Halo 2 on Vista crashes - Help

[Glenn]

Hi,

I am running Halo 2 on Vista but I get part way through the game (2 - 5
minutes) and it crashes out. I have updated Video drivers, Direct X etc but
still no luck. Has anyone had this problem and is there a fix or work around
that can be suggested. Thank you.

[Paul Smith]

What sort of crash? System falls over with a blue screen, or Halo 2 falls
back to the desktop?

[Alfred Kaufmann]

I had problem until I installed a beta WHQL video driver - try
searching for "Nvidia 160.04 32bit" or Nvidia 160.04 64bit" whichever
applies to you. I downloaded it from www.guru3d.com. Good luck.

Ak

[Sid.Legend]

Dear paul,
I have got problems with Halo 2 on Vista. As the game starts within 5 mins
my monitor goes blank and the LED of my monitor keeps blinking...But my CPU
is still on and running(i dont think my CPU got hanged or Crashed). I then
need to restart my Pc. The same problem repeats when the game starts
again!..Any Help here Paul????

i recently added a new Nvidia Geforce 8600GTS grapic card.....(U think this
doesnt support the game)
my pc config is Dual Core 3.0ghz/Intel 945GNTL motherboard/2gb Ram/320Gb
Hard Disk/and the new Graphic Card i added.
pls help me out paul....

[Dans691]

re:Sid
i had a problem that sounded exactly the same as what explained.
check to see if your vedio card needs power from the computer power
supplie. check out the connections on your video card.

[kpowell]

When I try to load Halo 2 it crashes at the start up screen, after about 20 secs. If I go into a menu or something it keeps going until I return to the main screen. I tried to start a campaign level and it crashed again. Is there any way I can lower the graphics more than what Halo 2 allows you to?

[Joe]

Nope, but if your game is crashing it could be your hardware. What kind of
system do you have? Latest drivers? Latest game patches/live patches?
Latest DirectX installed?

More info...

--
Joe

[kpowell]

My graphics card is a Mobile Intel(R) 965 Express Chipset Family, 358 MB of graphics memory. My system has DirectX 10 installed with all the latest drivers for my video chipset. My processor is only 1.73 Ghz though, but I thought that it would not make any difference as it is so close to 2Ghz.

[Joe]

I went to http://www.microsoft.com/games/pc/halo2.aspx
and got the following:

* Microsoft® Windows® Vista™
* 2 GHz or faster processor
* 1 GB of system RAM
* 7 GB available hard disk space
* NVIDIA 6100, ATI X700, or above

First problem as you already stated is CPU power, now they don't say if
a 2 Ghz or faster processor means a dual core or single core, BUT this
could be because Halo 2 is not multi-treaded (only runs on one core at a
time).

Now at 1.73Ghz, will your game run with Halo 2? Maybe, but if you ask
Microsoft about it they'll say we don't Support you because
you're not running on what we Recommend. Does that mean the game
won't run? Not always.

The other problem is the video. The cards listed, while older, are all
dedicated video cards. Your P965 video card is integrated into the
system chipset. I can't really say why this is bad, it's technical, but
lets just say, integrated cards, save for some of the newer cards, are
just nowhere near as good as a dedicated video card.

It does NOT matter how much video ram you throw onto the card. More ram
does not make the card faster, just lets it display more
pixels/colors/textures on the screen at once.

Also, I think the P965, when you say it has 358 MB of ram, that's
actually System Ram that your computer reserves for video. The
integrated setup your using does not have it's own video ram, it has to
share ram from your normal system RAM.

The only thing you can do is to go to Intel.com, find the latest video
driver for your setup. In your BIOS, set your video ram LOWER, like
128MB, you don't need a lot of video ram, you won't be able to run a
game on your system that needs more than 128MB of video ram.

Update all your other drivers like audio, computer chipset, DirectX
(find dxwebsetup.exe at gamesforwindows.com).

If you try to run the game with all updates applied and it still does
not run, I think you are screwed my friend.

Your game experience would be nothing short of miserable, even if it did
run.

My new Toshiba notebook has a nice screen, but it's got an integrated
notebook video card, thus about the only thing I can play on it is
Civilization 4 at lowest settings (turn based games FTW!). If you really
want to game on a notebook, find a notebook with a dedicated graphics
card (ASUS notebooks are great (G50/G70 /drool), so are Macbook Pros),
nVidia 9x00M cards are awesome.

--
Joe

[kpowell]

Well, I give those things a try and get back to you to tell you if there is any improvement. Thanks for your help so far.