Computer Freezing

[tehpola]

Hey, everyone, I've been trying to fix this problem on my computer for a while but to no avail.
Ok, the problem is I'll be playing DirectX 9 games (i.e. CS:S, Oblivion, Psychonauts, HL2, etc) and after I've been playing for five minutes or so if I alt-tab out or when I quit the game, my computer will lock up when it tries to redraw the desktop. (total lock up, my music stops, computer not responsive anything, i have to turn it off and back on) I don't have these problems with OpenGL games or older DirectX games (HL1 mods: CS, TS, etc, Diablo 2 thats directx right?) So I'm thinking its a conflict with DirectX 9 somehow.
Basically the problem started as far as I can tell when I installed Oblivion and I decided I should upgrade my drivers to get the best performance. Then soon after I realized that my system would crash when I alt-tabbed out of Oblivion.
I've tried reinstalling directx, rolling back, and upgrading drivers. I currently have Dirext 9.0c and the latest NVidia driver.
If anyone has any insight as to what the problem would be I'd really appreciate it, this has been an extreme pain.

Specs:
AMD 64 3200+
NVidia GeForce 6600
1 GB RAM
WinXP

[Indoril Nerevar]

My first suggestion would be to not alt-tab while in games. Most games don't react well to it, and you'll find that many game manuals actually tell you not to.

As for the computer freezing when you quit the game, which games do you have this problem in? It's a common problem with Oblivion, and installing the latest patch from the Elder Scrolls site should fix it.

Which driver version are you currently using, and which have you tried before (the ones you've had the problems while using)?

[gamerman0203]

As Indoril said, Alt+Tab is a no-no in a lot of todays games. The only assistance that can be offered is to not do it. As for crashing when leaving games, Oblivion is notorious for this and it is something that just needs to be tolerated for now (I patched and it still didn't fix it.....). Other games I'm not sure of, but CS:S, HL2, etc. all work just fine for me so make sure Steam is properly updating them when you start it up.

[tehpola]

The current NVidia drivers I'm using is the 91.31, the latest as of a couple weeks ago as far as I know. I've had this problem in Oblivion (where I first encountered the problem) and now in Source games and Psychonauts. Those are all DirectX 9 games, and the ones where I don't encounter the problem aren't. I agree that alt-tabbing probably is not a good idea, but the thing is that I was always able to do it, although it might have been slow switching or whatnot, I've always been able to do it in CS:S and HL2DM until I started experiencing the problem with Oblivion. What's weird about it is that it doesn't always crash, but it tends to do it a lot more frequently when I've been playing for a while. I've had this problem since Oblivion came out, I'm not sure exactly when that was, but its seemingly gotten worse over time, but maybe I didn't notice it before. So the last driver I had before this problem I think was the one released in Dec 05, but I'm not positive on that, and I've tried rolling back to that one and it didn't seem to do the trick.

[tehpola]

nobody has any other ideas?

[Indoril Nerevar]

As gamerman and I said, the only real solution to the alt-tab problem is don't do it. True, you may have gotten it to work before, but you were lucky. It's not something which always works - as you've seen.

If you have any other problems (was the freezing-on-quitting just to do with Oblivion?), please post them, and we'll see what we can do to help.

[tehpola]

nope it freezes with every directx 9 game every time i quit if ive been playing for more than like 5 minutes. its quite frustrating and i have yet to make any headway as to the problem. basically alt-tabbing isnt the problem, its whatever happens when it redraws the screen upon exiting a directx 9 problem, whether its from an alt-tab or just an exit.

[Indoril Nerevar]

Have you tried reinstalling the problematic games? Uninstall them, reinstall DirectX and update/reinstall your video drivers, and then reinstall the games.

Also, make sure you defrag between uninstalling and reinstalling, and defrag again afterwards.

[dai]

if you installed your drivers properly there should not be any drivers to roll back to
see if you can find anything here
http://www.tweakguides.com/NVFORCE_1.html

[tehpola]

is it possible that this could be a PSU problem, I'm only running a 350W PSU and I was just playing around with some overclocking settings and when i told it to find the optimal clock speeds it locked up like after games after a minute. The PSU i have has only .5A on 12V, is that a big problem?

[Indoril Nerevar]

It's possible, but I think it would be more likely to cause problems in general gameplay. Also, I think it'd be 15 amps on the +12V rail, not .5 amps, as .5 wouldn't be enough to run anything at all.

For your system, I would be using at least a 400W, so my suggestion is upgrade the PSU, and if it turns out to be the cause of the problem, then that's two birds with one stone. If you can, at least borrow a gruntier PSU and try it in your system.

Also, try my last suggestion, and if neither fixes the problem, post back and we'll keep knocking ideas off the list.

[dai]

see if you can borrow a quality 550w to try in it