The Magical Black Squares

[TychoCelchuuu]

I've seen someone post about this problem before, but I can't find it through searching. Magical Black Squares have appeared in magical places. For example, sometimes I will hit tab to check scores, and all the letters and numbers ahve been replaced by black rectangles. My TV guided missile shows only the crosshair - the rest is black. M16 iron sight? Actually a giant rectangle that takes up 2/3rds of the screen. Sometimes my shock paddles or my pistol are pitch black (my hands are fine though). I get close to trees, and they turn into black lollipops. Sometimes the ground goes black!

Radeon 9600, latest drivers minus 1, P4 2.6GHz 800MHz FSB, 1 gig PC3200 RAM, WinXP, BF2 is running at something like 800x600 at medium/low settings.

[millipede777]

I've had the ground flash between black and its normal color fairly often since the patch. It sometimes will last a long time or quit in just a second or two. It doesn't seem to always happen in one specific place, so I don't know what causes it. I just know it's really annoying. Anyone know how to fix this?

[ScratchMonkey]

There was a black ground rectangle bug involving vehicle shadows in early nVidia drivers, when the BF2 demo first came out. Updating the driver showed the correct shadow.

[Kilrogg]

black squares are a RAM problem, it doesn't necessarily mean your ram is bad but if you've started/closed BF2 a few times without rebooting or other ram-intensive programs it can do that. BF2 eats up ram like whoa

rebooting should fix it

[Acid]

RAM problems or just overheating. Overheating causes all sorts of wierd stuff to happen in BF2.

[TychoCelchuuu]

Overheating, eh? Well, I'll restart (it's been a while, and BF2 crashed last time I exited) and run my Temp monitor in the background. Thanks for your help guys!

[Acid]

Mabey try opening up your case and pointing a fan at it.

[TychoCelchuuu]

Look, I think it's the memory/crash thing. My computer has more fans that normal, and running at 100% CPU usage for hours on end, along withthe video card working away, has never heated it up to anything near dangerous temperatures. I doubt BF2, played for about 10 minutes, is going to make it hot enough to affect any changes.

[=Sarc=]

Don't dismiss an overheat cause just because you have lots of fans. BF2 may stress the computer in a different way that causes the artifacts. It may not be heat but try out things that will lower the probability that it is the cause.

Heat may not be related to a memory problem. It could be that your RAM has a problem now. Try out a mem test program like MemTest86.

[TychoCelchuuu]

It's not an overheat. I restarted and it's fine. Trust me, BF2 isn't going to heat up any capacitors on my 3d card that Maya, Photoshop, Quake IV, and anything else won't.

[=Sarc=]

Maya isn't going to do much and neither will Photoshop. It's not rendering things in real time or isn't the same kind of stress that BF2 puts on your system. I'm not saying that BF2 is the ultimate stressor but it may do something different that your system reacts to differently.

Have you even tried out MemTest86? You could say heat isn't a problem but your system is having a problem with BF2. Other things you can try are different driver versions (newest isn't always the best), Prime95 (maybe your CPU is unstable) or a graphical artifact tester (I think one comes with the Omega drivers). Unless you start testing components and eliminating possibilities, you're not going to find the problem.

[TychoCelchuuu]

Not running Maya. Rendering in Maya. And not just running Photoshop: applying CPU intensive filters. My machine does NOT have a problem with BF2, driver versions, or an unstable CPU: the problem was fixed by restarting, since BF2 crashed and I ran it again before I restarted. My memory is fine, dangit. My problem's gone! You can stop trying to help me now

[icky]

It could be a problem with hard drive fragmentation or maybe your IDE driver...

[TychoCelchuuu]

Haha

Although, in all seriousness, I don't HAVE an IDE driver and my hard drive has almost zero fragmentation.

[Drizzid]

I have a similar problem with buildings, ground and mountain terrain. I have a radeon sapphire Atlantis 9600. I think it's the drivers from ATI personally. Didn't happen until I updated to the catalyst drivers. I'm running the omega drivers right now and they seem to be better. Still have the blackening but minimal.