Doom 3 is crash fest 2004!

Ok, I just bought DOOM 3 yesterday and first off it wouldn't install, my CD-ROM drive would not recognize disk 3 but would disk 1 and 2? So I had to copy disk 1 and 2 to the HD using the CD ROM drive and then use someone else's laptop to copy disk 3 from network.

Well anyway, there is absolutely nothing wrong with my system, I built it myself and take pride in making sure everything is in top running order, the other 100's of games I own don't have any problems whatsoever and it is really a bummer that this game does, especially when it's the first ID software game i've ever had even the slightest little problem with, and I own them all.

My problem is, there is no sound at ALL, and the game crashes right after the security checkpoint in the beginning of the game, never fails. I have tried everything I can think of, completely disabled sound card, set AGP aperature size up and down the scale 40 times over, disabled fast writes, lowered AGP speed, used Omega Drivers, 4.9 catalyst, 4.7 catalyst, bios updated, and no it's not a heat issue.

All other drivers are up to date, windows is updated as much as it can be, directx 9.0c, nothing overclocked, and I am totally lost now, if anyone has any suggestions it would be greatly appreciated.

My system is:

P4 (Prescott) 3.0Ghz
Intel 865PERL MOBO
1GB 266Mhz DDR
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
SoundMAX Onboard Audio
Windows XP Home
DirectX 9.0c

Hi,

OK it looks like you have tried a lot of ideas already, but I'll try to offer some other ideas.

1. Have you run memtest86 recently? It would be a good idea to rule out any flaky memory as the cause here.

2. Stick with the cat 4.7's until you get this figured out. Completely wipe video drivers using "driver cleaner" and re-install.

3. Are you disabling agp fast writes in your bios, or in control panel somewhere? Disable in bios if option is there.

4. Maybe you could use some popular utility to calculate checksums of all files in your doom3 installation tree. Then you can make those checksums available to me, and I'll use the same tool to calculate checksums for my files. That will completely rule out a corrupted install as the cause of your problem.

5. Have you tried the no-cd "cracked" executable? This shouldn't matter - it's a bit of a reach I know.

6. Reduce your config as much as possible. Get rid of anything and everything that is not required to run the game. Turn things off in BIOS, kill running processes in Windows, etc... Simplify as much as possible. It sounds like you already tried this with your sound driver, but I guess I am suggesting that you take this idea as far as possible.

7. Investigate your BIOS settings as much as possible - you might be able to try different settings for a few options to see if it makes a difference.

8. Try directx 9.0b.

9. Hate to suggest it - but you could re-install windows. If you don't want to clobber your existing install, you could install to another partition, or use ghost - so that if re-installing doesn't help anything, you can just restore your current setup from an image.

That's all I can think of for now -- maybe someone else will have some good ideas for you too. I hope you can get this figured out so you can enjoy the game soon - I know this kind of thing is very annoying.

*EDIT*

Another idea - you could also disable DMA for all your storage devices, especially the hard drive where doom 3 is installed. Also update your CD-ROM firmware if possible and see if you can install normally then.