Hi,
I've been having problems with some specific games.

Half Life 2: Episode 1
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic
Sim City Societies

I don't know what's wrong with them, I have applied for support many times, and EA keeps telling me to close background tasks.

I have done much to reduce what is in my startup, and what is allowed to run. Right now, I have 5 tasks running constantly under my username. Many of these I cannot remove (explorer, jusched...)

But I do not remove my antivirus while I am running games. Is it really that important to not have my antivirus running? (AVG Free, and Spyware Doctor)

Would they conflict enough to make the games crash during loading or gameplay?

have you checked to see if it as overheating issue, try speedfan SpeedFan - Access temperature sensor in your computer to check your cpu temp and i use Rivatuner RivaTuner to check the temp of my GPU, also take a look in your windows event viewer see if there are any errorrs that are showing

Hello and welcome to PC Help Forum.

Firstly how much RAM/Memory do you have installed on your computer?
What graphics card do you have and is it set right in BIOS=Setup?

Have you updated your graphics card driver?

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My temperatures are perfectly fine according to Speedfan. CPU 48, internal 37.

I have a Geforce 8600 GT (512 MB), with the latest drivers, and Directx 9.0c.
I also see it detected in the BIOS.

I have 1.0 GB RAM, which is the recommended amount for Dark Messiah, and is perfectly fine with the other games.

For Dark Messiah my problem seems to be graphical. I tried closing my antivirus programs, and I lowered all the settings to minimum, loaded the game, and then cranked them up to max. Worked perfectly (runs smoothly, without any crashes). I tried starting the game later without tweaking the graphics, and I get missing patches everywhere, and then the computer crashes.

Very weird. I'll try to duplicate the conditions of the time that it worked and see what happens.

I didn't find any relevant errors or warnings in the event viewer under system or applications during the time of this crash.

Sim city Societies simply freezes up after a few minutes of gameplay.
And HL episode 1 crashes during loading.

Curses. I tried setting everything to low, loading, and cranking back up. Worked for two minutes, and then crashed. I tried simply loading with medium, a minute later, missing patches all over, tried quitting to the menu, but then the program closed on its own.

I don't get why this is happening. The card is only two weeks old, and I DO have the latest drivers.

could always give the beta drivers a try if you have not tried them yet

GeForce Release 174