New System Unable to run Star Wars

I purchased a computer system yesterday consisting of...

What I assume is an Intel P4 3ghz
listed as Intel 2.93ghz LGA775 533m

Intel 915GAVL ?Prescott? Motherboard...
c/w HT Technology

I had the choice of a ATI X300 Radeon 128 MB Video Card or to upgrade?!?!?!
to Graphics Media Accelerator 900.. I took the latter. Seems to be a
onboard Intel system...

1G Kensington DDR 400 mhz 2.5v ram...

Windows XP Media Center

I purchased it to run star wars knights of the old republic. It ran fine
the first time I ran the game.. but the next day when loading the file to
play.. the game shuts down returning me to windows.

I've tried loading the latest driver from intel for the graphics.. I've
increased the page file size.. I noticed that when using the system
resources in the task manager.. the cpu is at full usage prior to shutting
down...

Suggestions? A new graphics card? A different machine?

Scott.

"sw" wrote in message
...
I purchased a computer system yesterday consisting of...

What I assume is an Intel P4 3ghz
listed as Intel 2.93ghz LGA775 533m

Intel 915GAVL ?Prescott? Motherboard...
c/w HT Technology

I had the choice of a ATI X300 Radeon 128 MB Video Card or to
upgrade?!?!?! to Graphics Media Accelerator 900.. I took the latter.
Seems to be a onboard Intel system...

1G Kensington DDR 400 mhz 2.5v ram...

Windows XP Media Center

I purchased it to run star wars knights of the old republic. It ran fine
the first time I ran the game.. but the next day when loading the file to
play.. the game shuts down returning me to windows.

I've tried loading the latest driver from intel for the graphics.. I've
increased the page file size.. I noticed that when using the system
resources in the task manager.. the cpu is at full usage prior to shutting
down...

Suggestions? A new graphics card? A different machine?

Scott.

What program (or service) is taking up all of the CPU resources?
--
Cari (MS-MVP)
Printing & Imaging

On Fri, 15 Jul 2005 20:29:32 -0400, "sw"
wrote:

I purchased a computer system yesterday consisting of...

What I assume is an Intel P4 3ghz
listed as Intel 2.93ghz LGA775 533m

Intel 915GAVL ?Prescott? Motherboard...
c/w HT Technology

I had the choice of a ATI X300 Radeon 128 MB Video Card or to upgrade?!?!?!
to Graphics Media Accelerator 900.. I took the latter. Seems to be a
onboard Intel system...


Upgrade? Intel video is about as slow as it gets. Some
SIS integrated video is even worse due to more buggy
drivers, but if you went to a computer store, put on a
bindfold and just grabbed the first card possible, it'd be
significantly faster. If it were an nVidia card it's be
significantly better overall. If ATI, it'd be better except
for the drivers.



1G Kensington DDR 400 mhz 2.5v ram...

Windows XP Media Center

I purchased it to run star wars knights of the old republic. It ran fine
the first time I ran the game.. but the next day when loading the file to
play.. the game shuts down returning me to windows.

Most often that means you changed an in-game setting. See
if you can reset the defaults for the game. Check on game
forums for how to do it if that doesn't work- sometimes
deleting a game config file will cause game to reproduce it
with defaults. Other times uninstalling, then deleting the
game folder (if it still exists on the HDD) then
reinstalling will work.

Check on a path for the game and a newer video driver.


I've tried loading the latest driver from intel for the graphics..

Just to confirm, this came from inte's website or elsewhere?
Board manufacturers often do not have the latest drivers,
nor does Microsoft.


I've
increased the page file size..

You had it's maximum size manually limited? Don't do that,
but otherwise all you should need is to have it set to
anything. I mean, setting a fixed minimum will help
perforamnce in general if that makes it unfragmented HDD
space but otherwise all that's needed is no upper limit and
enough HDD space that it can expand if necessary- half a GB
of HDD space should be more than sufficient but if you had
less than that amount of free space on the pagefile
partition, try to make more free space. By half a Gig I
mean, if you had set a half-gig minimum pagefile, that
should be enough, you would not then need another half gig.
This assumes the system starts out with a fair amount of
memory, perhaps 384MB or more.

I noticed that when using the system
resources in the task manager.. the cpu is at full usage prior to shutting
down...

Look at what's using CPU time in task manager.
It could just be background apps or things you "meant" to
install, or it could be virus, spyware,etc- scan the system
and note windows startup applications. Even with 50%
utilization, that alone should not crash the game.



Suggestions? A new graphics card? A different machine?


Test stability of the system with Prime95's Torture Test,
and run memtest86+ for several hours. If it passes both of
those I'd look at a video card, as your video will defintely
not be sufficient for future games of any significant
complexity. In that case, ignore the comment about about
randomly grabbing any card, seek online reviews to pick the
best card for your budget.

kony wrote:
On Fri, 15 Jul 2005 20:29:32 -0400, "sw"
wrote:

I purchased a computer system yesterday consisting of...

What I assume is an Intel P4 3ghz
listed as Intel 2.93ghz LGA775 533m

Intel 915GAVL ?Prescott? Motherboard...
c/w HT Technology

I had the choice of a ATI X300 Radeon 128 MB Video Card or to
upgrade?!?!?! to Graphics Media Accelerator 900.. I took the latter.
Seems to be a onboard Intel system...


Upgrade? Intel video is about as slow as it gets. Some
SIS integrated video is even worse due to more buggy
drivers, but if you went to a computer store, put on a
bindfold and just grabbed the first card possible, it'd be
significantly faster. If it were an nVidia card it's be
significantly better overall. If ATI, it'd be better except
for the drivers.



1G Kensington DDR 400 mhz 2.5v ram...

Windows XP Media Center

I purchased it to run star wars knights of the old republic. It ran
fine the first time I ran the game.. but the next day when loading
the file to play.. the game shuts down returning me to windows.

Most often that means you changed an in-game setting. See
if you can reset the defaults for the game. Check on game
forums for how to do it if that doesn't work- sometimes
deleting a game config file will cause game to reproduce it
with defaults. Other times uninstalling, then deleting the
game folder (if it still exists on the HDD) then
reinstalling will work.

Check on a path for the game and a newer video driver.


I've tried loading the latest driver from intel for the graphics..

Just to confirm, this came from inte's website or elsewhere?
Board manufacturers often do not have the latest drivers,
nor does Microsoft.


I've
increased the page file size..

You had it's maximum size manually limited? Don't do that,
but otherwise all you should need is to have it set to
anything. I mean, setting a fixed minimum will help
perforamnce in general if that makes it unfragmented HDD
space but otherwise all that's needed is no upper limit and
enough HDD space that it can expand if necessary- half a GB
of HDD space should be more than sufficient but if you had
less than that amount of free space on the pagefile
partition, try to make more free space. By half a Gig I
mean, if you had set a half-gig minimum pagefile, that
should be enough, you would not then need another half gig.
This assumes the system starts out with a fair amount of
memory, perhaps 384MB or more.

I noticed that when using the system
resources in the task manager.. the cpu is at full usage prior to
shutting down...

Look at what's using CPU time in task manager.
It could just be background apps or things you "meant" to
install, or it could be virus, spyware,etc- scan the system
and note windows startup applications. Even with 50%
utilization, that alone should not crash the game.



Suggestions? A new graphics card? A different machine?


Test stability of the system with Prime95's Torture Test,
and run memtest86+ for several hours. If it passes both of
those I'd look at a video card, as your video will defintely
not be sufficient for future games of any significant
complexity. In that case, ignore the comment about about
randomly grabbing any card, seek online reviews to pick the
best card for your budget.

Run through the recommendations on this site:
http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/slowcom.htm

Q