Major gaming issues with the ATI radeon HD 4850

[naptimeshadows]

Im running Vista 64 with the radeon HD 4850, and when I open any full screen game, it immediately minimizes.
The mouse still functions like Im in the game, the sound plays, but I cant SEE the game;
the apps behind the game I can see, like my desktop, firefox windows, etc, but its preventing me from playing the game.

Anyone have any idea how to fix this!?
From the looks of it, Im the first one having this problem, but I would love to get it resolved.

[Enoch]

I suggest you should check for your system monitor resolution, and the recommended system resolution by the Game cover letter,please also check the same problem occurred with the other low level games as well. and let me know.

[Birdie]

Do you know what other programs you have running in the background. Applications like MSN Messenger can sometimes call for your attention, this usually make MSN jump to the front so to say and may cause fullscreen applications to minimize.

[Eldon]

You should first of all update all you drivers , specially for your graphics card. Run the Virus scanner . Or you may need to repair the vista installation .

[opaper]

Well, don't jump on ATI so quickly. You may jump to a conclusion. So let's try to figure out what the problem is. First, I would run memtest, just to be sure. Run it for a few hours if you can, and make sure you don't get any errors. If no errors show up there, I would find a friend's computer (with a decent power supply, you don't want to blow his up) and try the card in it. If it fails in his computer, it is the card. If it doesn't, then...It's really a tough call, because it looks like everything should be okay. There's a decent chance the card is bad, but to be honest, your symptom appears more power supply, or memory related.

[naptimeshadows]

Alright, to address the issues:

Enoch: The games I tried are Mirrors Edge, Legendary, World of Warcraft, and Age of Empires 3. ALl but Mirrors Edge did what I described. Both monitors (I have 2 22") are at 1680*1050. The game resizes the resolution, then shows up for a few frames before messing up.

Birdie: The only things I could have had running any of these times were firefox, skype, AIM (Away, so notifications are disabled), and PC-Cillin. None of these were doing anything specific when this happened.

Eldon: Im having trouble finding Catalyst drivers for just one card...Any idea where I could go?

Opaper: Whats memtest? Where do I get it? I got the pc made by HP, and everything was made and installed by them. Im in Iraq, so finding a friend to do this with would be very difficult. Im not sure what the power supply wattage is, Ill look that up. What kind of problems should I look for in the power supply or RAM that would show me that it's the problem?

Thanks for the help!

[naptimeshadows]

To Opaper: The power supply has no visibile labeling, as theirs a little metal box around it holding it in place.

The case is so small, they obviously dont want anyone adding or removing anything; doing so would be impossible without breaking something

[kiLLer]

It probably is some program running in the background which every 2 mins checks to make sure that it is the front most program, this could be a virus or spyware or something. If you do alt+ctrl+delete and go on the proccesses list and see any process with funny names, end them and then try.

The reason the game minimize is the same as if you hit the start key or alt+ctrl+delete it makes that window active making the game minimize so you cant see it.

Hope that helped.

[opaper]

Whats memtest? Where do I get it?

Memtest: Test your memory

Download memtest

[naptimeshadows]

I dont know what I did, but everything works now.
I went ahead and updated the drivers to 9.3 anyway, though.
Thanks for all the help, guys.