Aces High Bulletin Board
Help and Support Forums => Aces High Bug Reports => Topic started by: Steve on June 28, 2004, 05:17:17 PM
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I'm getting this just about every time I take off now. Usually takes a while to kick in. I used to get a few high pitched squeals in AHI. i get them now and then a black screen. Is this sound card related? I have a sound blaster audigy Gamer card. It was doing it w/ older drivers... updated to new ones unchanged. Sometimes I get a funky VPN message from ATI re: vid card (disabled this, get lockups instead now). WTF?
9800 Pro radeon.. tried old drivers, new drivers, omega drivers, no change. Please help!!!!
I've played a lot of computer games in my life. NEVER have I had so much trouble.
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Hang in there Steve.
Have you done the dxdiag thing and turned sound acceleration down to a max of 3/4 ?
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Steve,
Is this on the computer that you just reformatted and reinstalled all your apps on or another one?
If it's not the one you just reformatted, you know what my advice will be.....
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Mosq, yes it's the one I reformatted.
You guys just might be geniuses though.
Here's what I did:
Turned down hardware acceleration for sound card (forgot to do this after reformat)
DL'd driver cleaner 3.0 per Silat's and Slap's instructions.
Deleted drivers.
Rebooted in safe mode.
Ran DC3.
Rebooted, did not allow windows to load drivers.
Loaded omgea drivers and rebooted.
Ran AHII, flew a whole tank of gas in a p51D, garnering 5 kills in the process and landed them... no boot!
Thanks for your input here and in the text buffer!!
P.S. I really suck at AHII, not in a gosh-I'm-not-very-good-way.
but more like in a geez-I-suck-so-much-that-I-can-barely-keep-this-thing-flying-while-trying-to-acquire-a-gun-solution sort of way. It's actually pretty darned amusing just how bad I am. I gave myself several good laughs on the flight!
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I am having very similar black screen problems and have for about 5 or 6 days now.
I posted a message about crashing to black a few days back.
I still don't know what causes it. Some occasions it will crash about 10 seconds after game starts in the tower others I may play for 5-30 minutes. Occasionally now I get to sign off when I am ready. :eek:
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DAMN!!!!! Premature celebration. Still getting lockups after all that effort. I'm starting to suspect that the ATI 9800 Pro will not work well w/ AH2.... I wasted a lot of $$$ on this thing. Skuzzy, please help me.
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Damn.. getting lockup booted...monitor loses signal like it is shutting down... WTF is that?
I have a 350 watt P/S... this is supposed to be enough.
Arrgghhhhhh!!!
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350 watts is enough for a 9800 pro?
Dont seem like it.
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Well what is?
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350 seems pretty low Steve. If your moniter just plain loses the signal that just might be your problem. Antec has a 430 watt that's good, and cheeeep.
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I'm running a 9800 Pro on a 350 watt PS.
No problems like you are mentioning, Steve.
Just a heads-up.
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I know with my current nvidia card there is a 3 prong power plug in at the rear of the card. Instructions said nothing about it. If you have one on the ATI it needs to be plugged into computer power.
If your flying for an hour before problems crop up, think about heat. You could turn off the box, have a couple of cheep beers and fire it up and fly as an experiment. Check what your case and cpu temperatures are when you get booted.
I still say 350 is on the lean side. Newer cards eat the power. And tho the graphics right now don't look fancy, their pushin the card, making it work. After checking benchmarks on your card you definatly need more watts. Whether that is the root of the problem I can't tell you. But one of the top 3 cards is definatly going to make the lights dim.
We'll figure it out.
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I'll pick up a power supply tomorrow.
That will mean the following have been updated on my PC for AHII:
CPU
Mobo
Vid card
Power supply
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Here's my update list :D
Epox INTEL865 EP-4PDA2+
800 FBS Hypertheading
INTEL P4/3.06GHz CPU
2 x 512MB PC 3200 Ram
Western Digital SATA 80gig hard drive
7200RPM 8MB buffer
Chaintech FX5900XT Nvidia 128meg card
. OEM drivers
. Card settings: 1042x768 truecolor 85 hertz
. Image setting: Performance
. AA setting: 4X
. Anisotropic filtering: 4X
. Vsync on ( 85 hertz )
DirectX 9.0B
Soundblaster 512, XP configuration
. 3/4 acceleration
Misc DVD-RW, DVD, floppy
Antec Truepower 430watt power supply
Antec PlusView 100AMG case with 2 extra fans
( incase temperture 75 degrees )
XP Home
CH USB Fighter stich, Pro throttle, Pro pedals
My advantage is that I have done this same thing with the release of WBIII a few years back. This time around it was second nature. The game is smooth, without a hitch.
If you have just reformatted, your in a good place. Lean and mean. Just need to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
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Steve....betcha I know what is going on if your mobo has Via chipset.
As far as power supplies go....I'm running a 300 watt power supply it's plenty. And....I'm running a 9800Pro off a dangle, a Freezer bay set of cooling fans off a dangle etc.
Don't fall for the ole not big enuff power supply gig. Cripes..realize 350 watts and what it can do. I wish I had the money for every one that went to a 400 power supply...when they dint need to LOL. By the way...the power supply on my Aopen case is 5 years old and running strong...and runs everything at 300 watts.
Now...black screen issue. If you're running a mobo chipset...and they are via....9800 instruction book states that you must have latest via drivers or what you are experiencing occurs.
If you just reformatted, and you loaded the disk that came with the mobo....chances are great you don't have the latest hyperion 4 in 1 drivers. If not go to viaarena.com and dload and install the latest hyperion drivers...you'll get rid of that black screen crash.
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Hmm yes I run a 9800 pro 256 off a 300w supply as well.
Not saying it works perfect, for all I know a bigger supply might help my performance, not sure.
The system runs fine tho, there are 8 fans, a dvd drive, a cd burner and 2 hdds running in the system.
SKurj
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In this Forum under the thread....
AH2 Bug Reports > ATI Radeon Catalyst drivers and CTD
Pyro reports that HiTech (having downloaded the most current Catalyst drivers) is now experiencing our CTD pain and is "working through the issues" surrounding this latest driver release.
We're NOT crazy !!!
LOL
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Oh btw, one change I noted recently:
I went from 4.5 cats to 4.6
I nuked every sign of ATI off the machine during the uninstal process removing registry entries etc.
My vidmem total increased from 251.1 to I believe just over 256
This with the same version of the game.
I can't recall for sure, but either this change or P4 permitted me to run 140-150mb used vidmem with no perceivable side effects. With the 4.5's and/or P1,2,3 my used would go to 118, and start warning me constantly.
SKurj
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Changed to 500 watt power supply.. same damned problems.
It's the game..the game is full of bugs. Fortunately I haven't begun paying for my subscription yet. HTC has 2 weeks to keep my business.
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Roll back to very old drivers , I had troubles with catalyst 4.x I reverted back to catalyst 3.9 !
And now all is fine :)
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Thanks for the input Straffo. If you don't mind, please tell me how I go about "rolling" them back? I'm willing to try it... exhausted all reasonable means otherwise.
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You can find the old drivers here : http://www.atitech.com/support/products/radeonwinxppreviousdrivers.html
To roll back , simply go to "control pannel" then start "add/remove software" then remove "Ati control pannel" and next "Ati driver"
Before reboting use "driver cleaner" availlable here (http://www.driverheaven.net/cleaner/) to clean up the remaining drivers files.
Next you reboot and install the drivers :
http://www2.ati.com/drivers/wxp-w2k-7-95-031028m-011774c.exe
and the control panel
http://www2.ati.com/drivers/control-panel-7-95-031028m-011774c.exe
BUT !
Before doing that can you test your configuration with another directX9 game (like far cry) if like me you have only AH on your computer get the demo here (http://www.farcry-thegame.com/uk/demo.php)
And check if you have troubles with far cry too.
Some other point you need to check are :
is your PC cooled enought ?
Have you installed your motherboard drivers ?
did you try to reduce texture resolution in AH ?
Can you post here your system specification :
Motherboard brand and type
CPU
sound board brand ,type and driver version
and any exotic hardware you can have
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Steve,
The ATI's are having big problems. Since yours is brand new, you might consider taking it back and getting an Nvidia chip based card.
FX-5900 XTs at Newegg are running $175 to 195.
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I also upgraded to an ATI in preperation for AH2. 6 CTDs in Patch 4 in an hour. bummer
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Originally posted by MOSQ
[BFX-5900 XTs at Newegg are running $175 to 195. [/B]
That's the card I'm runnin ( bought it there too ) Having zero problems with the game. It's a step down from Steve's card on the performance comparisons.
I've flown an hour a night over the last three days and haven't had stutter one. Smooth as glass.
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For the record I've a 9800 and never had a CTD in AH ever ( not even in AH1 :))
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Originally posted by straffo
Roll back to very old drivers , I had troubles with catalyst 4.x I reverted back to catalyst 3.9 !
And now all is fine :)
Originally posted by straffo
For the record I've a 9800 and never had a CTD in AH ever ( not even in AH1 :))
So what problems did you fix by rolling back?
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Originally posted by MOSQ
So what problems did you fix by rolling back?
I had some trouble with my own software :)
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Mosq, I'm gonna explore every avenue before I dump this card, thanks though.
OK, here's what I did today/last night.
Installed cooling fan in desk top over PC case. Installed new 500W power supply.
Deleted, then cleaned vid drivers.
Deleted, then cleaned sound drivers.
Loaded "rolled back" drivers per Straffo's recommendation.
Loaded latest drivers for sound card (audigy).
Played for an hour and a half just now..... no trouble!
I have 131vid mem listed. I did notice that my vid mem usage slowly climbed as I played but it never got over 50.6 used.
I'm still partially convinced that some of my problems were attributable to sound card. Would get odd screech in sound card even in AHI. I could alt tab out and it would go away. Couldn't in AHII though.
Last night as I attacked an A20, I got a loud screech, lockup, then boot.
no Screeches/boots tonight.
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Just flew another round. Got booted on the runway first try. Could this be a random one? I hope it is.
tried again, flew the whole flight. Landed no trouble. :)
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Originally posted by Steve
DAMN!!!!! Premature celebration. Still getting lockups after all that effort. I'm starting to suspect that the ATI 9800 Pro will not work well w/ AH2.... I wasted a lot of $$$ on this thing. Skuzzy, please help me.
Traded in my g-force for a ATI9600 PRO on a recomendation
from my Computer shop.
All tho don't have lock-ups , the card sucks in AH2. Frame rates
are down--lottsa little glitches like pieces of the map going awol ,
Gun site turns into the sun , just wierd irritating things.
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Steve,
You might post your IRQ settings here for Skuzzy and others to look at.
And this may seem weird, but do you have your sound card in the PCI slot that is closest to your AGP slot? Somtimes that can cause problems. If it is, try moving your sound card, and any other cards, away from the PCI slot that is next to the AGP slot. For some reason Windows likes to have an empty PCI slot between the AGP and the first PCI card.
If you do move your sound card you should uninstall the sound card first in System, then move the card, otherwise you may get funky IRQ problems.
And be sure that when you have reinstalled your sound card drivers that DX9 has not by default reset you to full acceleration.
From Skuzzy's Hints and Tips in the Hardware BBS:
SOUND PROBLEMS
NOTE: With version 1.11 of Aces High or later, we do require DirectX 8.1b or later. In DXDIAG, your DirectX Version should be 4.08.01.0881 or greater. If it is not, then you need to download and install DirectX from Microsoft's WEB site.
1) Press the "Start" button from the Windows desktop
2) Select "Run" from the dialog box that pops up.
3) In the Run dialog box, type DXDIAG and press the key.
This will start the Microsoft DirectX diagnostic tool.
4) Once started, select the "Sound" tab
5) Make sure you have your hardware acceleration set to no higher than 3/4 (one notch lower than full).
6) Run the Sound diagnostics and make sure is works.
If you are still having problems:
Make sure you have the latest sound chip/board drivers for your operating system. NOTE: In some cases, such as the C-Media chip or any onboard sound chip, random lockups and lost sounds seem to be normal.
If you have interrupt conflicts/sharing with any Sound Blaster board, you will have problems, such as video graphics stutter, lost sounds, general Internet connectivity issues, or any combination of the above.
Using the "System Information" tool, you can see what interrupts are being used in your computer system. NOTE: It is safe to ignore the various "Steering" interrupts.
Also if you are having problems with voice, you might try changing your record/encode method, in the game, go to "Setup", then press the "Voice" button from the clipboard and check the "Use Wave In" option to see if that will clear his problem up.
INTERRUPTS AND YOUR COMPUTER
For gaming, it is highly desirable that each device in your system be on its own interrupt. Sometimes this means moving cards around in the PCI slots to accomplish this.
Shared interrupts will cause all types of maladies. Stuttering video, sound cut-outs, all the way to system freezes and crashes.
It is difficult to tell you how to resolve this as it depends on the BIOS, motherboard, shared device type, operating system, and many other factors.
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Here are my Irq's.. what do you think?
(http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/54_1088661975_irq2.jpg)
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Strange that everyone resorts to the IRQ sharing 'fix'. Cards are supposed to able to share IRQ's and while it is not desiable to share AGP IRQ with any others it shouldn't cause any major problems. In fact with todays boards it is almost impossible to avoid sharing IRQ's.
I would like to know what turning down sound acceleration does though. Every other game I play, sound acceleration at max has no effect on them.
Looking at Steves IRQ pic, be aware the APIC which gives you more than 16 IRQ routes all IRQs above 15 through IRQ 9.
If you don't use them turn off the following in the BIOS-
Com1
Com2
Floppy ( I use LS120)
IDE 2 ( I use SCSI as main, need IDE 1 for LS120)
Printer ( I have network printer)
These will all help free up IRQ's for installed devices.
One suggstion Steve - If possible go into BIOS set PCI slot 1 to use IRQ 5, this usually shares with AGP slot and will get Vid card onto its own IRQ.
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IMO it's not video related.
Did you try with a fresh AH install ?
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Tried new patch and played extensively w/ no boot.
I would have tested it more but the late night studmuffingotry really made me ill. I had no idea the community was so overrun late at night by eunichs. No more late night AH for me.
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boot boot boot boot. The results of my 4 flights tonight.
My free time just wore out. If Skuzzy doesn't extend it while he fixes this buggy mess. I'll find another game to play. I am NOT goin gto pay for this.
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boot boot boot boot. The results of my 4 flights tonight.
My free time just wore out. If Skuzzy doesn't extend it while he fixes this buggy mess. I'll find another game to play. I am NOT goin gto pay for this.
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I updated my BIOS at someones suggestion and I have only logged on once but, that one time there was NO problems. Prevoius to that my computer went thru the restart rountine 4 times with the longest online session being about 5 minutes.
I think I have actually mase it to the runway to land 2-5 times so far this tour.
Mt patience is also wearing thin. I may just sign off for a few months if this doesn't get better. Between the Rook hordes, small maps, and the constant restarts I am getting tired of the fight just to play.
:confused: