Starting yesterday, I've suddenly started having the game lock up on
me after about 3-4 minutes of play. The game will freeze and I'll get
a checkerboard pattern of vertical red lines over the whole screen as
so:

IIII IIII IIII IIII
IIII IIII IIII
IIII IIII IIII IIII

The music continues to play normally. The only way I can exit is to
turn the computer off.

This is in SP and is a recent development; it's NEVER happened
before. I re-installed D2 and LOD, and I still get the problem. I've
made no updates or upgrades to my computer recently.

Has anyone experienced a similar problem before? If so, what was the
problem/solution?

In article <4452ae98-97dc-478c-927a-d4360d59e770@m44g2000hsc.googlegroups.com>,
Flank Groinpull wrote:

[snip]

Quote:

This is in SP and is a recent development; it's NEVER happened
before. I re-installed D2 and LOD, and I still get the problem. I've
made no updates or upgrades to my computer recently.

Has anyone experienced a similar problem before? If so, what was the
problem/solution?

What do other graphics intensive applications/games do? Do these still run
ok?

In my case, I had random lockups. Not only in Diablo II, but also in other
games. At first I suspected my videocard, but it turned out my mainboard
had developed some serious problems.

Try downloading/running a test-program to see if that triggers it. If you
have an NVidia card, find the 'highest spec' demo you can run from:

http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_downloads_nvidia.html

(In my case, the Froggy demo was a good way to stress-test the system.)

I suppose ATi has a similar site, but I have no experience with them...

Regards,

Patrick.

On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 11:17:28 -0700 (PDT), Flank Groinpull
wrote:

Quote:

Starting yesterday, I've suddenly started having the game lock up on
me after about 3-4 minutes of play. The game will freeze and I'll get
a checkerboard pattern of vertical red lines over the whole screen as
so:

IIII IIII IIII IIII
IIII IIII IIII
IIII IIII IIII IIII

The music continues to play normally. The only way I can exit is to
turn the computer off.

This is in SP and is a recent development; it's NEVER happened
before. I re-installed D2 and LOD, and I still get the problem. I've
made no updates or upgrades to my computer recently.

Has anyone experienced a similar problem before? If so, what was the
problem/solution?

Sounds like a hardware problem to me ...

But, have you tried switching to/from 3D mode / 2D mode by running the
D2 Video Test app?

Back to hardware, can you open the case and see if the video card FAN
is spinning?

(Good luck anyway)

....

"Flank Groinpull" wrote in message
news:4452ae98-97dc-478c-927a-d4360d59e770@m44g2000hsc.googlegroups.com...

Quote:

Starting yesterday, I've suddenly started having the game lock up on
me after about 3-4 minutes of play. The game will freeze and I'll get
a checkerboard pattern of vertical red lines over the whole screen as
so:

IIII IIII IIII IIII
IIII IIII IIII
IIII IIII IIII IIII

The music continues to play normally. The only way I can exit is to
turn the computer off.

This is in SP and is a recent development; it's NEVER happened
before. I re-installed D2 and LOD, and I still get the problem. I've
made no updates or upgrades to my computer recently.

Has anyone experienced a similar problem before? If so, what was the
problem/solution?

I continue to have this problem even after a swap of NVidia graphics cards.
(Neither were real high end cards). It happens for no detectable reason.
Sometimes with a lot happening graphically, sometimes not. Oftentimes
resulting in a loss of XP, pots and money.

It looks like the fan on the video card took a crap.

Thanks for the responses, I appreciate it!

"Flank Groinpull" wrote in message
news:4452ae98-97dc-478c-927a-d4360d59e770@m44g2000hsc.googlegroups.com...

Quote:

Starting yesterday, I've suddenly started having the game lock up on
me after about 3-4 minutes of play. The game will freeze and I'll get
a checkerboard pattern of vertical red lines over the whole screen as
so:

IIII IIII IIII IIII
IIII IIII IIII
IIII IIII IIII IIII

The music continues to play normally. The only way I can exit is to
turn the computer off.

This is in SP and is a recent development; it's NEVER happened
before. I re-installed D2 and LOD, and I still get the problem. I've
made no updates or upgrades to my computer recently.

Has anyone experienced a similar problem before? If so, what was the
problem/solution?

Its a hardware / driver problem.

Has windows decided to update a driver without telling you?
You'd be suprised how crappy the drivers from windowsupdate can be
(especially when they release "updates" for hardware thats not their
hardware).

Other than that... only thing I can suggest is to check your fans are
spinning inside computer (especially the one on the graphics card - if it
has one) by opening it up and looking (or in my case... stick you finger in
it & see if it hurts- lol)

Test other games... and also make sure Diablo2 is running in DirectDraw mode
(from the test program in D2 folder) as Direct3D support in D2 is rubbish.
If other games are also having this problem & "playing" with the graphics
hardware/drivers didnt fix anything...
....your probably looking at a motherboard/memory problem and a whole load of
checks to findout which (including swapping motherboards & memory with other
peoples)

Last thing I would always suggest before buying new hardware to replace
items you think are defective... ...backup all your data and reinstall
windows (just INCASE its a recent windows/directx/driver problem you havent
been able to find)

"Flank Groinpull" wrote in message
news:a24be370-9e30-406f-b0ad-524f95bb280e@e10g2000prf.googlegroups.com...

Quote:

It looks like the fan on the video card took a crap.

Thanks for the responses, I appreciate it!

np - thanks for giving us feedback to let us know a "solution" was found