3D graphics issues

[xanderuk]

hi sorry its a bit of a long 1.

recently had a prob with pc and had a new motherboard power supply and graphics card fitted under extended warranty but warranty is limited to a certain amount so if i cant fix this i have to pay cash.lol

the problem i have is that my pc is running 100% fine except for when i try to play a game that has 3D graphics the game will load and play any preview movies but then when you click on play it either freezes or most commonly goes blackscreen.(and i have to reboot by disconnecting/reconnecting the power supply)

i initially thought it was just this 1 game in particular (age of mythology) but it is all 3D games. (i am 40 so i dont have many games to check it with)

my concern is that I bought age of mythology over a year ago and played it on this system for a year with no problems but now as i say it wont play.

i have been through the microsoft support site for this game and my pc is more than powerful enough to play this game (and did 4 a year) and more demanding games.   (pc deatils to follow.)

has anybody go any ideas that may resolve my problem?

my PC is an IEXTREME 6091 (packard bell) 2.9ghx
with 256DDR ram the graphics card is a radeon 9200.
and is windows XP.

to try to resolve this isuue i have tried:

1)re-installing all the drivers
2)removing and re-installing the game
3) altering the game itself to run on lower settings(although it ran in high detail in the past.)


I did get 1 error message once which said the graphics card was caught in a loop.

but i have to reboot system when it fails so i dont get any error messages usually.

the problem i have is that all the replacement parts were identical to the original parts so this game and others should run.

i have run dxdiag and the pc passes all the dxdiag tests
direct x is installed (latest version 9).

i am not the most knowledgeable on pc's so if there is any other information you need please let me know and i will reply a.s.a..p (but if it requires expertise for me to retrieve it from my pc then please tell me how.lol)

many thanks for your help.

[xanderuk]

sorry just to add that the age of mythology game requires win 98/200/me/xp   128 mb ram  450 mhz   1.5gb hardrive (i have 120 and most of it is free) and the video card needs to be 16mb/3D.

[Raptor]

Have you done the following activities on a regular basis?

• Scanned for Viruses/Trojan Horses/Spyware
  
• Defragmented Hard Disk Drive/Partitions
  
• Cleaned registry
  
• Cleaned system case and removed excessive dust built-up
  

[xanderuk]

yes i have the latest norton antivirus and regularly run adaware and spybot to check for problems.

i dont have heavy disk usage but run defrag at least every 2 months.

since i had the new parts fitted i ran a full system reload and wiped everything off.

(but the 3D graphics weren't working B4 i did this)

in an attempt to resolve this issue but sadly it didnt.

[Raptor]

since i had the new parts fitted i ran a full system reload and wiped everything off.

Does reloading include reformatting the Hard Disk Drive for you?