[Monty4317]

So, I just pieced together a computer out of some old stuff I had lying around. It starts up fine and everything functions EXCEPT for games. While playing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion my monitor will suddenly enter "Power Save" mode and not respond. It doesn't always occur at the exact same place but it seems to happen when I am either at the character creation screen, entering/exiting doorways or by pressing the "quick save" button. Nothing I do will get the computer to respond again and I can hear the game running in the background (I could even hear my character perform some actions!). In the end, I have to shut down my computer and restart. I've installed the latest drivers, downloaded the most recent updates, etc.. and I've searched for solutions to this but to no avail. I've tried using different monitors but I get the same thing every time. Any idea what's going on here or what I can try out next? Here's what I have...

running Windows XP Pro SP3

ATI Radeon HD 3650 AGP
Processor AMD Athlon XP 3.0
1Gig DDR Ram

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[Monty4317]

[Monty4317]

41 views and no replies...

[Eclipsed]

So, is this the only game that you have this issue with?

What does the monitor look like when it stops showing the game?

Also, if the monitor goes blank how do you shut down the computer? Do you hold the power button until is shuts down (reset)?

Answer these and I might be able to help. Sometimes this can happen if your graphics card is over heating.

[Monty4317]

So, is this the only game that you have this issue with?

What does the monitor look like when it stops showing the game?

Also, if the monitor goes blank how do you shut down the computer? Do you hold the power button until is shuts down (reset)?

Answer these and I might be able to help. Sometimes this can happen if your graphics card is over heating.

The other monitor also goes into standby/sleep mode (even if both are plugged in).

Sometimes I am forced to hold down the power button and sometimes im lucky enough to get the task manager to show up and then im able to restart it.

The computer restarts just fine after that.

Update: I just installed new drivers for the video card (previously AMD had said they no longer support the drivers for this model but they were there now). I still have the same problem but now my monitor won't go into its' maximum resolution correctly (it should be able to use 2048x1536 but it only works on 1280x1024). When I enter 2048x1536 it's like it only shows a small portion of my monitor (it's zoomed in really far and I have to navigate around to find desktop items).

[Eclipsed]

Are you sure you download the drivers for the correct product? It actually sounds like you have corrupted drivers.

It originally sounded like an overheating problem but now I am a little confused as to what it is.

[Monty4317]

Are you sure you download the drivers for the correct product? It actually sounds like you have corrupted drivers.

It originally sounded like an overheating problem but now I am a little confused as to what it is.

I was pretty sure I did but now I'm questioning what happened... I went to the AMD site and selected the drivers for Windows Xp Pro Radeon 3600 Series (for my ATI Radeon 3650HD). At first it claimed I was not authorized to download it (what the..?), the second time it worked and now I have gone back and checked and it says I am not authorized to download... so now I'm massively confused.

[Eclipsed]

Download and install this driver for xp professional/home for the hd 3600 series.

https://a248.e.akama...ccc_wdm_enu.exe

Edited by Eclipsed, 22 December 2009 - 10:09 PM.