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“When I enter a game room, my computer stops responding, hangs, or locks up”

Obtain the latest driver and firmware updates for the video card

Many video-related issues can be resolved by updating the drivers and/or bios for your computer system’s video card or graphics controller. To obtain the latest drivers and/or bios available for your video card or graphics controller, contact your computer manufacturer or video card manufacturer for assistance.

For information about how to contact the manufacturer of your video adapter, click the appropriate Microsoft Knowledge Base article number in the following list:

65416  Hardware and Software Third-Party Vendor Contact List, A-K

60781  Hardware and Software Third-Party Vendor Contact List, L-P

60782  Hardware and Software Third-Party Vendor Contact List, Q-Z

Microsoft provides third-party contact information to help you find technical support. This contact information may change without notice. Microsoft does not guarantee the accuracy of this third-party contact information.

The third-party products that are discussed in this article are manufactured by companies that are independent of Microsoft. Microsoft makes no warranty, implied or otherwise, regarding the performance or reliability of these products.

Adjust the hardware acceleration for the video card

If you continue to experience this issue after updating your video-card driver, try adjusting the hardware acceleration for your video card or graphics controller by following the steps below.

Step 1

Close all programs and restart your computer.

Step 2

Click Start, point to Settings, and click Control Panel. In Windows XP, just click Start and then Control Panel. If the Control Panel window is empty, click View all Control Panel Options in the left section of the window to show all the icons.

Step 3

Double-click Display. In Microsoft Windows XP, you may need to click Appearances and Themes and then Display.

Step 4

Click the Settings tab.

Step 5

Click Advanced.

Step 6

Click the Troubleshooting or Troubleshoot tab to open the hardware acceleration control window.

Step 7

In the Hardware acceleration section, click and drag the slider to one of these settings:           

One notch to the right of “None:  No accelerator functions.”

“None: Basic accelerator functions.”

Step 8

Click Apply and OK. If prompted, restart your computer.

Step 9

Try the game again.

Step 10

To reset your graphics acceleration to Full, just follow these steps again and move the slider back to full.