Total novice here! Each time my grandson tries to load a game, the computer goes straight into stand-by mode and shuts down. When we restart, the windows was not properly shut down message comes up. The c drive is scanned for errors, which are, of course, not found. Thanks for any help.

Dawn P

Re: Games Shutdown

Hello Dawn

Need a little more info here.

What is the name of the game you are playing? What version of windows are you running? Did you install the game? Or trying to run it directly? Does it happen will all games? How old are the games? Have they every worked on this PC

Old games that used MSDOS and sometimes restarted the PC in MSDOS mode, which could explain what’s happening here.

However with out full knowledge of you PC system its quite hard to trouble shoot. Gus

Re: Games Shutdown

Thank you Gus... Running Windows 98 SE. Certain game trials down loaded will run, others won't ie; microsoft pinball arcade will run, but gutterball won't.

Any others attempted just shutdown also. For some reason any games attempted have shut down. Being a novice I thought it might have something to do with drivers, or something. I honestly am still in the egg as far as this technology is concerned. Thanks for your help...

Dawn

Re: Games Shutdown

Although unlikely, another possible explaination is that there are some corrupted directx files. Something that could be tried would be installing the latest version of directx from the pcworld cover discs.

With windows98 systems, directx updates some files used by windows, so it wouldn't be a bad idea to give this a try. Directx is also available for download from the internet or magazines.

I wouldn't recommend downloading directx without a broadband (high speed internet) connection.

Re: Games Shutdown

Thanks again for the help. After loading a game (microsoft game)& it crashed, a message popped up saying that there may be a hardware conflict. Maybe I should take the hard drive to a pro until I learn a bit more about the pc.

Thanks for all the responses,

Dawn

Re: Games Shutdown

There are several issues here:

1. By visiting the web-site of the game (or the game manufacturer), you may be able to get the latest patches. Download these patches and save it to your HDD (hard disk drive). Apply these patches to the game that you have loaded. Ofcourse read the instructions and you may see that it specifically addresses your problem.

2. By visiting the video card manufacturer (or if it's an old video card and the manufacturer no longer supports it via updates/patches then there are web-sites that have old drivers....can't remember exactly the web address but google if necessary), download the latest drivers for the video card. Again save these updates to your HDD for later convenience. Hopefully, you have the original video drivers as well - in case you may need 'em.

3. You probably want DirectX 8.1 rather than the latest DX 9.0b - since you have an older operating system and video card. I think that later file was around 30 MB - I assume that the earlier version is about the same sizet. Otherwise, you may find DX8 on a cover CD for a computer magazine.

Maybe if you state the make and model of your video card and the game title, more information may be useful.

In my past experience of having difficulties with a particular game, I found that applying the latest patch and having the latest driver for the video card usually addresses the problem. At least, if you don't solve the problem, you will have the latest driver for your video card and the most up-to-date DX that your system can support - which may help in future with other software.

Re: Games Shutdown

Thank you so much for the help; you wonderful people are Wizards, and that is definitely a compliment! I'll give your advice a run.

Thanks again,
Dawn P