Games run badly

[Dark Neighbour]

I have a Pentium 4, 1.7 GHz with 512 MB of RAM, GeForce 4 MX 440 Video, Intergrated sound and LAN, 20 GB hard disk, 40X CD-ROM. It has issues...

One of them is the games i try to play on it. A couple of weeks ago, i could play Battlefield 1942 at 1280X1024X32@85 Hz with no problem, but now, it has trouble playing it at 640X480X16@60 Hz. It is beginning to shit me. My first idea was to format the S.O.B into oblivion, and then i thought about it, and i couldn't be bothered to fuck around with Windows XP for the next month and a half. Any ideas guys?

[Paul Miller]

Spyware, drivers, viruses. Look into those. Then realize your video card sucks, but if it played well before, now should be no different. Reinstall the games too. Then report back.

[Dark Neighbour]

Ok, drivers are 56.56 Forceware. Virus check last night reported nothing. No spyware either, checked that today. A re-install fixed Freelancer, NFS-Underground and Black and White, but Battlefield refuses to work properly...

And yes, my Video card is shit, but it does the job i want it to.

[Paul Miller]

Weird... And I agree about your video card. I guess try for a driver reinstall. But with other games working fine it hard to say really. Have you updated Battlefield to the latest version?

Edit: Oh yea, reinstall DirectX too (or update it if it isn't).

[Dark Neighbour]

1.6.19 or something like is what i have...

[Norgus]

you might want to try a registry cleaning program, I found it made a very noticable difference to my PC performance.

personally I hate the entire registry but since most games and apps and more importantly windoze use a registry I am forced really

by the way I am using <a href="http://www.registry-cleaner.net/">this registry cleaner</a>, I only had to run it once so far as I don't clutter my registry if I can help it.

p.s. you need to "buy" the registered version to get any real functionality. I am sure you can find it very "cheap" if you look around

pm me if you need a URL that can't get posted here

[Del_Boy]

Worth checking to ensure you haven't enabled Anti Aliasing too.

[Dark Neighbour]

...my old man might have had a field day in the options menu...

Just had a look, nothing about AA or anything like that is enabled in nVidia driver setup, and Battlefield doesn't support it.

Ill give the registry cleaner a go, but if that fails, i think i might just format the S.O.B...

[Del_Boy]

Of course Battlefield supports it, if you've enabled it that is It's a forcible option for all D3D/GL games, course some games may look worse with it on.

Unless you mean it doesn't support it in the in game options, which is a whole different thing

[Dark Neighbour]

Its not in the options, which is what i meant. Sorry, I should have been more specific. As far as i can tell, the computer isn't doing anymore work then it did before. When Battlefield ran well, the hard disk did constant thinking for about 15 seconds, then flashed one every 10 seconds. (Yes, i timed it...) It does the exact same thing now, but the graphics are sooooo sllllllloooooooowwwwww....

I did think it might have been the new drivers i put on, so i installed some oldones i got with my Video Card and it still ran badly.

Ok, thats all i can think of now. Ill try the registry cleaner once my bro gets his ass off the computer, and report back...

[torpedo009]

Newest nVidia drivers are 56.72 Forceware, try updating

[Josh]

I use 60.40 version drivers. They are really good. You just have to search google for 60.xx nvidia drivers.

[MastaBait]

i have pretty much the same pc specs as you, for my bf it runs on the 1000x700 , but i use the old old drivers, no anti aliasing , and all bars set in the middle (Blend/Performance based) , what devision is your card ? XFX pine? Sumo ?

[Dark Neighbour]

...no idea...

Doesn't matter now anyway. I fixed it. The sound card drivers were doing it, they weren't what they were supposed to be. It was so bad it caused the game to slow down to 10 FPS. I rolled them back, re-installed the video drivers. Runs at 77 FPS now.

Thanks to all who helped.