Help needed please

[Panzer]

My problem is that sometimes my screen just blacks out in the middle of a game. The game itself runs properly, I can hear the sounds of buildings and units being finished and citizens working. No error message comes up and no crashes to desktop occur. I'm forced to either use Ctrl-Alt-Del or to turn off my computer. Alt-tab doesn't work, the screen is still black when I'm on my desktop, though I can access programs there, like music.

My specs are:

1000 megahertz Intel Pentium III
ASUS TUSL2-C ACPI BIOS Revision 1007.A 06/08/2001
256 MB RAM
Directx 9.0a installed
Matrox Millennium G550 32 MB videocard (latest drivers)
DELL M990 [Monitor] (17.7"vis, s/n 1238P05UB00E, May 2000)
Soundblaster 4.1 digital soundcard
20,38 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
4,99 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space
ATAPI-CD ROM-DRIVE-52MAX [CD-ROM drive]
OS: Windows 98 SE (build 4.10.2222)
Rise of Nations retail version (I live in Europe, normal English version, no mods, no patches)
Firewall: ZoneAlarm Pro
Anti-virus: Norton Anti-virus 2002
Nothing is overclocked.


I did some searching on the internet and I think I may have found the cause of my problem. Apparently my graphics card runs the game at a higher refresh rate than what my monitor supports. I've changed my refresh rate to 60 Hz, but the screen still fades to black . I've tried to download new drivers but when I try to install it windows says it already has a better driver, so I'm running out of ideas. Would changing the color resolution be of any help? Currently it's set at 16-bit. Maybe I should change it to 24 or 32-bit? Screen resolution is 1024x768, should I change that?

Help anyone?

[handyandy]

something simmiler happend to me and it worked out that my video card was over heating as my computer tower is quit old old and does not have the correct amount of fans which is over come by leving the side off. This may or may not be the same prob;em as yours if it is not i don't know how to help.

edit. I also have the same videocard and sound card.

[Panzer]

Hmmm, if that's the problem there is not much that I can do about it, apart from what you suggested .

Is there a way to 'wake' my monitor apart from completely restarting my computer? If there is a key (combination) or trick that I can use to revive my monitor it would be great. Having to restart my computer every time the screen turns black is a pain, so any help is appreciated.

If someone else has an idea to what the problem might be and knows a probable solution they are of course encouraged to mention it !

[skystreak]

They don't know and from what I'm seeing lately, they don't care. People can run the game, mostly, and none of the reviews I've seen mentioned how ridiculously buggy the game is. If they're not getting bad press, why waste man hours fixing the game.

Hasn't been a patch in a week, people are experiencing the same crashes, tech support is non-existent and its too late for me to get a refund. I STILL can't play a game over 30 mins and its not my system. Its a buggy game. I"ve tried everyt single workaround on the boards - ironically, I've gotten the game to run the longest in 16 bit mode, even though we're told to run it in 32 bit mode. The MS tech support people are clueless and there is no actual tech support from BHG, other than the very little help I've seen on these forums.

Patch and fix your buggy bloody game. I shouldnt have to spend 2 weeks trying to change my system to run this game right.