Here's the deal: Once in a while, Halo PC runs fine and it's an absolute blast: 1024x768 with everything turned all the way up. The problem is that it works only once out of every nine or ten times I run it. The other nine times, Halo PC will:
A: Show the splash screen for a few seconds, then quit to the desktop. The program itself sometimes remains in the background and has to be killed using Taskman.
B: Show the splash screen for a few seconds, then the display locks up. I can alt-tab other other programs and system sounds are still heard, but the screen is frozen on Halo's startup image.
C: Show the splash screen for a few seconds, then scream "Exception!" I found an MSKB article connecting this to a memory issue, but the suggested fix (starting Windows with all unessential system services disabled) had no effect.
D: Start normally, but when the menu comes up everything is jerky. Gameplay is impossible, even if the graphics and sound settings are turned all the way down.
The game seems to run normally in Safe Mode, but it's hard to play with no particles.
My system specs are:
AMD Athlon XP, 1.4GHz
256 MBs DDR SDRAM
ATi Radeon 7500 graphics card
Windows XP Pro
I have Directx 9b, the ATi Catalyst 4.6 drivers and all Windows updates installed. My virus scanner shows nothing unusual.
Has this happened to anyone else, and does anyone know what I can do to fix it?