Freezes 1-5 seconds into game

Hey everyone, I am having troubles after the 1.1 update. When I start to play borderlands, it loads, game starts, then about 1-5 seconds (at different intervals) the screen freezes. The audio still plays, although it does not play "new sounds" that would occur during the game (music changes, interactions, etc.). My mouse and keyboard both freeze, but my computer is not frozen. I say this because I can hear notifications of my friends chatting with me through steam after it freezes. That being said I cannot alt-tab, alt-f4, escape, or do anything other than look at the frozen game. The problem even persists after I purchased the DLC: Dr. Ned.. This problem is happening almost 100% of the time now and is especially frustrating because I really like playing borderlands.. I am running windows 7 64-bit and have an 4870HD (with latest drivers). If anyone has any advice or experience with a problem such as this, I would greatly appreciate it if you could share possible remedies. Thanks in advance!

I have Windows XP, SP3, my specifications are...

-Motherboard: M4A79T Deluxe
-CPU: AMD X4 Phenom II 945 (3.00GHz)
-Graphics Card: ATI Radeon HD 4870 with 1gb of RAM
-RAM: 4 GB of RAM, 1333 MHz, DDR3


Anyhow, I got Borderlands, and this same thing happened to me, the difference being that I get a black screen, or more prominently, a white screen.

I have the latest drivers, 9_12.


Help on this would also greatly help, I checked Borderlands Forums, and MANY others have this problem, with our graphics cards, if not more.

[kn00tcn]

ctrl+alt+del saved me many times (in other games) ever since vista came out, since it loads a new menu screen on top of anything that's frozen

if your numlock or capslock lights work, then the keyboard has not frozen

Hey Knootcn, I cannot ctrl-alt-del nor do I have a numlock/caps lock light on my keyboard . Nothing is working, I have updated all my drivers, mucked around with profiles, changed ini files, got rid of my over-clocking, ughh...

[Rikopio]

Same here. If I start a new game, everything works and I can play. But as soon as I quit and try to load it again, it will freeze but the ambient music still plays. Requires me to shut down my computer.

[H.A.M.mer]

I recently switched to an ATI 5870 (9.12 drivers) and had the same problem for some reason. In my case using the "Borderlands Advanced Settings Tool" (see http://forums.steampowered.com/forum....php?t=1085076) caused the problem because the "DirectX 10-Mode" was activated.
Disabeling it solved the problem.

[Inaire]

Originally Posted by Zaxara

I have Windows XP, SP3, my specifications are...

-Motherboard: M4A79T Deluxe
-CPU: AMD X4 Phenom II 945 (3.00GHz)
-Graphics Card: ATI Radeon HD 4870 with 1gb of RAM
-RAM: 4 GB of RAM, 1333 MHz, DDR3


Anyhow, I got Borderlands, and this same thing happened to me, the difference being that I get a black screen, or more prominently, a white screen.

I have the latest drivers, 9_12.


Help on this would also greatly help, I checked Borderlands Forums, and MANY others have this problem, with our graphics cards, if not more.

I had this problem too, it's the 9.12 drivers for ATI that's causing the freezing, downgrade back to 9.11.

You'll get the texture bug, but it's better then having the game freeze on you all the time.

I also assume the topic starter has the same problem, but I only read the first and last sentence of his post, wall of text hurts my eyes.

Originally Posted by Inaire

I had this problem too, it's the 9.12 drivers for ATI that's causing the freezing, downgrade back to 9.11.

You'll get the texture bug, but it's better then having the game freeze on you all the time.

I also assume the topic starter has the same problem, but I only read the first and last sentence of his post, wall of text hurts my eyes.

Same problem here - I've just purchased Borderlands + DLC so I can't verify if it worked before the patch but I doubt it's Catalyst 9.12 driver as the original poster stated that the game worked fine before the patch.

I find that I can sometimes get the game running if I Ctrl Alt Delete, bring up Task Manager and then return to the game - sometimes needs a few attempts but once its running it runs smoothly.

I suspect the problem is due to the patch and specifically the enabling of DRM (Securom I think) for the DLC content - I know it's been said many times before but why punish the paying customer with DRM bloatware and why is it necessary on Steam? I assumed that that the game didn't come with bloated copy protection software that invades my PC and takes up resources. I also assumed the game would just work as my PC runs everything else flawlessly.

Am I also wrong to assume that Steam can see that I have purchased a legitimate copy and therefore DRM is absolutely not necessary?

[SourMashKoolAid]

I had this problem also using vista x64, ati 4850 9.12 drivers. The way I resolved it was to rename the borderlands.exe to borderlandss.exe . I also removed ATI Catalyst before doing this.


Sounds a bit like voodoo but I haven't had it freeze upon starting yet.

[caveman26]

update your ati driver to the new one might help 10.something

[SourMashKoolAid]

Thanks for the advice - didn't realize they just released that.

[Leinad177]

AMD X4 Phenom II 945 (3.00GHz)
ATI Radeon HD 4870

are you serious? a crappy AMD cpu

AND a crappy ATI card which just happens to be one of the worst cards ATI has ever released...
(i should know, i used to own one)

jeez...im surprised you could even load windows on a rubbish system like that

Originally Posted by H.A.M.mer

I recently switched to an ATI 5870 (9.12 drivers) and had the same problem for some reason. In my case using the "Borderlands Advanced Settings Tool" (see http://forums.steampowered.com/forum....php?t=1085076) caused the problem because the "DirectX 10-Mode" was activated.
Disabeling it solved the problem.

how does one disable DX 10?

[Fruitbatz]

I have the retail version & the latest update is 1.30 which u need to play knoxx aswell ..I,m sure if you have the steam version its fully updated.
http://www.gearboxsoftware.com/games/borderlands