Problem returned after 4 months

[CodOfDuty]

OK it was 4 months ago i had got a new system and I am sure everything exceeded the graphic reccomendations for M2:TW, however during the early days i experienced problems in battles only which were reasonably minor things you could ignore such as banners, shadows, troops etc flickering and after a few minutes of ignoring that in the same battle things such as textures and skins will look corrupt, not show, units may become invisible, flicker and some sounds will stop playing, now after few more minutes things will get severe, for example, CTD's, computer automatically resetting etc. Also, if I was to tab out during any part of this the desktop's resolution will be reduced to 800 x 600 pixels, meaning if i loaded the game back up from the desktop with that resolution the game will not load back up, however, if i open up properties via right click --> properties and change my resolution back to default, the game will load up again, and this usually stops the problems however the resolution changing can and does change by itself more than once, other problems i get is the screen refreshing itself, unit cards are swapped, and text corruption.

I have tried everything i could think of, reinstalls, changing refresh rates, hardware accelerating, troubleshooters, changing to minimum graphics in-game, and clocking the graphic card memory to minimum. Nothing helps.

I did find a solution, though, I think, it seemed to stop whenever i wasn't logged on to Xfire, and now, (even though i don't have that Xfire loaded up in background) these problems have come back, and looking even more sever than they were, resets and CTD's are much more frequent, the game is becoming unplayable.

Still with me? Thankyou, I have tried anywhere I know to get help for this, and no one seems to know the solution, here are parts of my specifications:

Processor:Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E6750 @ 2.66GHz (2 CPUs)

(I do not know why it has 2 CPUs, and when i go to right click, properties, settings it shows to monitors there marked as 1 and 2, which i also tried fiddling around with)
Memory:2048MB RAM

Hard Drive:250 GB

Video Card: ATI Radeon HD 3850

(This is what i think is causing everything)
Monitor: Plug and Play Monitor
Sound Card: Realtek HD Audio output

Operating System:Windows XP Home Edition


I will post some screenshots shortly, it is very hard to take them as they come out as the same resoultion as the desktop. I really am struggling to take any screenshots as they only come out in the low resolution and it is not able to show you exactly what the problem is
The problems only occour when the resolution is 800x600

Desktop normal/during glitches

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[irishron]

I'd like to have your system. Only reasons for the monitor to be causing this are game settings too high or monitor about to die. Also don't try to multitask with it. Causes more problems than it's worth.

[CodOfDuty]

I find it difficult to enjoy playing on low graphics, even though that only seems to stop the chances of the problem occuring.

[irishron]

I just noticed you're trying to run it 800x600. Game minimum is 1024x768. Is your monitor too small to run it at this resolution?

[CodOfDuty]

Well like I said, that is the major problem, it seems to change to 800x600 resolution by itself

[irishron]

What size monitor do you have? Brand?

[CodOfDuty]

Fujitsu Siemens flatscreen, size is 270mmx340mm

[irishron]

Now I know why and you won't like the answer. It's a laptop and your screen is too small for any resolution larger then 800x600. If you want to play this game minimum resolution required, you're going to have to think upgrade.

[CodOfDuty]

I'm not sure if that's it, it ran fine on my last and smaller monitor

[irishron]

Could you post the specs for your monitor including resolutions supported here in English?

[CodOfDuty]

Here is my graphics Adapter Information:

Chip Type: ATI Radeon Graphics Processor (0x9505)
DAC Type: Internal DAC (400MHz)
Memory Size: 1024 MB
Adapter String: ATI Radeon HD 3850

Resolutions:

640 by 480
720 by 480
800 by 600
848 by 480
1024 by 768
1152 by 864
1280 by 720
1280 by 768
1280 by 800
1280 by 900
1280 by 960
1280 by 1024

Is that enough info or do you want me to go into info for example high/true colours, also my refresh rates that can be displayed are 60, 70 and 75 Hertz.
I am currently running my desktop on 1280 by 1024 pixels with 32 bit colour quality.

Also another problem that is hrad to explain is that when i do tab out and the scren is on the low resolution and i go to change it back, sometimes it will show that their are twice as many resolutions to display, going into even bigger resolutions. And sometimes it will only show half as many, quite difficult to explain but if anybody wants i'll take a screenshot of that.

[irishron]

My apologies. With that list and that card you should have no problems.

Whenever I play this game I have nothing running in the background except basic necessities to keep away from things like this. Automatic updaters, instant messaging, weather screensavers, real-time chat sites, besides sites like Xfire can contribute to game problems.

If it was me and I found xfire being at least part of the problem, I'd leave it off while I'm playing M2TW. Maybe then you can figure out where the rest of the problems are.

[CodOfDuty]

I have nothing in background including Xfire when i am playing any game.
Could this help the matter? I have Dual SLI and my card supports 2 monitors.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[CodOfDuty]

Would switching to a different directx version help? I am currently on 9.0c

[irishron]

The directx is the correct one. From your screenshots, I believe inside it is a ATI problem with their crossfire drivers not doning what they are supposed to be doing. I just updated my ATI drivers a few days ago. If the new drivers don't do the trick, may want to reinstall the ones from five months ago and see if they make a difference.

[CodOfDuty]

I tried updating my card a last night but couldn't find anywhere, i looked at the manyfacturers website but there was nothing about ipdating the driver, could yo utell me where you did it from? Cheers.

[irishron]

I ran your card and this is what I got: http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_ca...=xp/radeonx-xp. Hope this helps.

[CodOfDuty]

Yes, this is exactly what i found last night, but i already had the ATI control center as it was already on the card, as for the display driver, i am unsure of what is does. But will try it out if that will help.

Question is how long will this keep going until you and me give up and i'll need to find help somewhere else.

[irishron]

The drivers are all June's drivers. The latest ones for anybody. Run it and see what happens.

[CodOfDuty]

Awh I have all 3 downlaoded and installed however i do not think it has taken any good effect on my game problems, here is a good example of one of my problems.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

And yes, if i just tab out and change the very low res back to normal, it's fine again for a short while.

This is now starting to effect my other games.