"Devil's 0wn" & Games

[Bliznab]

I've recently discovered that my Windows XP Pro is a pirated Windows Disk, and I -will- be purchasing a proper disk from PC Club or Best Buy.

Here are my computer specs:

Processor: AMD Athlon XP 2000+

Heatsink: OEM Fan in box with CPU

Power Supply: Antec TruPower 430Watt

OS: Windows XP Pro (Devil's 0wn Bootleg)

Mainboard: MSI KT3 Ultra-2 (MS-6380)

RAM: Both are 256 DDR PC-2100 RAM, 1 is Corsair, other is not.

Sound Card: Soundblaster Audigy Gamer

Video Card: AOpen Nvidia GeForce4 MX440 64meg

Hard Drive: Maxtor 40GB 7200RPM (2 Partitions, 15gig for XP in NT, rest in FAT32)

CD-Rom: Sony CD-RW (Forgot Speeds of RW/W) 40x Read

The following Text below this I copied from another post at another board. What I'm wanting to ask the community here is if someone can clearly tell me if this well-known bootleg can cause the issue I am describing below - - -

"Just for the record, over the past year I have reformatted the HD numerous times while making sure to delete partitions. I have always installed the drivers from scratch and updated them to the latest available from the manufacturers website. I keep a clean ship and run continuously Webroot Spysweeper, & Spykiller to keep spyware off. I was using Norton for quite a while as my Antivirus, but I deleted it.. and use EZ Firewall & Antivirus..which I always keep on and updated.

Now, what happens is this. As long as I do not play any games which require 3D usage.. the computer runs just fine like any other PC. But when I play my games, the problem arises out of no where. I play Counter-Strike online, Day of Defeat, & Wolfenstein. These games will start up fine and I can play for a while.. but out of the friggin' blue, 1 of 2 things will happen - -

1. Screen will lock up, computer will lock up, and some sound will go into a loop & continue to play. This will stay like this until I restart the computer by holding the power button 5secs or hitting RESET.

2. Computer will Reboot. Completely, no shutdown.. nothing... a complete Reboot.

It seems that with the higher end game (graphics wise), the faster the problem happens. I have recently begun playing Neverwinter Nights: Gold. I can play the game just fine.. but when it goes to load towns or areas... the bar will fill up til just about a lil over 3/4 and will pause. Either it will continue to load, or I will have the lockup or reboot issue."

I hope I'm not breaking any rules or wasting anyone's time, ... I've been having this issue for over a year now...and I am just so tired of it. Gaming is my favorite pastime, and this issue has darn near ruined it for me. I cannot figure out what it is, nor can any of my friends. Though, while browsing the internet for this issue tonight.. I stumbled upon your forums and saw mentioning of this bootleg.

Please help... I just want to know if I may have a hardware issue, or if it's this dang blasted Devil's 0wn Bootleg....

[Snoop]

sounds like a hardware conflict of buggy graphics card drivers to me.

try moving one of your pci cards so there is a gap between agp and the 1st pci card.

try moving your pci cards to different slots.

i would guess your graphics card and sound card are sharing resources or something.

if your sound card is directly below your agp card move it down a slot further so there is a free pci slot below the graphics card.

dont know about more recent mother boards but some of the older ones the agp slot and pci 1 share resources more often that not.

i really doubt its an OS problem

could be that one of your ram sticks is borked aswell theres a dos program that you can use to check your ram but i cant remember what its called.

im sure someone will reply with its name and download location.

also make sure you have the latest drivers for your motherboard.

[Mr Optimistic]

That sounds familiar. Happens from time to time, latest I had was with Doom 3. I changed from m/b sound to a pci card and upgraded the graphics card and now problem has gone. Your graphics card is a lot behind the pace.

[Drewdatrip]

Sounds like a cooling issue to me....

I mena yes i could see how having corp could effect ur games if u cant updates to sp2( compatabilty and all)

But if it were me id make sure the GPU and CPU are staying cool

|Drew|