fresh graphics drivers, put the bios hotfix in, and i believe my windows is updated... I guess im going to have to try re-installing windows......

[CrazyMonkey]

Sounds like a Dodgy Card i hope its not
Then again i get some dodgy things in HL2:EP1 like PC restarting in middle of game

[kempez]

GFX card or RAM sound like the issue. Try validating the game files and doing a HDD defrag

[DevilMayCry42]

validating game files???

I defragged my HDD, same problems.

I managed to get HL2 to start the actual game the last time i tried... The game starts in the train, and it ran properly for about 5 seconds again, and then the train walls dissapeared, along with the people inside the train. when i turned everything started sliding black....so i quit it again

[kempez]

I've found validating my game files works sometimes when you get corruption and random stuff.

Go to valve website and search for validate game files

Worth a go imo

[CrazyMonkey]

To Validate:

Load up steam>Games>Right Click the game name>Click "Properties">Local Files: Then "Verify Integrity of Game Cache and i would also try "Defragment Game Cache"

Verifying takes some time, if it finds anything it will redownload it.