CDT, Lockup, Black screen please help

[Steve]

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.

[SlapShot]

Hang in there Steve.

Have you done the dxdiag thing and turned sound acceleration down to a max of 3/4 ?

[MOSQ]

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.....

[Steve]

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!

[moto61]

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.

[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.

[Steve]

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!!!

[Morpheus]

350 watts is enough for a 9800 pro?

Dont seem like it.

[Steve]

Well what is?

[nopoop]

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.

[quig]

I'm running a 9800 Pro on a 350 watt PS.

No problems like you are mentioning, Steve.

Just a heads-up.

[nopoop]

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.

[Steve]

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

[nopoop]

Here's my update list

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.

[Hajo]

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.