It's because:
- you have too much RAM.
- Directx7 on Evo1 doesn't work on some new cards.
- 4x4 Evo is outdated.
The swap file problem is a classic evo problem. During these years, I have heard a lot of stuff about it, but no ones knows exactly what is causing this.
Well here it is;
4x4 calls an API function called GlobalMemoryStatus which returns incorrect information (exactly the dwAvailPageFile DWORD) of your swap (page) file. Having a big page file size and more than 2gb of ram causes this.
I made a small VisualBasic program demonstrating this.
Right now the size of my page file is 2046 mb and I have 2gb of RAM, but GlobalMemoryStatus reports -888127488 bytes (-846.9 mb)
This is even acknowledged by Microsoft
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/274558
TRI has never patched this, the 56-57 patches doesn't fix this.
About your graphics problems... for some reason, Evo1 is doing the same for me, but not Evo2. And I have a Intel G41 integrated graphics card with 256mb.
Solution: Use OpenGL (or try Glide if you have installed GlideWrapper/dgVoodoo) in the startup config dialog.
Try to open resource hogging programs, web browsers and that kind of stuff, use at least 700mb of RAM, then, run Evo. It works for me, Evo will still display incorrect information, but the gameplay will be a lot faster.
And THAT'S another big mystery solved by Kmaster.