General Septem Posted May 5, 2008 Posted May 5, 2008 I decided a week ago that my installation of XP was old enough (many years) and it was time to reformat and reinstall. I have spare drives, so backing up was easy. I just copied everything over into its own folder so I could decide what I needed later. I also install most of my programs on that drive, so I was able to reformat C: without losing any of my saved game data or having to reinstall anything. Or so I thought... After the reformat, I noticed that all of my games were buggy. I had installed all of the drivers I needed, specifically the NVIDIA drivers, EVGA drivers, and sound card drivers. The main problem was noticed when playing KOTOR and KOTOR II, the latter I'd installed after the format when I realized I still had the disk for it. However, I also noticed trouble with CoD4 and F.E.A.R., as single player CoD4 would not work, my hacks for multi wouldn't work, and in F.E.A.R. the problem was less noticeable, but it too was slightly buggy. All of these games are installed on drive I:. The issue was different for each game, and typically started out fine but began to degenerate after a few minutes of playing. Here is a general synopsis of the problems observed: KOTOR/KOTOR II Game would start out fine but rapidly degenerate after 10-15 minutes of playing Computer terminals would be buggy; a background sound would get caught in a loop, and sometimes after selecting an option the game would freeze for a minute before moving on Graphics would be glitchy, lighting on objects would be all wrong, rainbow effect or blacking out of player character Movement would become sluggish but then the character would rapidly move halfway across the level, often becoming stuck in a wall Player character movement would freeze altogether FEAR Game would start out fine, glitches took longer to appear than they did in KOTOR (about 60 minutes maybe) Reload animations buggy, the hand and ammo cartridge don't move together "Tears" cheat stops working, full ammo is given but doesn't remain infinite ammo like it's supposed to, player runs out of grenades after throwing five but the counter still says there are five and doesn't go down CoD4 Single player mode no longer works, says a file is missing Multiplayer mode won't open with hack, says a file is missing (I only use hacks as equalizers on servers dominated by hackers, and while spectating to catch wallhackers) Multiplayer mode will open by itself, but only loads about 50 servers All of these games have been reinstalled or fresh installed after the reformat. Here are the measures I've taken to fix the problem, to no avail: Reinstall drivers and DirectX 9.0 Uninstall conflicting video codecs Reformat again I am currently running CHKDSK on drive I:. There do not appear to be any errors yet but I do not know what else it could be as I've reformatted and reinstalled XP again. Any help anyone might have would be greatly appreciated. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest SuppA-SnipA Posted May 5, 2008 Posted May 5, 2008 try a new install xp cd clean? sp2 slipstreamed? all drivers up to date? oh and finally make sure the ide cable on ur optic drive has no tears finally finally, run memtest Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
slick2500 Posted May 5, 2008 Posted May 5, 2008 I would also recommend giving your hard drive a good defrag with something other than Windows Defrag. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
red930 Posted May 5, 2008 Posted May 5, 2008 you formatted and reinstalled the games right? and after that you copied the folders to where they are placed peviously? or did i misunderstand? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
General Septem Posted May 5, 2008 Posted May 5, 2008 try a new installxp cd clean? sp2 slipstreamed? all drivers up to date? oh and finally make sure the ide cable on ur optic drive has no tears finally finally, run memtest A new install of the games or Windows? Because I did both of those. I never even installed KOTOR II until after the reformat. The CD is right from Microsoft. SP2 slipstreamed. I've used this CD for years with no problems. As far as I know, I'll check on that though. This includes a game that isn't run from the disk, but I'll try reinstalling it from the other drive to see if that makes a difference. I would also recommend giving your hard drive a good defrag with something other than Windows Defrag. I'm running Perfect Disk now, thanks. you formatted and reinstalled the games right?and after that you copied the folders to where they are placed peviously? or did i misunderstand? I didn't copy folders, they were installed on the I: drive to begin with. But I did end up having to or just deciding to reinstall all four of the games I tried anyway. By the way, I also ran all of the 3DMarks and they ran fine. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
red930 Posted May 5, 2008 Posted May 5, 2008 what might work is a reinstall of the games and then copy the install you had over the fresh installed games , might though not sure Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wevsspot Posted May 5, 2008 Posted May 5, 2008 GS, Regarding games.... When I do a fresh format and reinstall the OS, I only save the specific application/player profile folder(s) from each game that actually contain your player stats, special weapons, tweaks etc. Never every folder that constitutes the entire game installation. I've tried that before and have never had anything but trouble when trying to move those back to the game's installation folder after a fresh install. Is KotorII an add on to the original Kotor (i.e. does it require that the original version is installed in order to install and play the second revision?) or is it completely independent and standalone from the first version? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest SuppA-SnipA Posted May 5, 2008 Posted May 5, 2008 oh so he isnt reinstalling but instead he is recopying the games folders to their respective locations? hmm i advise against that as well Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
General Septem Posted May 5, 2008 Posted May 5, 2008 oh so he isnt reinstalling but instead he is recopying the games folders to their respective locations? hmm i advise against that as well No, I'm not recopying the game folders to their respective locations, they were installed there to begin with. I have two 500 GiB drives and an 80, I only formatted the 80. All of my programs were unaffected. Regardless of that I did still reinstall most of them from the original disks. By the way, I've copied fully installed programs from RAR files without installing them properly and 99/100 times they work fine, but that's not the situation here. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
General Septem Posted May 5, 2008 Posted May 5, 2008 GS, Regarding games.... When I do a fresh format and reinstall the OS, I only save the specific application/player profile folder(s) from each game that actually contain your player stats, special weapons, tweaks etc. Never every folder that constitutes the entire game installation. I've tried that before and have never had anything but trouble when trying to move those back to the game's installation folder after a fresh install. Is KotorII an add on to the original Kotor (i.e. does it require that the original version is installed in order to install and play the second revision?) or is it completely independent and standalone from the first version? I didn't actually back them up, they were installed on that drive to begin with so I left them there. Typically when you reinstall over an old version the saved games are kept, so that is what I did when I found I had to. KOTOR II is completely standalone, and was actually released by a different company than the one that did the original. Neither one had issues before the format. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest SuppA-SnipA Posted May 5, 2008 Posted May 5, 2008 turn off antivirus, give it a shot Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
General Septem Posted May 5, 2008 Posted May 5, 2008 turn off antivirus, give it a shot As soon as PerfectDisk is finished defragmenting that drive, I'll try that. It's taking FOREVER on that drive. The other three partitions finished defragging hours ago. I'm starting to think the problem is/was that drive. CHKDSK didn't seem to find any errors on it though, which is a good thing. Any other disk diagnostic tools I should know about? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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