Hey Matthias, thanks for the info.

I've tried doing the same thing with Age of Mythology, and the same thing happens with me. As soon as you get into the main menu, there is some animation in the background. As long as you don't touch anything, the game doesn't freeze up. After watching a movie (about 1.5 hours) I simply moved the mouse and in a second the game froze.

Smells like some interupt conflict, but I have none to begin with. And the only thing that has changed since it the game ran fine is that I replaced my videocard...

That's it.

I tried further options:

- deaktivated all USB connectors
- installed newest mouse driver

Result: problem still exists - my knowledge reached its end

Let us compare our systems! May be, we find some similarities that can be the source of the difficulties.

- Athlon XP 2000+ (Thouroughbred)
- MSI KT3Ultra2 (VIA KT333)
- 512 MB Infineon (CL2)
- ATI Radeon 9600Pro
- MS WheelMouse Optical
- Creative Soundblaster Live 5.1

- completely reinstalled system (format c
- WinXP SP1 (everything up to date with WindowsUpdate)
- ATI Catalyst 3.6 with ControlPanel
- DirectX 9.0b

Show me yours, I showed your mine

Asus CUSL2-C mainboard
Intel PIII/866 MHz
384 MB internal mem
30 Gig Western Digital
Trust Digital Optical 5.1 soundcard
Microsuck Internet Keyboard
Microsuck Mouse (regular)
Sapphire Radeon 9600 Pro
LGE Flatron 775FT 17" monitor

Don't see any important similarities.

have you tried using a logitech mouse? the ms mouse seems to be one similarity in your systems. i'm sure you could track down a basic logitech usb mouse for cheap, or borrow one from a buddy.

I will bring one from work if I don't forget. That'll be they day: Sapphire Radeon 9600 Pro incompatible with Miscrosoft mouse...

Hmm got the MS Intellimouse too. I just had to reinstall everything after a overclocking disaster, lol. I didn't load the drivers that came with the intellimouse or the MS office keyboard. Everything is working fine so far.

Hi!

At last I found someone with the exact same problem!
In my case too, not moving the mouse helps to avoid the problem.
I posted this to ATI, I hope they will react soon.


Using:
Connect 3D Radeon 9600 Pro 128 MB
Logitech (dual optical) or Microsoft (Intelli Explorer) mouse, both on USB.
W98SE + all important updates
Newest Catalyst driver
MSI Mainboard with VIA chipset (MS 6590 - KT4A Ultra)
512 MB Ram

List with games that don't work in connection with our problem:

C&C Generals
SimCity 4
Praetorians
Neverwinter Nights
NFS 6

have you tried switching your mouse to a different usb port? maybe it has some goofy resource conflict.

Yes, I also tried to switch it to the PS/2 Port!

I got this sapphire card from the internet, and I'm stuck. The driver from the CD...works fine. Can't install newest driver, the screen goes black after it hits the loading screen. When I try to install 3.5 from the add hardware wizard it says

Please insert the CD labeled ATI technologies Inc. Installation Disc (Video) into D:

I don't know what the hell that means. But I put the video card CD that came with it in there and it didn't let me go any further. So I tried to download the omega driver. I tried at least 4 different versions. Installing them from the add hardware wizard and it says the same thing as the other did, please insert disk (video). So I tried to just install it manually, and it says INF Error. Could not load driver. So i'm forced to use the 3.4 which really sux. I want to play counterstrike in open GL not D3D. But I have no choice but to use D3D because it says that open GL isn't supported (in counterstrike menu). I don't know what to do!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

where exactly does the screen go blank? i had to wrestle with mine going blank at the windows xp loading screen. turns out i had the gart settings incorrectly set at 4x agp. i dropped it to 1x agp and made sure the fast write option was off, and my system appears to run pretty much flawlessly.

if you can't get in, try booting with the ENABLE VGA (or something like that) option.

Ok i'll try to change the settings. Can I change the agp settings in the bios. I'll check. It goes black right after the xp loading, never hits the welcome screen at all.

I just recently bought a 9600 Pro and am having the same problem with C&C Generals. One reason I bought it was so that I could run Generals at a faster rate, and now....Man I am so frustrated.

My computer is a Sony Vaio:
2Ghz
1GB of Ram
MS mouse
60 GB Hard drive

By the way, I am running XP and it is a P4.

The screen-goes-black-during-boot is another issue discussed in http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/10667/ . Please stick to the topic: games freeze after a few seconds of gameplay.

Oh and Matthias, I'll extend the list of games that have the same problem:

C&C Generals
SimCity 4
Praetorians
Neverwinter Nights
NFS 6
Tombraider - Angel of Darkness
Age of Mythology

and it goes on ...

Neverwinter Nights
Gothic 2
Rise of Nations

I meant that my game freezed also, not the blank screen problem. I have contacted both ea and ati about this problem.

I've got a Radeon 9600 as well and it's been a nightmare.
I'm running it in a Asus A7V333 mobo with an Athlon 2100+ and 512MB of DDR on 1 stick.

I have had 0 problems with this setup when I ran my GeForce 3 card, butnow I get pretty much the same issues as everyone else.

I don't think it's related to the 8X AGP spec, as my system can't run that and I still have issues.

I've tried EVERYTHING!

Reformatted, disabled Fast writes, moved all my PCI cards to their own IRQ's, tried 3 different BIOS'es, tried 3 different Catylist drivers, updated all of my chipset drivers, verified that my PS holds a steady 3.3V, verfied that the system run cool (33C case, 42C CPU).

I'm so tired of this thing, but I spent the cash, and I'm determined to make it work.

FIC told me to try new RAM and pull out all of my PCI cards.
Can't do the RAM, as it costs $140CA to replace my stick on the guess that it may be bad......when it's run the last year problem free??
And what does the "AGP Performance Control" setting do in the BIOS of VIA chipsets. I've googled it to death and can't find anything..in english at least. Maybe I need to learn German.