nVidia GeForce 4

[Dr Toker]

Well, for starters, your machine is going to be more inclined to have problems than say, mine would with such a card. You have a P4. This means You also have an INTEL Mother Board. Right away there is a "Lack of Perfect Compatibility". If your going with a Nvidia Video Card, its always best to get a Nvidia Mother Board. (nForce2). Always start with Nvidia for gamers.

Another thing, it sounds like you dont have enough RAM, or your memory is failing or something perhaps.

[darkes]

Originally posted here by Dr Toker
Well, for starters, your machine is going to be more inclined to have problems than say, mine would with such a card. You have a P4. This means You also have an INTEL Mother Board. Right away there is a "Lack of Perfect Compatibility". If your going with a Nvidia Video Card, its always best to get a Nvidia Mother Board. (nForce2). Always start with Nvidia for gamers.

Another thing, it sounds like you dont have enough RAM, or your memory is failing or something perhaps.

There are other boards that support P4's. I have a P4 installed on an SiS chipset (not INTEL), and it runs fine. GTA III works perfectly on my Geforce4 Ti 4800 SE under WinXP, using the WHQL drivers, which were fairly recently re-released (check Winowsupdate to find out). DirectX 9.0b works fine as well, and I can overclock my card with no problems, having nobbled the registry. The sound card is a Creative Audigy2.

Just to re-iterate, the MS supplied drivers DO work very well for games on my setup - I changed my drivers from the Nvidia ones I had installed to the MS recommended ones, and got a performance increase. After all if, it didn't work I could easily roll back ...

It is almost certain you have a H/W problem with your cooling or RAM, or possibly your sound card, that is the root cause of this.

[Und3ertak3r]

Another thing, it sounds like you dont have enough RAM, or your memory is failing or something perhaps

I agree with Dr Toker among the possablities faulty memory or incompatable memory, or if you are using 2 or more memory sticks ..mismatched memory..
As for the other advice from Dr Toker .. are you saying that less than 5% of all motherboards are compatable with better than 60% of Video cards? Can you back up your comments please.. at this point it sounds like

My TV reception is lousey.. I have a Sony TV.. could it be because I am using a Samsung VCR with this TV

But yes I would expect that nVidia based mobos would have the best compatability with their cards..

Cheers

[StealthThunder]

I appriciate everyones help in this matter. to answer some of your questions, i am running XP and no the video card is not overheating, it remains suprisingly cool. all of the games are bought and paid for, so i dont think its corruption with the games. i went ahead and downloaded drivers and patchs for the soundcard and video card and as of right now, im installing service pack 1. i got all the windows updates already, i'll will let you know when service pack 1 is done installing and will do some testing. thanks again for all your help.

[GeckoDragoN]

i know you've heard it all before but im haveing the same problem with my geforce fx256... and it was all just a simple overheating prob... just as a test try taking your side panel off for an hour and see if anything improves....
good luck

[Nhk]

Originally posted here by dcongram
StealthThunder......what OS are you running ? If it is XP....the drivers for Nvidia don't work with games.

I had WinXP and my Geforce 2 with default drivers worked fine with Counter-Strike.

[nihil]

I have had this problem too.....not with Sims tho'. I found the problem was with the sound card......in one case I just swapped them between two boxes and all was fine.

On another machine, I went into the game and set the sound quality to about 30%, and that fixed it.

You might try borrowing an old PCI soundcard (SIMS isn't philharmonic orchestra ) and see what happens with that?

I concur with the overheating suggestions but wonder why you are not having other problems as well if it were something so fundamental?...seems to be games specific to me.

Good Luck

[darkes]

I agree it's worth checking the sound card out.

I had a hardware problem with the Creative Audigy2 card that I originally installed when I upgraded my PC recently (new mobo etc.). Even after I downloaded the latest drivers from Creative, some games would completely lock the PC after about 30 sec, which meant to me it wasn't a cooling problem. I'd be a lot more suspicious if it happened after about 20 mins, as this is more likely to be a cooling problem with your CPU or graphics card.
Anyway in my case the old sound card I had still worked, so I exchanged my Audigy2 for a new one, which worked perfectly.

One final point is that it does make a big difference what you are running on your PC.
If, for example, you are running WinXP with say Word & IE open, your P4 will be idling at about 5% (no significant heat generated), whereas when you run a game it will be at 100%, and generating a hell of a lot of heat, which can screw up other components nearby if your cooling system doesn't work. Also if the P4 itself gets too hot, it will either lock or shut itself down.

[Und3ertak3r]

If he has a new Mobo .. it will have onboard sound.. the Hum as he has described will probably have absolutly nothing to do with the sound card.. the description is verylokley "Looping" sound.. ie a .25 second loop.. the sound card is playing back a loop from its internal memory..because the rest of the system has locked up. and can't tell the sound card to bloody shut up..

Instead of chassing him all over the country with this.. how about working on this one step at a time.. then atleast he will learn some thing and so will some others..
Fault finding is about following basic steps elliminate something move on to the next step..
not.. OH **** it;s summer.. must be over heating.. or
]oh Crap the computer is runnig slow.. Must be a Virus....

In this situation.. We have two normal suspects.. First is the Video Card, second is Memory..third is PSU (powersupply)

Options: remove all other cards and accessories.. you will only need the GF4, ram, cpu, HDD (the sound is onboard right?), your keyboard and mouse..oh and monitor..and PSU

If the problem continues you then need to eliminate by replacement the remaining components. If you can get a hold of another Video card.. do that first, or if you can get ahold of another PSU do that, If you can get ahold of an other stick of memory do that.. By the by.. You do only have one stick of memory ..don't you.. not 2 or three?

Sry i repeated myself..

[StealthThunder]

Well, its not my processor, it doesnt get over 39C but my video card was running a little warm after the last time it crashed. i went ahead and bought a thermatake cooler for it and will see if that helps. i will also take out my sound card and use the onboard sound and see if that changes anything. i already keep my side panel off 24/7 to keep good air flow.