Oh no! More boring computer problems! Oh no!

the other day i bought a tv card for my pc (the dvb-t plus with built in freeview), installed it v-e-r-y carefully so nothing screwed up and thankfully it works. but now i've just tried to load half-life 2, which worked fine before, and it loads up but when the actual playable bit of the game comes on it lasts a second then my screen goes black and 'no signal' flashes up. even more annoyingly it won't let me restart with ctrl alt del or even the power off button so i have to pull the power cable out of the back.

it's done this a few times, and also with call of duty. is it some clash between tv card and 3d games? i've updated the drivers for my 6600 gt graphics card and still no change. can anyone suggest a solution?

Does the game work again if you remove the TV card?

Sounds like the Card installed a direct show filter which is grabbing the game's output. Not sure how to fix it, though.

StanM, I've not tried that yet, I'm loathe to fiddle about in there again. Is it best to try to uninstall the tv card program? If this doesn't work, then I'll remove the card itself.

Actually, what Ed said sounds more likely. I'd try reinstalling the game to see if that solves the problem. (If it doesn't, check if there's a more recent version of the drivers that came with the TV card?)

anyone know why my winamp has suddenly stopped working? it starts up then crashes the moment i try to play music. it's been fine for years up until now.

oh man things just got 100x worse. so i uninstalled the tv card program and drivers. reinstalled nvidea drivers, still nothing. opened up my pc and removed the tv card, did all the drivers stuff again. pc still does the same thing - load a 3d game and it lasts half a second then the screen goes blank, a message flickers up saying 'no signal' and i have to pull out the power cable from the back. only this time, i now have no internet either! i click on a page and it doesn't even try to look, just goes straight to 'page not found' (in both ie and firefox). there's no logical reason at all why it should do this, i've not changed anything relating to the internet at all.

so i currently have a hulking pc that can't play games and won't connect to the internet. my laptop is connected wirelessly to the router and that works. anyone have any idea how to solve a) the game issue and b) the internet issue?

i'm thinking of undertaking the sisyphean task of burning everything off my pc and starting again from scratch but i reeeeeeeeally want to avoid that if possible. (tune in tomorrow for a new unexpected world-stopping pc woe)

Sounds like the game is setting a refresh rate/resolution your monitor doesn't support.

Do you get to the options/menu screen on the game, or does it bail before then?

It goes through the menu screen and onto the main game bit but when I move the mouse it instantly flicks off to the 'no signal' screen. Thing is, these games all worked fine before. I installed a new one and the same happened again. It's worked fine at the 75hz and top res settings before (I've lowered these settings but it makes no difference when I load the game).

Am I damaging my pc by pulling the power cable out at the back? There's no other way of restarting it. I figure I've had to do this about 8 or 9 times in the past 24 hours. Could this explain why the internet has gone down for that pc?

not really damaging but its not helpful.

What monitor do you have? Is it a CRT (old school tube) or a TFT (funky flat panel).

What video card do you have?

What res/refresh is your desktop at?

OK, VERY stupid question but I'll ask anyway. My dad ordered a laptop (here) and wants me to ship it to Japan. Is it safe (if I keep it in the original box). I couldn't convince him it was risky, he just wants the god damn laptop.

Where is here?

I wouldn't reship it, it may get impounded by customs and you'll have to pay import tax or something also it may get trashed,

buy the laptop in Japan... they are cheaper than most places over there anyway.

My monitor is a TFT flat panel, Acer AL1951. The refresh is set to 75hz and the res is 1280x1024. My video card is a GeForce 6600GT. Games worked fine before I installed the DVB tv card - has the tv card damaged the video card? And it was after removing the tv card that the internet died. (Thanks for helping btw)

when you get the game up the next time set to 800x600 and 60hz then load a save.

Have you tried removing the Nvidia forceware and reinstalling them?

Right. I've looked around a bit for "no signal" and "half life 2" (people have the same problem with Counter Strike, sometimes) and it seems that getting rid of Steam and reinstalling it can solve the problem. (whatever that means - can someone explain what this Steam thing is?)

(I think it could be something like the Windows XP thing where your PC isn't the same configuration anymore so you have to reinstall/reregister or something, but I'm not sure)

Steam is a content distribution system used by Valve to provide downloadable games etc to PC

So it could be "this unique ID doesn't correspond to the hardware in this PC anymore so I quit" ?

Not really, as all 3D games do it, also you would get the warning way before you got to the point where you could load up a save.

Oh fek, import taxes. Shit, didn't think about that. But we did look at the macbooks in Japan. We decided against it: different keyboards (qwerty and also the function keys are different). Hmm

ok update on my previous posts a couple of months back. i managed to fix the internet issue and i've spent the past few weeks buring date and formatting my whole pc in a bid to fix it.

i've now taken the tv card out - which seems to be the thing that has led to all this. (i tried it once with the tv card still in and now with it taken out and both results in the same thing.)

when my pc boots up a little box opens saying "error: no card found". doesn't say which card but i guess it has something to do with the graphics card. games still do the same thing - load for a bit then completely cuts out, screen goes black, nothing works, not even the power on/off button.

it also seems that something has happened to my ram. i bought my pc with 2gb ram installed but now when i right click on 'my computer' it says:
Computer:
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor
3200+
2.01ghz, 1.00gb of ram
physical address extension

so somehow a gb of ram has gone missing! i've opened up my pc and both the ram and graphics cards seem to be installed properly. but when i check 'system information' it says:
total physical memory: 2,048.00mb (which i assume is the correct amount of 2gb ram)
and underneath says:
available physical memory: 763.88mb
total virtual memory: 2.00gb
available virtual memory: 1.96gb

does anyone have any advice on how to check if my graphics card and ram are installed and working ok? or how i can fix this so i can play games on it again and bring this missing gb of ram back?