Disco InfernoFollow

A few months ago my girlfriend decided to get her OWN computer to play FFXI on, so we bought the game downloaded all the updates loaded it up and bang... it was 1970 all over again. There were strange coloured lights and shapes appearing all over the screen and the game was unplayable. I looked on the internet and saw that a few people had been having the same problem and some fixed it with a graphics overclocking utility such as 3-D Analyze. I got the program and began fiddling with it, the closest I got to fixing the problem still made it unplayable, isnteadof the background appearing weird it was as if all the characters PC and NPC were exploding, large shapes were coming out from their bodies...

Anyway, putting the problem down to a videocard issue and continuing to let my girlfriend play FFXI at my place (grr) today we got a new card... the same make and model as the one in my PC hoping that doing this would mean no more trouble. We were wrong, the same problem was back and I have no idea how to fix it.

The specs are;

-AMD Duron Processor 1.39GHZ (i think this may be an issue as I use an Athlon?)
-256MB of RAM
with a GeForce FX 5200 (recommended on the games packaging)

I'm using the exact same card on my PC and I run both Half-Life 2 and Doom3 with ease as well as that my FFXI settings are on Max and it plays with no slowdown 95% of the time which leaves me doubtful of the card being the issue.

If anyone can let me know of a way to fix this id be greatful - until then I'll try messing with this overclocking stuff to try and find a way around it.

thnx ^^

Sounds like one of two problems to me: either a corrupted installation (corrected, obviously, by simply reinstalling the game), or bad/mismatched RAM. Most likely it's just the installation. If it's the RAM, it probably isn't mismatched (ie two sticks of RAM running at two different speeds often cause problems) because that computer only has 256MB, which can only make me assume that it's just one stick. If a reinstallation doesn't fix the problem, try swapping a stick of RAM from your computer into hers and see if that works. Or you might want to try those steps in reverse, since FFXI takes forever to update.