Gears of War PC reboot

[jmmyz14]

hello,

i recently bought gears of war for PC and have been trying to get it work for weeks. at first i thought my vista system was simply crapping out, so i recently just reformatted and installed XP, and i get the same symptoms.

after launching the game, i can edit settings etc. etc. but once the game enters the 3d engine in the pre-rendered cutscene, it freezes my entire computer and i have to do a hard reboot.

i have the latest catalyst 8.6 (8.7 just got released today, i will try it)
sound blaster x-fi with latest drivers
amd athlon64 4000+
2gb dual channel ddr400 ram
windows xp sp3 / vista 32bit

i have tried enabling/disabling various features in CCC. turning on and off various X-fi settings. turn off anti-virus. updated live-games and gears title update. no luck.

ive been digging around for WEEKS online for a solution, anyone have a simliar experience?

 

[RallyMaster]

What is your video card and power supply, young grasshopper?

 

[jmmyz14]

whoops, forgot the most important parts!!

his iceq3 3870 512 gddr4
ocz xstream 750 watt (i just bought this cuz i thought i had a failing psu, didnt fix it)

 

[BladeVenom]

Are other games working fine?

 

[lupi]

I'm running it fine on a p4 with a 7900gs on a 22" LCD.


Other than that Live crap that is

 

[LittleNemoNES]

Originally posted by: jmmyz14
whoops, forgot the most important parts!!

his iceq3 3870 512 gddr4
ocz xstream 750 watt (i just bought this cuz i thought i had a failing psu, didnt fix it)

so you had a failing PSU? Tell us more about this.
It is possible it damaged your mobo.

 

[AsianriceX]

GoW for the PC was notorious for being an unstable piece of crap. I could only stand 3-4 levels before I gave up as the game would CTD too frequently. If you haven't checked out the Epic GoW forums, I suggest you do so to see if anyone else has had your problems (highly likely) and whether or not they've released a patch to fix it (highly unlikely).

http://gearsforums.epicgames.com/forumdisplay.php?f=15

I hate to be a downer about this game, but it's one of the few times I've felt burned after spending 40 bucks on a game, only to have the developer flake out and basically leave their users high and dry. I haven't checked for a patch in a while, so they may have fixed all of these problems.

 

[jmmyz14]

sorry for responding so late. yes my other games run fine. in fact i can even run the crysis demo... WoW, various other stuff.

i've tried everything i could google. i even bought a new psu but that wasn't the problem. it seems to always hang right when the 3d engine engages, so i suspect video driver issues... but i dont know why other stuff works fine.

anyway, i may give up on this game as well, until i get a completely new rig. sad to see my 20 bucks down the toilet... i was really excited about this game too!

 

[derdrache]

Game works fine on my craptacular rig. nivida card here though. Try beta drivers for ati if they have them or try downloading the Unreal 3 demo and see if that gives you issues. Uses the same engine as GoW as far as i know. I've had a CTD once and that was during a lan game when the router went out due to power surge (my pcs are all on ups's).

Also, there's a patch out for pc version if you havent gotten it already. Its from nov07 though so may be of zero help.
Linky linky http://www.gamershell.com/download_22190.shtml

The following issues are fixed with this title update. 1. When starting the game using Autorun, a player can lose preferences and custom map data. With the shipped game, when a player starts Gears of War for Windows(r) with Windows Vista(r) using the shortcut from the Games Explorer, the player's account can lose changes made to preferences and any added custom content after a game session. This problem occurs because Autorun does not deelevate the user from Administrator to the logged-on user account after startup. Therefore, all changes made to preferences and any added custom content belong to the Administrator account rather than the player's user account. With this title update, the problem has been corrected. Autorun now properly deelevates to the logged-on player so that content and preference settings are saved to the player's profile rather than to the Administrator's account. 2. After game shutdown, sometimes a player's profile data is erased, including progress, COG tags, and preferences. With the shipping version of Gears of War for Windows, a few players have reported that in some cases after a very quick game shutdown their profile information (specifically the campaign progress, COG tags, and personal settings) was reset to the shipped defaults. This problem occurs because at shutdown, the game program did not wait to receive confirmation that all data had been written to the profile before shutdown ended. With this update, the problem has been corrected. All data should be retained after shutdown in all cases.

 

[BladeVenom]

Try their tech support.

 

[PieIsAwesome]

That game is buggy. I would get BSOD randomly when I start the game.

Do you have anything like tray tools running the background? I also had problems with the tray tools OSD running in the game causing it to crash after a while.

 

[videopho]

Been playing GOW on both xp-64 and Vista 64 rigs w/o a hitch.

 

[Ganeedi]

If it seems to be only that game, uninstall it and try a reinstall. Maybe your install is corrupted.

Also check with your mboard manufacturers website to see if your mb bios is up to date and supports your video card.

 

[jmmyz14]

thanks for the replies. it is not a matter of corrupted install, since i did a reformat to install XP and it still had the same issue.

i just installed ccc 8.7 and updated my motherboard bios to the latest version, so i will test that later.

also, i'll need to find the latest bios for my ati 3870... its currently at .75

thank you everyone!

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: PieIsAwesome
That game is buggy. I would get BSOD randomly when I start the game.

Applications cannot cause a BSOD basically by definition. That sort of failure would be from a driver, hardware, or in *very* rare cases, Windows.