I knew someday Steam was going to cause me problems! Against my better judgement - I installed Steam and downloaded ASA A Space Adventure. I played the game for about an hour when suddenly my PC Froze solid - all I can do is power down and reboot. While booting - my DELL splash screen showed rows and rows of dots - I thought something was not right but it continued to boot. When I got my system back up, my resolution changed to 800x600! and my PC did not recognize my NVidia GeForce 8800 GT card !!

Ok - I'm a tech, so lets get drivers from NVidia which I did but I could not installed them getting Windows error 43 - that Windows has stopped this card from being used because it detected an issue - and - of course - no other explanation.

I can no longer get this card installed by any means - NVidia detection, manual driver install, Windows Update - Nothing !!

I cannot get Windows to even detect the card - I know its running since its dedicated fan is running and I do get VGA video from it as I have no on-board video.

Has anyone run into this problem ?? I am tagging Steam as the culprit.

I think its highly unlikely a game did something to your video card.Its possible the card just went bad and you just happened to be playing that game.With everything you describe you did it sounds like the card went kaput.You could try unplugging it and re-seating it in the connector but I wouldnt get my hopes up.

I agree with Geo.
It's probably coincidence that you installed Steam shortly before the video card failed.
New drivers can't rescue a video card with hardware failure.

I think your 8800 went south - mine did the same years ago.

Same exact behavior as when my old video card went south. And I didn't even have Steam on my machine back then. As Jenny says, drivers cannot help a video card which has failed.

Yea - mostly likely correct !! Just venting I guess and Steam is a good target for me !

Ok so I replaced the 8800 temporarily with a GeForce series 6 ( 6800 ) card I had as a spare but now I am getting a Corrupt Game error in Steam "Init Failed - File is Corrupt" Not being Steam savy - I see that I can delete Game Content and re-download the content for that game.

I am guessing that is an un-install then re-install routine ??

That would probably correct the issue, hard to say - I don't own the game. Does the game have a setup that can be rerun?


It's one of my favorite targets as well.

InlandAZ - not that I can find - I am not a Steam fan nor would I ever promote it - it does its own thing and it almost acts like a VIRUS. I will try to remove it entirely from the PC - and then reinstall it and only because G.O.G. does not offer the game so if I want to play it - gotta be Steam !!

I just picked up a new GeForce GT 740 from Best Buy - it was cheap and will do the trick for now.

So my Saturday afternoon will be fun, fun, fun.

Right - drivers can't fix a fried video card - but I have seen poorly written software do some nasty things to a PC - including overheating a chip or corrupting a system etc etc.

Actually the Adventuregamers shop offers a DRM-free download of ASA.
https://store.adventuregamers.com/products/view/asa_a_space_adventure
They give a choice of either DRM-free, client-free download or Steam.
I'm not sure how the €14.99 price translates into dollars though.

There will also be a DVD version once the developer is sure the game is fully debugged and won't need further patching.
http://shop.theicehouse.fr/games-dvd---asa-remastered-edition.html
That's the one I'm waiting for.

The developer wanted the game on GOG, but GOG refused it for some reason.
http://blog.theblackcube.fr/2015/03/no-gog-release-savegame-bug-future.html


Hopefully it will be fun after the card is installed.

Thank you Jenny

I took care of my video issue....I installed a new nVidia GT740 Graphics card and my PC was running pretty good but every time I start ASA Space Adventure and play the game , I would get a video crash, the screen would turn bright white and after a minute or two it would return to normal but with a message saying that the video has recovered from a crash but recovered. My screen would come back and I would have to restart the game, from an "AutoSave". This only would happen when I play this game from the Steam program.


I deleted STEAM ! and ASA A Space Adventure - no more problems ! I don't know if the game or Steam caused an issue but they are gone ! I am not a fan of STEAM. I think Steam is an "infection" and I don't like the way it handles games. At any rate , the game is gone and from what I've seen so far, after playing it for a few hours, the game is not worth spending any more money on anyway, even if GOG or AdventureGamers does offer it, I can't justify re-purchasing it.

I hope my fellow GBers have a much better experience than I did and can play and enjoy ASA A Space Adventure !

Did you try the "disable Steam overlay" suggested here
https://steamcommunity.com/app/329980/discussions/0/617329797182664086/

ASA is NOT bound to Steam overlay. In fact, it is DRM-free version distributed via Steam.
That is, you can run it with Steam overlay of course, but you can also run just asa_r.exe without launching Steam itself and Steam overlay.

Hi Jenny - Yes I tried that too but was still getting crashed video screens when Steam was running. I had to un-install Steam and my system seems stable now.

Steam and I don't get along - I had another game - Serena - I was playing before ASA - I can no longer play that one either ! it just will not load anymore. All I get is a fast blink and no game.

Steam had to go..... so I deleted it.

There is a common thread in all this for me at least ...and that is while playing a game and I had have to leave the PC for a moment and the PC "goes to sleep" while Steam was running --- there was no way I could wake it - no mouse movement, no keyboard key combos, not even accessing that PC from a remote desktop on another machine! I could not even Ctrl Alt Delete into task manager to kill the process.

Maybe this is something to troubleshoot here ; but Steam took all of the STEAM out of me - so out it goes.

While I'm no big fan of Steam, I've never had any of the issues you are, sureshot! Steam must have cursed you...

Hi Draclvr !

Well they'll never get another chance at me!!

If I can't get a game from all the other sources then so be it !

Like I said earlier - Steam acts more like SPYWARE and/or a Virus - just too intrusive and buggy for me!

Oh well. It was just a thought since I didn't see that particular fix mentioned earlier.

I don't use Steam myself. If I'm going to pay for a game, I want more control over how I download, archive, and play it.

That's one reason I'm glad the new Adventuregamers shop has opened up -- they offer DRM-free, client-free downloads for some games that GOG doesn't have -- like ASA and The Journey Down.

I wish they'd release Crimes and Punishments, otherwise it's never going to get played here.

Jenny .... it was a good suggestion - I just feel that Steam is far too buggy to be "fixed" !

Inland - I will pay a premium on another site for a game before I even consider using Steam again! I'd rather not play the game than risk a OS corruption or crash.

Ya know - I must be getting old - I thought something was missing from GB site - I didn't see The Adventure Shop link in a while

The Adventuregamers Store is new.
The Adventuregamers website has been around a long time, but I think the store was only started earlier this year.
https://store.adventuregamers.com/
and their FAQ is here
https://store.adventuregamers.com/about

The Adventure Shop is a different shop and is at
http://us-adventureshop.gamesplanet.com/
I don't think Adventure Shop ever had DRM-free games.
As far as I know their games always had activations

Adventuregamers used to have a banner for Adventure Shop, the way Gameboomers did, but had problems with them.
Adventuregamers Store has a webpage specifically about Adventure Shop and the name confusion.
https://store.adventuregamers.com/about/adventureshop

Thank you Jenny !!

Why is it that whenever something breaks, it ends up in the south? Why not, say, in Arizona?

Perhaps something to do with old age...everything gradually sags...(south)

I think it equates south with down as it is on the cardinal directions. Sounds good anyway!

Yea but if you live in the Southern Hemisphere, do they say gone North ? Is "down" really "up" down there ? hmmmm