WEIRD, but non threatening, problem!!

[Richard_Simmons]

Okay here is my weird problem, I was playing Tron 2.0 last night till around 2:00am (cool game) and I stopped the game cause I was tired and shut the computer off next. I woke up and turned the computer on, and left it idle for about 2 hours, when I went to go play Tron again later the screen would start up but it would throw me back to the desktop for no reason with Tron minimized in the menu bar and the game music playing! Every time I would restore the program the screen would flicker and throw me back out. My desktop res is set to 1280*1024 and the game is running at 1024*768. Okay so I first thought maybe my driver got messed some how, so I re installed it again (ATI Catalyst) and started the game again, it didn't work, same problem. Installed Direct X once again and same problem, what was really ticking me off is that last night I played it fine and haven't done ONE THING to the computer in any way and it won't start. So out of desperate last resort messure, I changed my desktop res to 1024*768 and tried to run the game BINGO it worked! So I figured that from now on I was going to have to change my sdesktop res to get it to work. Then I ran into another problem, I loaded a game of Battlefield 1942 (which I also had set at 1024) but it kept shooting me out cause the MENU screen is at 800*600, so inorder to start a game I had to hit everything blindly, with the screen not up and me just pressing the buttons. When I finally fiddled around the game began and the screen loaded to 1024*768 and I was playing! Now, the problem isn't like life threatening, I can still just switch the desktop res before I play a game, it is just really annoying, cause I never did anything to have this happen in the first place. Have any of you had or heard of this problem and know if there is a way to fix it? Any help would be appreciated, oh and I am not to computer illitrate either, I checked all of the monitor and video card options.

My Specs (if needed)
P4 3.2GHZ 800mhz FSB w/ Hyper-Threading
Intel D865PERL w/ 8x AGP
Antec Case with 450watt Power Supply w/ 5 built in fans and air filter
1024mbs DDR 400mhz (2x 512mb)
2x Western Digital 40gb HD (@7200rpm)
ATI Radeon 9800pro 128mb (@8x AGP)
Intel SoundMax3D 5.1
ViewSonic Perfect Flat 17' Monitor
....and I am running WinXP Pro

[phobos77]

MY HEAD HURTS! :bucky!:


But i think i can help you out... maybe! ok... first of all-which cat version did you download? the newest is 3.7. also, did you USE DRIVER CLEANER from driverheaven.net? that will erase ANY ati drivers you had and gives you a clean installation. Tron 2.0 is still a new buggy game and a patch should help-with battlefield, do you have the latest patch? thats all i got under my belt, it probably WONT solve your problem-consider reformating and reinstalling windows!

Sounds like you install driver then direct x 9 which you need to erase and install your driver again cause it sounds like the ati control panel is not installed properly. And the removal tool as stated in post above is great. Some other things to check that may or may not affect are bios updated, windows updated (was a few fixes with dx9), drivers installed while in safe mode, ad-aware ran, wait for vertical sync off (for troubleshooting) not application. Just some things to try if you haven't already and I usually save the drivers to desktop then remove then reboot in safe mode and load driver reboot then load control panel in safe mode because drivers hate anti-virus programs.

If the above didn't help one thing you could do is if you had battlefield installed before tron, as I assume, is do a system restore right before you installed tron. Then load battlefield if everything works correctly kinda narrows it down to problem with tron.