Strange annoying random black screen while playing CF
I'm having very strange random black screens while playing Crossfire. I had this problem from the very first day I installed Crossfire.
It doesn't occur always, but sometimes I'm having it even twice in a match. When it happens the game freezes for a couple of seconds. After that my screen becomes black and the game goes on (most of the time I'm shot down by then..). then I hit ctrl+alt+delete to activate the task manager. Then, when I close the task manager and click in the black screen the game freezes again for a couple of seconds (10-20). Then it finally returns to the game, wasting 1-2 minutes of gameplay. As I sayed, the bug can stay away for 5-10 matches, but it can also happen every match once or twice. IT'S VERY ANNOYING!
It's also interesting to know that 40-50% of the crashes occur right after I die.
All of my drivers are up to date, including Directx (I have Directx 9.0c). My system runs on Windows XP professional with service pack 3. I have a 2,4 Ghz Pentium 4 processor and 1024 mb of physical memory. My graphics card is an ATI Radeon 9200 SE with 128 mb memory.
I hope I've informed you enough about the bug and my system. I hope someone knows the solution to this problem because it's very annoying. (And sorry if my English was bad, I'm a Dutch guy, so xD)
It doesn't occur always, but sometimes I'm having it even twice in a match. When it happens the game freezes for a couple of seconds. After that my screen becomes black and the game goes on (most of the time I'm shot down by then..). then I hit ctrl+alt+delete to activate the task manager. Then, when I close the task manager and click in the black screen the game freezes again for a couple of seconds (10-20). Then it finally returns to the game, wasting 1-2 minutes of gameplay. As I sayed, the bug can stay away for 5-10 matches, but it can also happen every match once or twice. IT'S VERY ANNOYING!
It's also interesting to know that 40-50% of the crashes occur right after I die.
All of my drivers are up to date, including Directx (I have Directx 9.0c). My system runs on Windows XP professional with service pack 3. I have a 2,4 Ghz Pentium 4 processor and 1024 mb of physical memory. My graphics card is an ATI Radeon 9200 SE with 128 mb memory.
I hope I've informed you enough about the bug and my system. I hope someone knows the solution to this problem because it's very annoying. (And sorry if my English was bad, I'm a Dutch guy, so xD)
Comments
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Papadolier wrote: »on the keyboard, hit the windows logo+R then type in "eventvwr" (without quotes) it will open the windows system log. in there expand warnings tab > do you have display error messages (4101)?
I've done what you told me but I didn't come across the 4101 error. I don't think windows would log such an error. Today the bug only showed up three times.
I think I'll clean up my computer soon, because my system is getting unstable lately, getting BSOD's and such.Papadolier wrote: »You probably have the resolution up too high, try turning everything down to low, then see tell me the results.
No, I've tried every resolution with all settings, and each of them still contain the bug, so that's not the problem. I think it's my buggy system. -
does this happen in any other game than cf?
im running windows 7, maybe the eventvwr is not the same as in xp, maybe try look in other tabs if you see any errors that accures at the same time as you get the black screen, for example, you get blackscreen at 3:33 am, then seach for an error message that was created that time.
This problem sounds alot like the problem im having, and the windows system log register it as an 4101 display driver error. for me it seams to be a cooling problem, im using a laptop so i bought a laptop cooler and im getting this error less than before but i still gets it, mainly in this game, but it also happens in other games but not as often.
You could try speed up your fans 100% while gaming. i have read alot about this error and speeding up the fans have solved it for many, but not for all. -
Nope, only happens in CF, that's why I think it's sofware related, because I can run much heavier games than CrossFire (Like Unreal Tournament 2k4, Half Life 2) without any problems.
I discovered very critical issues in my system lately (malware, hdd damage, registry errors) and tried to solve them all. Now my system is stable again, so I'm going to play CF and see if it really helped. I'll tell how it's running soon.
Thx for your help anyway, eventvwr helped me to locate and solve those critcal problems too, didn't knew about that command. -
Exact the same problem! I didn't get the 'send report' error message before because I didn't had ATI tray tools, but now I have, and I see that error when this is happening. The funny thing is, as I mentioned before, my gpu can take much more gpu intensive games without overheating, while in CF I get these malfunctions frequently. They should do something about it because I don't think it's my hardware.
There's also something else. After I've played CF and I quit, the resolution and bpp of my desktop stays the same as configured in CF. That's kinda annoying too, but I can put my own resolution back manually. So it's not a critical problem.
What kind of gpu do you have? -
Nope, only happens in CF, that's why I think it's sofware related, because I can run much heavier games than CrossFire (Like Unreal Tournament 2k4, Half Life 2) without any problems.
My laptop runs CF perfectly fine aswell, but CF is generally a buggy and confusing game![:\](https://forum.z8games.com/resources/emoji/confused.png ":\")
Did you say you've tried GameBooster? -
I've tried gamebooster and other stuff long before I got CF, but it didn't really change anything for me while playing games. Games like Ut2k4 normally run at 30 fps on the highest settings, which is quite nice for my old gpu. CF runs very smooth too, but the framerate drops a bit in 16-player matches.
CF is so buggy, i don't understand why they released it this way, they should come with a patch soon. At least I hope it will give a solution for my problem. -
A might-be solution..
I've searched the web about this problem, and it seems I'm not allone. Many users of ATI gpu's are experiencing the same problem while playing games like Call Of Duty 1 or 2 or Counterstrike: Source.
The sad thing is nobody really knew a solution. But most of them advised to lower your 'AGP write speed' in SMARTGART (for instance, I normally run at 4x, so I should put it on 2x). They also advised to disable 'fast write' there, I'm going to try this all and see what will happen.
Someone even came with a patch for windows 2000 to solve this AGP matter, but the link is to that patch is dead now, so it could have been a bad idea to use it since no one bothered to spread the patch over the internet (Couldn't find it anyway).
Other options are: Putting a fan on your gpu, buying a new gpu, buying a new motherboard or just clear your gpu and/or the rest of your computer of dust.
Know that this is not a CrossFire issue, though CrossFire still remains a pretty buggy game (this is not my only problem with this game).
The reason you might have to buy a new motherboard or gpu is because of the fact that your motherboard doesn't really like your gpu, and causes conflicts with it. The 'VPU recovery window' doesn't always mean your gpu is overheated, sometimes it just thinks it's overheated so it will shut it down to prevent "damage". The patch I've told about was made to fix this, but it never stayed on the internet.
I'm not going to invest money in this computer since it's worth nothing more than a pile of junk. It's definitely not a gaming rig. So I'll just stick with reducing the SMARTGART options.
I hope this information was useful to any other people with this problem. -
Yeah I have had the same problem for months. I also have a Radeon 9200. Everything you said I am also having the same exact problems. And I have been also aware that many other people get the same problems with Radeon. I think it might be as simple as CF just isn't that compatible with the Radeon 9200 series. My computer was recently wiped clean scratched the hard drive and everything. And I don't have any problems with any other games.
The weird thing is, I found out about this FPS game called Sudden Attack. The game is the EXACT same as Crossfire but the movement is lot more like the original Counter-Strike and you move much slower. But even the voice commands are the exact same. The item shop. Everything down to a T the exact same but I have no problems with the game at all. Of course Crossfire is a million times better but I have tried just about everything to get rid of the black screen of death.
Oh and with the event numbers I found that I see ( i have xp and yeah it was a little dif) I see a lot of
7036
7035
Those event numbers, so I dont know if that means anything to anyone or helps.
It seems to be getting worse though, but also it seems to happen with certain guns I've noticed. I am trying to break a scar light and I got the bl ack screen of death about 20 times in the last 2 days. But I almost never happens when I am using certain guns like the ak, m16, scar heavy, type89. But also seems to happen a lot in clan matches as well. Ive noticed the safest map by far is downtown but even that is starting not to work. Also I found that when i use the mp5 adv it always crashed within 2 minutes.
I really do hope there is a solution to this, or to at least make it more tolerable. I really can't afford to have to go buy a gforce graphics card (that is what crossfire recommends i believe). I have tried everything, graphics are on the absolute minimum, and I have always been at the 2x write speed or whatever it is. I am going to try some of the SMART options you said but I might have already tried it.
Its always felt like I get more crashed when I play certain maps or use certain guns. Like I know to never play TD because its a guaranteed black screen of death. Not a problem all I play is S&D anyways but would be nice to have no fear of having a great score or winning a clan match then crash when my comrades need me the most. Its almost getting to the point where its like, I either buy a new graphics card or just start playing other games.
My only conflict is that I am madly addicted to crossfire, lol. -
Well as I said, if you search the web you'll see that ATI gpu's have these kind of problems very frequently, so I'd recommend one from Nvidia.
But if I got the money I'm going to buy a high end computer so I won't have these kinds of problems anymore.
Reinstalling and lowing down graphics won't help a lot, at least not for me. -
Those event ID's (7035, 7036) are perfectly normal, read this:
http://www.eventid.net/display.asp?eventid=7035&eventno=1530&source=Service%20Control%20Manager&phase=1
Event ID 7035 will show up when a service is powered on and event ID 7036 will show up when a service is powered off. These events are recorded by the Service Control Manager, you might want to check out if that's their source in eventvwr
They are not a problem. -
Editing the SMARTGART settings doesn't work for me, I just tested it and still got the same issues, so I'm going to reset those settings.
It seems that this is an ATI radeon 9200 SE problem. Crossfire is apparently not compatible with this gpu, so the story comes to a sad end.
Either CrossFire will get a patch to fully support this gpu, or everybody with this problem needs another gpu. If you play CF frequently I should take one from Nvidia, else just take one from ATI, as they remain the best choice dispite the issues with some of them.
I hope for the first solution though. If the CF crew think this is important they might look at it. -
Yeah I agree my friend I have come to the same conclusion. Although I did find a temporary fix for me. It came to the point where I was getting the black screen within a minute of playing. I did the game defrag on crossfire and it had a lot of fragmented and obsolete files. It fixed it right up and seemed to really help a ton. So now I defrag CF with game booster everytime before I play and I haven't gotten it yet. But I know it's still bound to happen but yeah. I am definitely thinking about just buying one of the nvidia or whatever. I think I am going to wait for the new patch and see if it improves, if not I will be forced to buy a new graphics card. I think this thread is concluded for the most part. Thanks to all for your help. Peace.
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im having an ati card too, but a mobility radeon HD 5650. I know we dont have the same error, i get "Display driver atikmdag stopped responding and has recovered" but it acts exactly the same as yours, its maybe related? to bad i have a laptop so changing to a nvidia card is not an option.. i have contacted support on both the manufacturer of my laptop and ati so i will see if i get a replay. and as i also can play much more "heavier" games than crossfire and almost never get the error is very strange. i even get this error when im at lobby sometimes
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i found a souloution to my problem, probably not recommended, only as last resort but i get rid of my windows 7 and installed windows xp sp3, i never had this problem again.
But then windows updated the system, 31 updates after sp3 and i strated getting BSODs, something about ati2dvag, so i restored my pc from a restore point before this update was made and it worked fine again, i disabled windows update...
wierd but it seams to be a windows problem here?
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