Nvidia GTS250 OC, Age Of Conan, Windows 7 64 problem

I just got a new hard drive, and Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit. Hopefully, all the specs show up in my info. I installed Age Of Conan, and I am having graphics problems. The game will "freeze" quite frequently. The music and sound will continue to play, but the picture onscreen will freeze for several seconds (up to 30 seconds) and makes the game unplayable. I installed the latest Nvidia drivers for Windows 7 64bit, but it did not help. I tried the Beta drivers, and they just brought in an additional problem, with the beta drivers I get a multi-colored "snowfall" onscreen while running the game. I tried swapping out my card for an ald Nvidia 8600 I had laying around. Updated the drivers, still the same problem. I took out the new hard drive and put my old one back in (which has Windows Vista Ultimate 32 bit) and the game runs fine under Vista with either card. I tried reinstalling the Windows 7 drive, and hooked up the Vista drive with a dock. I loaded Windows 7, navigated to the docked drive and ran the game's exe from that drive (just to test if it was the game installed on the new drive that may be the problem), still had the same lockups.

This is the only problem I am having with Windows 7, but it's a big one for me since I use this machine mainly for Age of Conan. Any ideas on how to get the card(s) and game working with Windows 7?

Best thing you can do is install a few more games and test to see how they react.

Another good idea is to visit the site of the game and see if there are any patches available.

Let us know results.

I don't have any other games to install.

I did search Funcom's site and forums. Other people seem to be running Windows 7 with no problems (at least none reported).

http://ati.amd.com/developer/demos/r9700.html

Try playing with these.

Thanks, I will try those now. Slight update... I just tried running Conan in windowed mode and still got the freezes, but they were not as frequent and did not last as long. This is strange because under Vista, Conan ran much better in fullscreen as opposed to windowed.

RivaTuner

Overclock your video card. It may help a good deal, especially if it has a good cooling solution.

Read about it to be careful while doing so. Raise fan speeds high if you do.

RivaTuner v2.24c download from Guru3D.com

Defragment HDD too. If you just installed 7, it may take a day or two to settle down from services acting up and the like (actually "normal" operation.)
Try disabling Windows Search service.

Type services.msc in start menu search box to get to it.

Use msconfig in same place, then startup tab to stop anythnig not needed for Windows to run or that you yourself require to always run.

The 250 card is overclocked out of the box. If everything ran fine with Vista 32, why would I have to overclock with Win7 64? Is it because it's a 64 bit operating system? Does a 64 bit system demand more from the video card?

I understand that. So is mine and I still raise it another 80 mHz gpu and lots more for graphics ram.

You don't have to overclock. If you're a gamer, you want to overclock.

64 bit demands more memory amount, that's all really. Should not negatively affect processing, unless low on system ram. You're not low.

I got so frustrated with this, I decided to try an ATI card and see how that works. I went to Best Buy and bought a Radeon HD 4890, installed it, updated the drivers, launched Conan. Played Conan for about 20 minutes so far with no problems. No hesitation, no freezes, great framerate. Seems like some kind of problem with the combination of Windows 7 64 bit, Nvidia video card(s), and Age Of Conan. So, now I have a 2 month old GTS 250 OC and nothing to do with it... I also spent another $200!