Blank screen loading 3D games in XP

cklabyrinth · #1 08-06-2006, 09:11 PM

Hi. Found this site on a google of blank screen games and thought I'd post this here. I've been trying to get my computer to play these games for two weeks now and haven't had any luck. Figured someone here might know the answer, and the proper method to format my computer and reinstall windows if that's what I need to do.

I recently got my brother's computer back from the shop, where the tech replaced a malfunctioning ABIT motherboard with an Asus A8v-MX one. The stats on the computer are: AMD Athlon 64 FX-55, 2.6 ghz processor, 2 GB ram, an nvidia GeForce 6800 GT. I'm running it with a Delta DV-770 monitor that looks like it's about 17 inches.

I'm getting a problem now when trying to start up three games: Oblivion, Titan Quest and VTM:Bloodlines. What happens is the screen will just flicker once or twice and then turn black. I have to alt-ctrl-del in order to tab the game out, and then end task to exit out.

In Oblivion, though, if I hit the escape key, the entry menu pops up with text only and no animations, simply brown text on a black background, and I can tab over to create a new character. When doing this, the game will load up a screen with character attributes like strength, dexterity, etc in brown text against a backdrop of the opening prison cell you start the game in. There is also a pseudo-picture of the character you're creating, with only its clothes, hair and no skin at all.

I've tried for the last few hours installing new drivers for the 6800, going back a few months to nvidia's release in March, and also to an omega driver I've had for a few years on a burned DVD disc. The driver the tech installed on the computer was the nvidia driver from the middle of June.

I'm out of ideas as to what could be causing this. I was thinking it might be the monitor for some reason, but I don't think that would explain what's happening in Oblivion. I'm stumped and don't want to lug it back to the tech's house to have him work on it again.

With the nvidia driver from June, I was getting a message on startup that said SLI multi-GPU graphics were turned off, which I thought was weird because I had only one video card. After looking at the forums, though, this seems to be a common occurrence.

So, can anyone help me with this? What should have been a few good hours of gaming has turned into a nightmare for me, which is unfortunate because I was looking forward to playing Oblivion on a somewhat decent computer.

Thanks in advance.

cklabyrinth · #2 08-06-2006, 09:12 PM

Thought I'd add that the newest omega drivers (still over a year and a half old) let all the games run, but at such horrible FPS that I quickly uninstalled them. Older games like Divine Divinity and Age of Empires 2 run with no problems, also.