But isn't that enabled by default for Windows essential programs and services only?

Have you more than One CD-Rom Drive on your Not working pc? maybe it must be the First Drive letter for which the game look for the CD.

I installed NFS Hot pursuit 2 and it runs Out of the Box..

Btw other Games installed the following on my System:
NET framework 4.5.1
Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable 9.0.30729.4148 (x64 & x86)
9.0.30729.6161 (x64 & x86)
10.0.40219 (64 & 86)
9.0.30729.17 (x86 only)

Maybe some of that is need for NFS HP2?

Highly doubt it. HP2 is from 2002, way before all of those things.

I had a clear out of my Devices and Printers, so now just have:
Devices:
ASUS PG278Q
IntelliMouse Optical
my PC
MyBookLive (NAS drive)
Speakers (Sound Blaster Z)

Unspecified:
Integrated USB Bridge (not sure what this is, possibly USB ports on top of PC?)

I killed off anything else but I don't think it helps. I've found another game that crashes, which isn't even 3D. It crashes when pressing Escape to skip the intro, or randomly during the intro, or when selecting a character. The game is: Blip & Blop - Balls Of Steel. It crashes ntdll.dll randomly too.

I also can't get BreakQuest to work, but that doesn't crash any part of Windows, so I'll leave that one out of this for now...

IntelliMouse, you say? Perhaps Microsoft is foisting some unnecessarily complex IntelliMouse software upon you. It's not a wireless one, is it? And you mentioned that your keyboard was PS/2 ?

It sounds increasingly like some kind of input problem, and given that you've tried everything else, maybe it's worth swapping those out.

I tried running with no mouse and it still crashed. I think I might go back to my fresh install of Win7 64bit and then remove sound and graphics cards entirely, to totally rule them out, using onboard integrated ones instead.

This reminds me of my pc with Asus A7N8X-X Mainboard:
Some Games crashed, other works hours without Problems.

Memtest Found no Errors.

The Problem was that the RAM was Not compatible with the Board.
It was ram for FSB 200 and it runs at FSB 200.. but instable with some Games.

No i Set it to 183 or 166 mhz.. and now it runs Rock solid.

maybe give it a try, and underclock cpu and mem FSB.

The RAM thing sounds interesting, but I'm always a bit wary of fiddling with UEFI BIOS settings too much. Especially as my RAM is "Kingston HyperX 16GB (2x8GB) PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Channel Kit".

I just dug out a bunch of demos for (some of) the failing games, not tried them yet at home, but here they are for reference:

Breakneck (NICE2) = http://www.fileplanet.com/39615/30000/fileinfo/Breakneck
Carmageddon TDR2000 (stupidly packed demo; RARs inside ZIPs inside one ZIP!) = http://www.fileplanet.com/44018/40000/fileinf … n-TDR-2000-Demo
F1 Championship Season 2000 (may only work reliably in software mode in-game) = http://www.fileplanet.com/53038/50000/fileinf … eason-2000-Demo
F1 Racing Championship = http://www.fileplanet.com/55761/50000/fileinf … ampionship-Demo
F1 World Grand Prix = http://www.fileplanet.com/44328/40000/fileinf … Grand-Prix-1999
WARM UP! = http://www.fileplanet.com/51796/50000/fileinfo/Warm-Up!-Demo
Mercedes-Benz Truck Racing = http://www.fileplanet.com/49903/40000/fileinf … tilanguage-Demo
Rally Masters = http://www.fileplanet.com/39611/30000/fileinf … ce-of-Champions
Need For Speed Porsche 2000 = http://www.fileplanet.com/40185/download/Need … rsche-Unleashed
Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2 = http://www.fileplanet.com/114036/download/Nee … -Pursuit-2-Demo
Sega Rally 2 = https://archive.org/details/SegaRally2Championship
Superbike 2001 = http://www.fileplanet.com/49899/40000/fileinf … /Superbike-2001

But isn't that (DEP) enabled by default for Windows essential programs and services only?

That's what it says, but I think that includes things like DirectX, system DLLs etc, stuff a game could certainly call or hook into anyway. Regardless, changing the setting and explicitly excluding a program can help prevent crashes. Obviously it's not advisable to do so unless the program genuinely needs it since it is a security risk.

BuckoA51 wrote:

But isn't that (DEP) enabled by default for Windows essential programs and services only?

That's what it says, but I think that includes things like DirectX, system DLLs etc, stuff a game could certainly call or hook into anyway. Regardless, changing the setting and explicitly excluding a program can help prevent crashes. Obviously it's not advisable to do so unless the program genuinely needs it since it is a security risk.

Please, in the name of everything that's holy. DEP is already disabled for everything that's not a system process, which btw DirectX is not. And a dinamic linkable library is not a service too.
Since DEP is already disabled, there's no security risk at enforcing it and then excluding something else.

I really can't understand who's the moron that started to spread this information years ago (and that made me fuck up half of my programs for a week)
Did it ever fix something?

VirtuaIceMan wrote:

juicy thingies

Damn, all those free demo.. So much stuff that one could write on the wiki... 😵

Anyway, I tried SEGA RALLY 2 demo.. and it works.. w7x64 with ati card.. Can't tell much more

VirtuaIceMan wrote:

I tried running with no mouse and it still crashed.

Well, if it is something that Windows decided to download and install when it saw you had an IntelliMouse, then merely unplugging the mouse won't stop whatever it was that was installed. This is getting kind of speculative, though.

Please, in the name of everything that's holy. DEP is already disabled for everything that's not a system process, which btw Dir […]
Show full quote

Please, in the name of everything that's holy. DEP is already disabled for everything that's not a system process, which btw DirectX is not. And a dinamic linkable library is not a service too.
Since DEP is already disabled, there's no security risk at enforcing it and then excluding something else.

I really can't understand who's the moron that started to spread this information years ago (and that made me fuck up half of my programs for a week)
Did it ever fix something?

Well, I don't pretend to be a Windows internals expert, all I know is that various games crash instantly with the DEP settings on their default but work fine when I change DEP settings and explicitly exclude them. Dark Reign is one such game that springs to mind. Your mileage my vary.

BuckoA51 wrote:

Well, I don't pretend to be a Windows internals expert, all I know is that various games crash instantly with the DEP settings on their default but work fine when I change DEP settings and explicitly exclude them. Dark Reign is one such game that springs to mind. Your mileage my vary.

I read here this is something that should be necessary only with 64 bit OSs..
which doesn't make any sense at all.. So I am led to believe there must be something else underneath.

... ok it seems there are some caveats to what instead seems a simple rule
I'm not in the mood to deepen

I agree it's a long shot, but seems like Iceman has ruled out pretty much any likely culprit.

BuckoA51, your PC is very similar to mine, so perhaps it's my brand of RAM, graphics, sound, monitor (don't think it's that as I ran the PC on my old tiny LCD) or case in some context. I might have to ask what settings you have in UEFI/Asus software (I see you overclock and I think I disabled all the overclocking on mine (I think, I'm not an OC expert at all!)).

Do the other demos above (you don't have to test all) work for you? I was trying them on my work PC (Win7 32bit) but it now fails to run InstallShield on most of them (probably as my work PC is cluttered with tons of crap!).

What happens if in the same not working computer you try vista (or 7) 32 bit with ati card?

Have you tried msconfig to limit memory to 3gb ?

Davros wrote:

Have you tried msconfig to limit memory to 3gb ?

There are plenties of alternatives to that filthy and old workaround

Ok ignore Le Mans 24 2002 for now; it runs fine on my PC with Win7 64bit using integrated graphics. But NFSHP2 and Supercar Street Challenge both crash the same as on Win8.1 64bit.

I've just removed GTX 980, Soundblaster ZXr, swapped to old LCD monitor and reinstalled Win7 64bit, so I can rule out graphics card, sound card, monitor and Win8.1. I also set UEFI BIOS (which was flash updated to the most recent version recently) to load optimized defaults, so no fancy overclocking is enabled!

I'm ready to try a few more specialist things now then. Shame I don't have spare less fast RAM, in order to check that out...

VirtuaIceMan wrote:

I'm ready to try a few more specialist things now then. Shame I don't have spare less fast RAM, in order to check that out...

You should try to limit memory to, say, 2GB.. 4GB as you claim in the OP would still be too high