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[Ark-AMN]

Ok, after drooling over my new PC setup (I'm sure most of you are tired of listing the details, but I'm going to list them here, only because it may help):

P4 3.6Ghz
Nvidia 256MB GeForce 7800GTX
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
320GB Raid0 HD
2GB 677 DDR2 RAM

So anyway, first "issue" I noticed is after installing Steam, when I try to play Half Life 2, the intro movie with the Valve Logo doesn't play (well, I hear the sound in the background, but nothing on screen) and the screen "looks" frozen (but its not, HL2 loads once the "movie" has finished). I know the movie is there, I used WMV to play it. Its a minor thing, but it couldn be indicative of another problem. I didn't have this problem with Steam on my older computer.

And another problem, a bit more serious is when I tried to install FEAR. I placed the DVD and then of course, Autoplay ran, but all that appeared was a "white window" in place of where the launch screen would be, although I was hearing the audio. But the Autorun was pretty much frozen and I couldn't install FEAR that way. Again, I don't get this problem on my older Dell computer.

So, I'm open to suggestions. I did a few things, such as defragmenting my drives, and I was pretty sure I downloaded the latest drivers, though there may be some I missed. I'm pretty sure I got all the important things like the drivers for my graphics card and DirectX. Its very strange, that it happens on my nice new computer and works fine on my old ATI GPU computer.

 

[blackadde]

oem pc or custom built?

chipset drivers in place, latest bios rev., sound card drivers, no device conflicts? psu capacity?

as an aside, in "320GB Raid0 HD" do you mean you have 2x160gb or drives in a raid 0 config or what? raid 0 provides a very minimal performance boost unless you are crunching enormous files for long periods of time (ie, large RARs), as well as doubling your data failure rate.

 

[Ark-AMN]

Its a Dell PC

I'm sure the chipset drivers were the ones I updated too, not sure about BIOS, didn't see any device conflicts when I checked. I'm not sure what PSU capacaty means.

The RAID configuration is two 160GB HD's in a 0 state. And jeez, you make it sound like thats a bad thing, damnit, Dell is sure sly about not pointing out these things.

 

[Illuminati]

Latest DirectX?

 

[Ark-AMN]

Pretty sure its the latest, I went to the official DX site and got the latest download available.

 

[blackadde]

if it is a dell you should not have to worry about your PSU rating so disregard that. by the same token odds are that some of the malicious free (sic) bloatware that shipped with your pc is the culprit.

The RAID configuration is two 160GB HD's in a 0 state. And jeez, you make it sound like thats a bad thing, damnit, Dell is sure sly about not pointing out these things.

well it is not necessarily a bad thing per se, as there is something of a performance boost. personally however i don't find it to be worth the hassle, and the thought of losing everything just because one disk goes bad is not a situation i am comfortable with.

 

[Ark-AMN]

if it is a dell you should not have to worry about your PSU rating so disregard that. by the same token odds are that some of the malicious free (sic) bloatware that shipped with your pc is the culprit.

Hmm, there was a few pieces of "Bloatware" that they shipped with the comp. I should do some housecleaning on that.

well it is not necessarily a bad thing per se, as there is something of a performance boost. personally however i don't find it to be worth the hassle, and the thought of losing everything just because one disk goes bad is not a situation i am comfortable with.

Hmm, really didn't think about that. Its just that Dell doesn't offer anything over 250GB in a single HD for their XPS series.

 

[Illuminati]

Hmm, there was a few pieces of "Bloatware" that they shipped with the comp. I should do some housecleaning on that.

The first thing you should do when you buy a new Dell is to full format it back to hell, it's an unspoken rule.

 

[Ark-AMN]

The first thing you should do when you buy a new Dell is to full format it back to hell, it's an unspoken rule.

Damn, I totally never heard that rule. I've never had any problems with their bloatware before on my past computers. But oh well.

I wont be able to do anything now though because I'm away from my computer. But I'll keep checking in case someone has some kind of epiphany perhaps.

 

[Ark-AMN]

Well, I'm pretty sure now that I've installed all the latest drivers (even a BETA from Nvidia) and the AutoPlay for FEAR still doesn't work. Now, I did try another game (Doom 3) and the autoplay actually worked fine it seemed, so its not the autoplay issue itself. Now of course Doom 3 was on a CD and FEAR is on a DVD, so I wonder if perhaps there is something wrong with the player.

Well, I should probably stop dancing around these minor things and just install the game and see how that works out.

 

[FlyinJ]

It's an nvidia driver issue. Every 3rd or 4th driver revision I get from them makes it so I don't see the Valve starting movie. Everything else works fine.

EDIT: Try the non-beta Nvidia driver and I bet you'll see the movie.

 

[Ark-AMN]

Actually, I was using the non-beta driver before and I didn't see the movie either. And FEAR's autoplay wasn't working then as well.

I suppose I can try it again, but I'll have to do that later as I'm about to be gone once more.

 

[ZombieSupaStar]

yeah that valve intro is nvidia problem


I got it once I went from a 9800 pro to 6800 and its still there currently on my 7800




Lame.


edit you can see the video (at least a snapshot of it) if you hit the windows key.

 

[Ark-AMN]

Ah, so its an Nvidia thing. Hmm, perhaps the FEAR thing is also Nvidia problem then, because both of these issues were non existent on my older dell PC which had an ATI 9800XT.

And yeah, the video is there, I can play it with the WMV. Glad to hear its a standalone problem and not the result of a hardware problem as I feared.

 

[Ark-AMN]

Oh well, I bit the bullet and just went ahead and installed FEAR, and it seems to run just fine. So, doesn't look like these issues were anything to worry about at all, just probably the usual bugs in Nvidias products.

Thanks for the help anyways guys