This is a weird problem, and im pretty sure its to do with my graphics card and the drivers somehow, some games (only Call of Duty and SoF2 afaik) crash before even starting up, CoD crashes on the splash screen (not responding) and sof2 gets past the console, goes full screen then locks the system up (monitor light just flicks on and off and nothing happens, i need to reboot). I think its because i installed BF2 demo and updated to the 72.xx nvidia drivers (i have a GeForce 6800), then i updated to 77.xx for the full bf2 i 'aquired' ()... i noticed on some videos they were really bright and too much white in the picture, someone said it was to do with graphics card not codecs, so i uninstalled BF2 and the demo and went back to the old 66.93 drivers which worked fine for everything else, since then (well, i only noticed after doing this), CoD and SoF2 crash. I dunno what else to try, other games run fine (Punisher, RTCW: ET, UT2004, SWRepublic, Hitman and others).

Anyone else had problems like this or know what to try to fix it? there's no errors in device manager and dxdiag says no problems with the display or directx (9.0 c), but when i start dxdiag i get this message:

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DirectX Diagnostic Tool
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DxDiag has detected that there may have been a problem accessing DirectShow the last time this program was used. Would you like to bypass DirectShow this time?
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Yes No
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if i click no, it closes dxdiag, if i click yes it stays open, i've done the tests in dxdiag for DirectDraw and Direct3D and they both worked fine.

i havn't tried reinstalling the games yet, im lazy/busy (cant decide =p) but i will try that if no one has any ideas

edit: and don't post anything like "just format", formatting is not an option when it's most likely fixable (considering its only those games)

Run Drivercleaner which is available in the download sectioin of Guru3d.com, and install the 77.72 WHQL from nvidia

direct show's message might be tellign you you need to either reinstall SP2, or DX9.0c

im on SP1 for a start, not SP2 but ok i'll try

yeah, it might be some damaged files, SP2 would update and repair sed files, and anyways

the Standalone DX9.0c and Sp2 built in dx9c are both 2 different versions for some reason

the game worked fine when i had 66.93 drivers and dx9.0b though :\

yah,.

but 77's require dx9c coz they have been made for SM3.0 which DX9c supports

the directshow problem is probably a busted file, which installing SP2 will fix

and afterwards try the 77.72whqls

i'm not installing sp2 until i back up my 19gb of music and all the films and games

good idea

but as long as you clear all the spyware and adware off the machine, first it should be a smooth upgrade,

you could invest in a 40gb drive to back up onto

then you'll never worry about having to format