graphic card woes!

LewieP's Mummy

So, Lewie bought me a new graphics card, for my 5 year old pc. Its a Radeon HD3650. the other info I can give you is this - its Intel® Pentium® 4CPU 3.00GHz, 512MB of RAM, it has Windows XP 2002. I expect you will need more information than that, but that's all I could find.

My problem is I can't play any games without my PC crashing - I have a Steam account with a few games on, but every time I try to play any, my computer screen goes. I wanted to upgrade the graphics card cos I couldn't read the writing on the walls in Portal, and couldn't run Defence Grid:The Awakening at all. What happens now it that a game will load, run for a few minutes - only up to level 3 on Defense Grid, and then the screen just goes blank. The hard drive still makes whirring noises, but there's no picture. I know I fitted the card properly, it was idiot proof, it could only go in 1 way!

I don't know what to do, will someone help me please?

Thank you.

Tav

What card did you upgrade from? There's a chance that if it was an nVidia card then you didn't uninstall the previous drivers correctly.

LewieP's Mummy

OOO that's probably it, i didn't do that - it was a Radeon9200SE 64mb card. How do I uninstall drivers please - never done that before!

matt has a problem

They're both ATI cards, since they're both Radeon cards. You should just be able to download the newest drivers and update them. Just go here - http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html select Windows XP in the first window, Radeon in the second, then Radeon HD 3600 Series in the third and click "Go". On the next screen you want "Option 2", the "Display Driver" link. You don't really need the Catalyst Control Center.

LewieP's Mummy

Thank you, I've done all of that now, is there anything else I should do?

Rivulent

I don't have any specific answer for you, but looking at your stats, it's entirely possible you are locking up simply because your computer can not handle the games you are playing. Also, your power supply may be unstable/overworked while you are playing video games, since everything draws more power when you do this.

My solution to all computer problems is generally just reformatting... lol.

LewieP's Mummy

Thank you!

proXimity

If it's crashing a few minutes into playing, it could be a cooling issue. I don't really know what you could do in your situation, besides taking a can of air and making sure the air is flowing and the fans are working.