Games and their operations :( Help!

[Kage]

I'm having a big problem with my computer, and I can't figure out what it could be

I installed the Tomb Raider Legends demo yesterday and tried to run it, and it wouldn't. I restarted the computer and it ran ONCE. I then tried after that, and even restarted and the game would not start up.
I tried it this morning, and it didn't either.

It comes up with a black screen and then says "This program has caused an illiegal operation and will have to close", and so you click to Stop it and it goes back to the desktop.

FOLLOWING ON:

I then deleted that game from my drive, and tried to run Need For Speed Underground 1, and Need For Speed Most Wanted.

They ALL now do the same thing.

I restarted to no avail after uninstalling the demo and games still refuse to work.

I even re-installed video drivers and restarted, and still no games work.

Whats gone wrong here?

EDIT:

I tried running DOOM 3, and that loads perfectly fine... Yet, the mouse pointer in the game doesn't move with the Windows pointer that now appears, and so I can't control it.

What is going on here?!

 

[allenn812]

Hmmm, thats odd. I would defrag, run scan disk and do a virus scan. Its worth a shot.

 

[Kage]

Thanks for the reply

I'm just running a Spybot search now, and an AVG virus search. I've only done that recently though and it was clean.

Something weird is going on though.

For instance, the computers set in partitions with 4 seperate Windows installations for family members.

Now, I ages ago changed the Boot.ini to stop the timer by putting "-1" into the bootup command, so that the computer halted and didn't load the selected operating system until told to do so.

Yet, now, even if I change this to "-1", after a restart, it still counts down 30 seconds, and then goes back to "30", when I check.

This never used to happen, and I'm very confused.

Nothings being overclocked what so ever either either

All I did to stop teh games working it seems was uninstall the Tomb Raider Legends demo which only worked the once I tried it, and never again. The virus scanner checked while installing for any code, and found nothing out of the ordinary in it.

 

[allenn812]

You just got the 6800GS right? Isent it possible that it might be the problem?

 

[Kage]

Well things were working perfectly fine with games before I installed the Tomb Raider demo, but I guess in the last day before installing, its possible the card could have died.

Though Doom 3 loads up fine like I said, but the mouse doens't work right...

I'm so confused

it doens't help that my other family members don't know a thing about computers, and so if somethings on their drive, they wouldn't know what to do, and I guess being only partitions on the same drive, information could still pass on from one to the other even though its a seperate installation.

Yet, I ran a scan on all the drives only a week ago with no problems.

I have to say though that Spybot is picking up the same threats over and over, and after cleaning, and then scanning, it finds no threats.

Yet, I restart the computer, and the threats are back.

EDIT:

I think Direct X 9c thats installed might be corrupt. It won't run any of the Direct X tests, and can't find information, etc.

Which might be why Doom 3 runs almost perfectly since it uses OpenGL?...

Though the Tomb Raider Legends demo didn't work even with the Direct X 9c i had originally, and so I installed the one that came with the demo, and that might of corrupted the rest.

I'll re-install and tell you of the results

 

[Kage]

I'm posting a new one as to not confuse you all.

Its working now. Turns out the Direct X 9c that came with the Tomb Raider Legends demo I downloaded was faulty.

Though that still doesn't answer the fact as to why the game wasnt working when I first installed it without doing that

Anyhow, I'll try and download again and see what happens.

Thanks for trying to help allenn812. Its appreciated

 

[GlasseyeUK]

Its a common fault with the game demos I have found, they are not the finished product, and have many bugs in them, you know how many bugs there are in the final product so I just fear installing demos faulty installers, dodgy versions of direct x, despite it meant to be universal software.

 

[Kage]

Yeah, I know what you mean.

I did some research and it turns out alot of the Tomb Raider Legend Demo installers are faulty and corrupt, and only a certain amount of sites work.

One of the ones that doesn't work is File Planet.

I'm downloading another now which doesn't have the same file name (Standard) attached to it, and it is also the full 509MB stated by the Tomb Raider website as being the true download size. The two other versions I downloaded were about 480MB in size, and crashed at startup.

I'm hoping on the 7th, they'll release a patch and not just another demo with the added parts.
I'm going to give it another go anyway since people are saying how good it is.

EDIT:

My computer is now messed up

After uninstalling the demo for a second time with it not working, I tried more games after re-installing the good Direct X 9c previously, and they do not work at all now again.

I can't re-install Direct X because it says its already installed and is okay, and can't find anywhere to delete it manually.

Then theres the fact the mouse isn;t working on some games like Doom 3 and this CueClub game that comes up with a mouse initiation error and shuts down.

I believe those two elements might have something to do with that Joystick to Mouse program I tried, but I'm sure I tried these games while that was uninstalled.

I don't know what to do

EDIT 2:

Fixed it. It wasn't Direct X at all. Found out it was one of the Mouse To Joystick programs I must have unsuccessfully uninstalled causing all games with a GUI in-game mouse to fail unexpectedly in some way or other.

But sorted now