I'm running Win2k. I love it. With one exception. (And I'm not sure if this happens with 98 b/c I haven't run it in so long, I can't remember) But anyway that doesn't matter.
Here are my system specs:
Tbird 900
256 MB Ram
nVidia Geforce 256 DDR (Creatives card)
sb live 5.1 platinum
7200 Western Digital Hard Drive
Now here's the problem. My games lock up randomly. When they do lock up, I can still hear music, but video freezes. This leads me to believe it could be a problem with the video card. But here's the other strange thing... I've only noticed this happening in games that use the direct3d rendering mode! Strange huh? Now my guess is that this "older" card doesn't like the combination of Windows 2000 and the new version of directx (8.0a) That is my only guess. Everything else has been ruled out.
Any other ideas anyone? Any tips would be appreciated.
Matho
Please anyone tell me if they have this problem
Try running in AGP 2x instead of 4x you can change that in the bios. If that doesn't help check out http://www.geforcefaq.com they have a lot of good info there. Good Luck
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FlyingPenguin
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Geforce1 DDR here on a Win2K system - runs fine using the 12.90 driver (12.41 doesn't support overclocking).
I agree with the previous poster - you probably have some AGP stability issues, or you have an IRQ problem.
Some general suggestions:
- I recommend the reference drivers over the manufacturer's. Do NOT use beta or leaked drivers - use only the latest official reference drivers. Get them here: http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?PAGE=drivers
Exception to this is if you overclock. The latest official drivers won't let you. Use the 12.90 driver instead which seems very stable. You can find it at http://www.nvmax.com
- Remove any utilities for your old video card (Voodoo cards for instance install 3Dfx tools which MUST be removed via the Add/Remove icon in Control Panel). Also, you should ALWAYS change the video driver to "Standard VGA" first before swapping cards to purge the old driver. If you didn't do that before, do it now. Change it to "Standard VGA", reboot and it'll redetect the geforce and ask you for drivers.
- If you're overclocking (either the vid card or the cpu), don't and see if that helps.
- In the motherboard's BIOS menu, make sure that "Assign IRQ to VGA" is enabled and that both "Video BIOS Caching" and "Video Ram Shadow" are disabled. Set "AGP Aperature" to 64.
- I recommend you download a free utility called NVmax that allows you to tweak your Geforce card. Available here: http://www.tweakfiles.net/video/nvmax.html
Using NVmax, set AGP to 2x instead of 4x if it's defaulting to 4x (many motherboards don't properly support AGP 4x). I also recommend you disable AGP fastwrites and Side banding addressing (all these are located in the System->AGP Services menu). These can cause a lot of problems like you descibe, and disabling them causes only a very minor performance hit.
- The Geforce does NOT like to share an IRQ with other devices - make sure it's the only card using it's IRQ. If you can't change the IRQ for the conflicting card in Device Manager, then you must move the card to another slot.
- Go to the motherboard manufacturer's web site and see if there's an updated Flash BIOS for your mobo. It could be your AGP bus support isn't up to spec.
- You may not have the proper or the latest drivers for you motherboard's APG to PCI Bridge. The Geforce is a true AGP card (unlike 3Dfx cards) and is very fussy about having the AGP bus setup properly. This is a MAJOR gotcha. Windows will install the wrong mobo drivers until you update them. There should be drivers that came with your motherboard on a CD, but you should download the latest version from the motherboard manufacurer's web site.
- It's possible that some other device is causing the problem. Best way to isolate it is to pull ALL your cards except the vid card (IMPORTANT: note what slot each card was installed in). Play the misbehaving game and see if it runs stable (yes, the game should run just fine without a sound card installed). If it behaves, install each card ONE BY ONE starting with the sound card until you isolate the bad boy. It's important to put the cards back in their original slots to avoid PCI IRQ Sharing problems (see next paragraph).
- You may have a card that has a PCI IRQ channel sharing problem (NOT the same as an IRQ conflict). The SBLive, NICs and SCSI controllers are very prone to this. Fix is essentially the same as mentioned in the previous paragraph except when you find the misbehaving card, you need to move it to another slot. More details on this problem here: http://soldcentralfl.com/quakecoop/glfaq5.htm#5_9
- You may have background app running causing problems. I like to run a very clean system when play - I want NOTHING running in the background. Don't run anything in the background: Virus Scanners, disk utils, reminder programs, taskbar shortcuts for Real Player, AOL Instant Messenger, etc). If you have Win98 run MSCONFIG.EXE click on the Startup tab. Uncheck anything you don't need running - Windows ONLY requires System Tray, Task Monitor and Power Profile to run properly (and you can lose Power Profile if your computer doesn't use sleep mode). Uncheck everything else unless it's required by something.
- You should also check out the Geforce FAQ at http://geforcefaq.com
Hope this helps...
I agree with the previous poster - you probably have some AGP stability issues, or you have an IRQ problem.
Some general suggestions:
- I recommend the reference drivers over the manufacturer's. Do NOT use beta or leaked drivers - use only the latest official reference drivers. Get them here: http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?PAGE=drivers
Exception to this is if you overclock. The latest official drivers won't let you. Use the 12.90 driver instead which seems very stable. You can find it at http://www.nvmax.com
- Remove any utilities for your old video card (Voodoo cards for instance install 3Dfx tools which MUST be removed via the Add/Remove icon in Control Panel). Also, you should ALWAYS change the video driver to "Standard VGA" first before swapping cards to purge the old driver. If you didn't do that before, do it now. Change it to "Standard VGA", reboot and it'll redetect the geforce and ask you for drivers.
- If you're overclocking (either the vid card or the cpu), don't and see if that helps.
- In the motherboard's BIOS menu, make sure that "Assign IRQ to VGA" is enabled and that both "Video BIOS Caching" and "Video Ram Shadow" are disabled. Set "AGP Aperature" to 64.
- I recommend you download a free utility called NVmax that allows you to tweak your Geforce card. Available here: http://www.tweakfiles.net/video/nvmax.html
Using NVmax, set AGP to 2x instead of 4x if it's defaulting to 4x (many motherboards don't properly support AGP 4x). I also recommend you disable AGP fastwrites and Side banding addressing (all these are located in the System->AGP Services menu). These can cause a lot of problems like you descibe, and disabling them causes only a very minor performance hit.
- The Geforce does NOT like to share an IRQ with other devices - make sure it's the only card using it's IRQ. If you can't change the IRQ for the conflicting card in Device Manager, then you must move the card to another slot.
- Go to the motherboard manufacturer's web site and see if there's an updated Flash BIOS for your mobo. It could be your AGP bus support isn't up to spec.
- You may not have the proper or the latest drivers for you motherboard's APG to PCI Bridge. The Geforce is a true AGP card (unlike 3Dfx cards) and is very fussy about having the AGP bus setup properly. This is a MAJOR gotcha. Windows will install the wrong mobo drivers until you update them. There should be drivers that came with your motherboard on a CD, but you should download the latest version from the motherboard manufacurer's web site.
- It's possible that some other device is causing the problem. Best way to isolate it is to pull ALL your cards except the vid card (IMPORTANT: note what slot each card was installed in). Play the misbehaving game and see if it runs stable (yes, the game should run just fine without a sound card installed). If it behaves, install each card ONE BY ONE starting with the sound card until you isolate the bad boy. It's important to put the cards back in their original slots to avoid PCI IRQ Sharing problems (see next paragraph).
- You may have a card that has a PCI IRQ channel sharing problem (NOT the same as an IRQ conflict). The SBLive, NICs and SCSI controllers are very prone to this. Fix is essentially the same as mentioned in the previous paragraph except when you find the misbehaving card, you need to move it to another slot. More details on this problem here: http://soldcentralfl.com/quakecoop/glfaq5.htm#5_9
- You may have background app running causing problems. I like to run a very clean system when play - I want NOTHING running in the background. Don't run anything in the background: Virus Scanners, disk utils, reminder programs, taskbar shortcuts for Real Player, AOL Instant Messenger, etc). If you have Win98 run MSCONFIG.EXE click on the Startup tab. Uncheck anything you don't need running - Windows ONLY requires System Tray, Task Monitor and Power Profile to run properly (and you can lose Power Profile if your computer doesn't use sleep mode). Uncheck everything else unless it's required by something.
- You should also check out the Geforce FAQ at http://geforcefaq.com
Hope this helps...
---
“The Government of Spain will not applaud those who set the world on fire just because they show up with a bucket.” - Prime Minister of Spain, Pedro Sánchez
“The Government of Spain will not applaud those who set the world on fire just because they show up with a bucket.” - Prime Minister of Spain, Pedro Sánchez
Let me first tell you i really appreciate your help with this.
I've removed all old video card stuff, actually this was the first card for this computer.
I'm not overclocking.
As far as the bios goes, i've updated to the latest flash bios and i cant find any of those options you said, except for AGP Aperture which is set to 64.
As far as the IRQ sharing, it's on 9 with a bunch of other shit. I can't move it to another slot because I only have one AGP slot. Is there another way to change the IRQ?
I've also installed the latest 4-in-1 drivers for my via mobo. And that updated the bridge so i don't think that would be the problem.
I also took your advice and set AGP to 2x and fastwrites disabled. I'm gonna go try the games now... brb!!!
I've removed all old video card stuff, actually this was the first card for this computer.
I'm not overclocking.
As far as the bios goes, i've updated to the latest flash bios and i cant find any of those options you said, except for AGP Aperture which is set to 64.
As far as the IRQ sharing, it's on 9 with a bunch of other shit. I can't move it to another slot because I only have one AGP slot. Is there another way to change the IRQ?
I've also installed the latest 4-in-1 drivers for my via mobo. And that updated the bridge so i don't think that would be the problem.
I also took your advice and set AGP to 2x and fastwrites disabled. I'm gonna go try the games now... brb!!!
-
FlyingPenguin
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Win2K always defaults to having all devices share 1 IRQ. Only way to avoid this is to disable ACPI in the BIOS power management menu.
If the Geforce is still sharing an IRQ with a card after that, you need to move the card that it's sharing with to another slot.
More info here: http://soldcentralfl.com/quakecoop/glfaq5.htm#5_9
If the Geforce is still sharing an IRQ with a card after that, you need to move the card that it's sharing with to another slot.
More info here: http://soldcentralfl.com/quakecoop/glfaq5.htm#5_9
---
“The Government of Spain will not applaud those who set the world on fire just because they show up with a bucket.” - Prime Minister of Spain, Pedro Sánchez
“The Government of Spain will not applaud those who set the world on fire just because they show up with a bucket.” - Prime Minister of Spain, Pedro Sánchez
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MegaVectra
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MegaVectra
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Since your MB uses the VIA chipset, it sounds like you might need to tweak the AGP driving value.
See here.
http://www.viahardware.com/agp4xfix.shtm
and here for more info
http://arstechnica.com/ask-ars/2000/ask-08212000.html
I had the same problems with my Apollo 133A MB when running AGP 4X.
Although some say not to use the <a href=http://www.viahardware.com/download/index.shtm#4in1>VIA 4-in-1 Drivers</a>, but I say do use them.
See here.
http://www.viahardware.com/agp4xfix.shtm
and here for more info
http://arstechnica.com/ask-ars/2000/ask-08212000.html
I had the same problems with my Apollo 133A MB when running AGP 4X.
Although some say not to use the <a href=http://www.viahardware.com/download/index.shtm#4in1>VIA 4-in-1 Drivers</a>, but I say do use them.
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FlyingPenguin
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