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I bought my son a new PC 2 months ago and it was all working fine however a couple of weeks ago he put his favorite CD game into the drive and as soon as it had loaded up the screen froze and the picture changed...where there was once a tree it was now red and green squares for example. Its kind of hard to explain and I cant do a screenshot as I need to reboot to get it going again.

I tried a couple of other CD games and the same thing happens with all of them. He can play online games fine which makes me think its not a graphic card problem and perhaps he has clicked on something.

Anyone any suggestions?

(http://www.lothianpc.co.uk/images/hammer.jpg)

Strange! What CDs are causing the issues and what online games are ok?

Oh, even if you answer I might not be able to help. Just trying to be more helpful than Kev :)

2 months old you say? Isn't it still under warranty suz?

You could have done that by ignoring her altogether

The round ones.

Sounds like it could be the graphics cards, games are likely to use the 3d part of it, online games are unlikely to do that. Warranty could be a good plan.

Could take a photo of the screen to show us too.

If its the graphic card then hopefully its under warrenty but ive no idea tbh. My oldest son found an online site that was cheap and had good feedback. I will need to check it out.

I will take a pic tomorrow and post it.

Thanks for your help.

This what happens when he tries to play Rollercoaster. The picture is fine for a few seconds then this..Is it the graphic card thats faulty?

that looks like what I get when I try to play Rollercoaster Tycoon on my laptop - I think in my case it is due to limitations on the graphics card - do you know what card is installed in the machine ?

These are the details and it has a warranty which is good :-)

intel core 2 duo gamers 9600 (Intel core 2 Dou E8400 3.00 GHz 6Mb Cache, 2GB Kingston DDR2 667 - 2 x 1GB, 160GB SATA Hard Drive, 160GB Secondary SATA HDD, , , 9600GT 512Mb graphics cards, C2D - ASROCK CONROE-ESATA II 1333fsb-DDR667x4, DVD+/- RW - 18X Samsung Lightscribe, No Floppy Disk Drive, 20.1 Inch Yuraku widescreen M2AABJ, Keyboard & Mouse Set Black and Silver, Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 4 PCI 7.1, Trust 2.0 SP-2200 Speaker Set, , Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition Inc SP2, No Additional Software, , 13 Month Warranty, Free Carriage)

That kind of spec shouldn't be a problem, My Mother-in- law plays roller coaster tycoon on a shitty dell, your graphics card is twice as powerful as hers. ???

Is it well ventilated?

Reinstall/update graphics drivers?

Yeah I would say that is definately a graphics driver or hardware problem, try updating the drivers from the manufacturers website and if not return it under warrenty.
Out of interest what card is in it?

there was a recall on most of the early 9600GT OEM graphics cards. I would suspect that there is something going wrong in that department.

your motherboard should also have a vga socket in it - why not plug the monitor into there and see what happens ?

Yes its well ventilated.

I have updated the driver though havent tried reinstalling it...I will give that a go.

Vga socket? now you have whooshed me lol, Im not too keen on opening it up but if reinstalling doesnt work I will see if I can find it :-)

Meanwhile I will email the company I bought it from and see what they say.

Thanks for all the help guys

Received a new graphics card today (exactly same brand), fitted it and waited with baited breath.....fired up Rollercoaster and exactly the same thing happened :-( I installed another PC game (Sims 2) and it freezes up too as soon as it starts to load so its not the game.

I havent tried uninstalling/installing the graphics card yet as I am not sure how to do it. Is this the right download that I will need?

 http://www.drivershq.com/Drivers/VistaDevices/Nvidia-Geforce-9600-GT-Driver/11976/Drivers.aspx

Straight from nvidia sight and free
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x86_180.48_whql.html

How is the computer connected to the monitor? DVI or VGA? (the lieing-down-D shaped thing with about 9 pins, or the rectangular thing with about 30?). It could possibly be a dodgy DVI connection that only kicks off when the resolution changes for a game. Try a different monitor, cable, or connector? Not hopeful to be honest, but it's worth eliminating.

Graphics driver definitely worth checking also. If you can, try uninstalling all traces of the old drivers before installing a fresh new one.

You should have got a driver CD with the card - worth a go with that first I would think. Then go get the latest version from NVidia.

Thanks for all the help guys, ended up sending it back via courier today = one miserable kid for the next week sigh