[PhyllisW]

Hello folks,
I certainly hope you can help us. I am writing on behalf of my teenage sons. I appreciate your time.

We have a four-year-old Windows XP Home edition SP3 Dell computer. Pentium 4, 2.80 gHz, with 2.50GB of RAM installed. When running newer games, after a variable amount of time, the screen would go blank and the game would reload. Example games that cause crash: Empire Total War, Guild Wars.

Dell sold us and we installed the following hardware:

Radeon HD 3800 graphics card, 512 MB
Antec Earthwatts 650-watt power supply w/ PCI-E connector

Now it's supposed to be working, but we are getting the same result as before, blank screen on the bigger games. The error message has changed though. Now it is this:

"VPU Recover has reset your graphics accelerator as it was no longer responding to graphics driver commands."

(Previous error message was similar in meaning.)

The first thing to check is, did we install the power supply properly? At first we didn't get the PCI-E connector hooked directly to the new graphics card. But we fixed that, so it plugs right in (got rid of two adapters that were cluttering things up).

The computer otherwise works fine, so I think the power supply must be installed correctly. Video works fine except for these newer games. A smaller game, Mount and Blade, works, also Empire Earth.

Any ideas?

Thank you so much.

PhyllisW

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This error is usually caused because the video memory on the graphics card has become defect.
If the card's under warranty, send it back.

[Neil Jones]

This error is usually caused because the video memory on the graphics card has become defect.
If the card's under warranty, send it back.

[PhyllisW]

Dell is telling me since it's been more than 21 days, they're not too helpful. I need to find a local technician to check the card, and then contact ATI about asking for a replacement.

Thanks so much for your help in diagnosing.

PhyllisW