installing software problems

[Violent Ed]

i just built a computer, and after installing windows and all the drivers, I tried to install a few games. none will install. after reformating and reinstalling windows (98se) about 4 times im about to throw the whole damn thing out the window...
what happends when installing no one lives forever 2 and raven shield is it comes up with an error at diffrent parts of the installation saying CRC error nolf2.exe does not match the setups .cab file. the medium from which you are running the setup may be corrupted. then it gives a choice abort ignore or retry. if i choose to ignore it just goes on installing until a diffrent file has the same problem... same with raven shield.

other games dont have the exact same error but they also dont install. they all work on my other computer.

if anyone could help me out i would really appreciate it...
thanks in advance

[PersianImmortal]

A CRC error means the information is being corrupted. Now this could be because:

1) Your source CDs are corrupted. This is unlikely if there are several CDs as they can't ALL be corrupt or damaged, and as you said they work on other machines, so we can pretty much rule this one out.
2) The place you're installing them to is damaged - i.e. your hard drive is corrupting the information. To test this, go to your hard drive manufacturer's website and they usually have drive testing/diagnostic software you can download. Try that. I doubt it's the drive though.
3) Your CPU/Memory is malfunctioning and corrupting the information as it's transferring over. This happens due to heat, overclocking or sometimes quite simply because the CPU is on its last legs. Or the memory may be fault.


My bet is the CPU is having problems. See if you can cool it more, and if anything is overclocked set it back to default speeds. If the problem persists, you may have to replace the CPU. If you suspect the memory, and run a P4, use Memtest86 (Google for it), or even just loop the memory bandwidth test in Sandra2003 for an hour and see what happens.

[Violent Ed]

the motherboard and chip are out of a friend of mines old computer after he upgraded. its a p3 1 ghz and actually i had to underclock it to about 930 mhz cause it ran hot at stock clock, but he said he had the same problem, and he was still able to run games ok, I have extra ram also so ill try replacing that just to rule it out, its a brand new maxtor hard drive so i doubt thats the problem but ill try to fun the diognostic software for it.

but im assuming its the cpu... ?

[PersianImmortal]

Assuming it's the cpu, then you'll need to replace it. To test the CPU, run Prime95 and you'll soon see errors popping up.

Basically if you have to underclock the CPU to get it to run, I think it sounds like this is clearly a CPU problem.

If it's not a slot 1 (boxed) CPU then you can remove the heatsink, put on some thermal paste (like Arctic Silver 3), and put on a non-stock higher flow CPU heatsink and fan. But that sounds like a lot of trouble when you're probably better off getting a new CPU.

[Violent Ed]

Alright, new cpu it is... it was free, so no sweat.
anyhoo, thanks for the help.

bad CPU