PC Games not working anymore?
 

I have been having a problem with some of my PC games as of late. I recently bought a new AMW Flat Screen Monitor, and up until now everything has been working just fine with it.

However, I just installed UT2K4 and FFXI just to play them for old times sake. After installing both of them correctly, and updating each of them, they refuse to work.

I have a GeForce 5900 128mb video card with Direct X 9. Before when I had my old monitor these games worked just fine. I am running my Desktop in 1280 by 1024

Now, when I go into FFXI, it starts to load, goes into the black screen like the game is about to pop up, and then it closes and brings me back to the desktop.

It does the exact same thing with Unreal 2K4.

Has anyone else had this problem? Could it be my monitor? I mean, it worked fine with my old one.

Sounds like a software issue, not a monitor problem. Does it work if you unplug the monitor and use your old one? Maybe you have to update the drivers then.

You can be more certain it's related to the monitor if say, the games ALL try to change refresh rate or resolution or something and the monitor goes all crazy.

Well, now that I think about it, I don't think it's the monitor. I think it has something to do with my drivers in my video card or something because these games used to work just fine with my new monitor, only until recently.

As an update, I download some program that was supposed to refresh my drivers and it ended up getting rid of my main drivers for Windows, and I had to reformat my computer. :boxing:

So, I figure as a fresh whipe, I can re-install XP, get all my correct NVidia Drivers up to date and then see if they work.

Perhaps it was some strange hidden system file in my windows folder that was preventing me from loading the games. For example, even when I freshly installed UT2K4, when I double clicked on it for the first time, it already was telling me that it was improperly shut down from last time, even though I completely uninstalled it.

Uhm... what do you mean by your main drivers for Windows?
Have you already reformatted, or what have you done?

Completely uninstalling a game will probably not remove a "hey, this crashed last time" message; games leave some information even after uninstallation.

Try uninstalling and reinstalling the nVidia drivers; follow the instructions for using DriverCleaner to see if it's just some residual information fucking things up. Of course, this assumes that you have not yet formatted your computer.

Seconding this. Also, try to reinstall DirectX9. It's kinda rare DirectX gets hosed, but it happens.

If you have an Nvidia card, you get the drivers from nvidia.com
If you have an ATI card, you get the drivers from ati.com

You NEVER install "some program" to fix drivers.

I know..I think I just learned my lesson the hard way. :edgartpg:
Thanks for all your help though.