Can't play games with the Radeon DDR LE, Problem solved

[arod324]

Okay, I recently built a computer for my friend (I have built my own computer, and for others, so I am not incompetent ). Anyways, his computer has been working fine for oh 1.5-2 weeks or so, but all of a sudden today, he called me up and told me that whenever he goes into a game, it gives him a string of errors (there is no set pattern or repetition). He can do EVERYTHING else perfectly fine, except for playing games. He tried reformatting his harddrive, and the problem is persisting (So, I'm guessing there is a problem with the hardware). Has anyone had, or heard of any thing like this, and if it is "fixable".
Thanks for your help
arod324

[edit]He has NOT overclocked it at all or even touched the registry settings [/edit]
[edit]Problem solved. When we brought it back down to 1X it's working fine (we could try 2X, but there isn't too much performance difference, so we just kep it low)[/edit]

 

[tjdavis1138]

He hasn't messed with his agp settings in the cmos has he? I know some cards have troubles with agp 4x on some motherboards.

 

[DClark]

Reformatting isn't the thing to do at the first sign of trouble. Was this error on one game in particular, or on all of his games? Here's how I install a new ATi driver, and I haven't had any problems playing games so far:

1) Install the "Standard Display Adapter(VGA)" and re-boot.
2) Go into the "C:\Windows\Inf" folder and delete all "ATI*.inf" files (usually there will be about 10 to 12 files).
3) Install ATi driver.

The problem may also be bad ram, but that'll generally give you an error message when you start using things like Internet Explorer too.

Finally, he could have accidentally screwed around with or corrupted DirectX, which would give you errors when entering D3D games.

 

[arod324]

Well, we uninstalled, and then reinstalled teh ati drivers, and it did not work. Since it is still screwed up after a reformat, I have to say that it is probably not the drivers that are at fault.
(This happens in all games), and he CAN run everything except for playing games (read in the first post! )

 

[Bestill]

What type of motherboard and chipset is he using? Is it a VIA chipset? They are known to have problems with AGP unless you download the latest driver set. You can get them here.