Gears of War trouble

[beanhead07]

I recently bought gears of war for the pc and it will not stay running. My computer meets all the requirements.
2.8GHz P4 processor
4 GB RAM
GeForce 8500 GT 512MB video card

I bought this game from a store that is going out of business and so I can't return it. It installed fine but when I try to play it, it will let me play for like 3 minutes and then a window pops up and says the program encountered a problem and needs to close. I looked online to see if there was a patch I needed. I found one and installed it and it worked fine. The next morning however, when I tried to play it came up with the same window saying it encountered a problem and needs to close and has continued to do that until now. Has anyone had this same experience? I have tried uninstalling the game and reinstalling it. I haven't made any changes recently to my PC. It's very frustrating because it's one of the best games I've ever played. So I'd really like to get it working. Any suggestions? Thanks!

[beanhead07]

I forgot to mention that I am running it on Windows XP with DirectX 9. Does it need directx 10? Thanks again for any help!

[saint_hades]

directX 10 is only for windows vista so you don't have a problem there

Have you tried updating your video card drivers
http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us

[beanhead07]

Yes I downloaded the latest drivers last night after I had already posted. I still get the same error. I'm running out of options to try. Maybe I just got a lemon game?

[Calum]

Unfortunately I don't know what else to recommend, other than uninstalling and reinstalling the game.
I had major problems trying to get it to work for me too, the whole "Windows Live Gaming" thing really doesn't like me.
Not sure how well your system will handle the game either, it's a real killer and the minimum requirements lie.

Welcome back beanhead by the way, good to see you around.

[beanhead07]

Thanks Calum. I haven't been able to post much cause my job takes up most of my time. But that's life. lol. Yeah the one time it worked for a couple hours it ran perfectly fine. No lag or anything. But yeah the windows live thing doesn't seem to like me either. Did you ever get it to work eventually or did you give up? I might try to uninstall it and reinstall it again just to see if 3 times is a charm. Maybe I'll just have to break down and get an Xbox 360 now that the prices are down.  Thanks for all your help!

[Calum]

Sorry, I didn't see you'd already uninstalled and reinstalled, my bad.
Good to hear it worked with no lag for you, I haven't had time to try it on my new PC yet but my older one lagged at the end of each level, really badly.  Maybe just my own bad experience.
The Windows Live experiences I had related to Halo 2, I haven't even attempted getting Gears online yet because Halo 2 daunted me so much.  The only two reasons I installed Vista were Halo 2, and Crysis in DX10.  Crysis was barely playable in Vista and Halo 2 wouldn't even work - hence the reason I'm now Vista-less.

[ThrowingShapes]

Windows live is a pain to get started up.  It took me an entire day to figure out.  Apparently you have to register your account with windows live, you can't use the profile you just created to get online.
Here's the link if you want to do that. http://get.live.com/getlive/overview

[beanhead07]

This may be a dumb question, but do I have to have that windows live in order to be able to play the game? I just figured if that was if I wanted to do online multiplayer stuff, which I probably will never use. Also don't you have to pay to keep using windows live? Or am I just misunderstanding what that is all about? Thanks again for all the help guys!

[ThrowingShapes]

I can't blame you for misunderstanding windows live, in all honesty I don't think I completely grasp it. 

You are right that you only need it to play online.  As far as the paying thing, from what I understand there's more than one kind of windows live.  I'm pretty sure there's like a basic one you can make/keep for free but there's some kind of gold windows live and it gives you more privelages.  At least that's what I've deduced from the peice of paper giving me a month of free "windows live gold".

I've tried my best to understand windows live, and everything it entails, But I've long since given up for these reasons.