Whats going on?

Whats going on!!!  Alright, I got a copy of GTA3.  When I try and run it on my computer(Athlon 1.4, Radeon 8500, 256M RAM) I just get a black screen and my whole system locks up(I did just do a test...I played an MP3 as I ran GTA3.  It still locked up, but the MP3 kept playing fine)

Well, I tried it on a Duron 1.2GHz with I think a TNT2 in it, and it worked fine.  I also tried it in a Dual MP1800 with a Matrox G450, and it worked fine, but why can't I get it to work on my computer?!  I have all the latest drivers, including chipset, video, sound...I've checked it all...  The ONLY think I may beable to update is windows...  I still run 98SE, but it says it's compatable with 98, so WHY WONT IT WORK!

[Uranium-235]

I'm guessing video card. Did you know ATI released V7.7 drivers?

[vee_ess]

Since you have at least one other system that does work, I would switch parts one by one until you get the problem to re-occur. Please try that and post results...G/L

I'm not sure what video driver I had, but I had just updated it today from the most recent from ATI's site.

As for exchanging parts, the Duron isn't mine, it's a friends I tested it on, and the Dual MP is my schools that I've got for the summer.  I do, however, have a duron 850 with a GF2 GTS and a Voodoo3 3000 in it, but I still don't think it's the video card...

Any way, I installed 2000 on my computer, and it works...sort of...  It will get to the loading screen, then just before the bar hits the end, it locks up.  However, I can get out of it by CTRL, ALT, DEL, so atleast I've gotten somwhere...

your school lends you dual mps, i think i wanna transfer!

Hehe...yea...The computer basically belong to one of the teachers.  He paid for some, and the school paid for some.  $5000 video editing computer, DV-Storm, 512M DDR, 200GB storage...not too bad...

But anyway, I thought I'd check my performace to see if everything was correct, and look what 3DMark 2001SE gave me...
"Could not create render target depth-stencil surface - D3DERR_INVALIDCALL"
Could this be the problem?  It happened during the advanced pixel shader.  My card could always run all the tests before, even when I had 2000 installed before...  Any ideas?

[Uranium-235]

did you get that error on the radeon 8500?

I was able to go into google and find one other person who had that problem, and he had a 8500 too.

Yes, it was my Radeon...but here's the odd part.  After getting that error(and knowing I never got it before) I when ahead and reinstalled windows 98SE.  It works fine, even better then the Duel MP1800.  I guess some software didn't install right or somthing...  Any ideas?