New PC crashes in AH.

[Greebo]

Hi all,
Recently I decided to retire my three year old PC and treat myself to a state of the art model with a GF3 and Athlon 1300 CPU. Having got AH installed on it I'm getting great framerates, but the blasted thing  dumps me to the desktop or freezing midgame, causing me to have to reboot. This happens at random intervals, but averaging about once an hour.

I've tried most of the usual things, getting rid of all the TSRs, checking for IRQ conflicts and overheating (CPU maxes at 50 deg C). Also I've had a look at geforcefaq site and tried some of their suggested tweaks, particularly WRT AGP settings, but all to no avail.

The next thing I'm going to try is a video driver upgrade. I'm using the Nvidia 12.00 drivers at the moment, does anyone have any experience with the newer ones? Alternatively, any other suggestions?

Full spec is as follows:
Athlon 1.3, Leadtek GF3, DirectX 8.0A, A7M266 MB, 512mb DDR ram, SB Live soundcard, Win 98SE.

[Vulcan]

Make sure Roger Wilco is set to WAVE recording, ie NOT directsound.

[Defiance]

Hiya's,
       When you say looked for irq conflicts do you mean start/control panel/system then look for irq conflicts there ?
Just a point if that's the way you checked, Windose won't show up most irq probs that way
If you have only checked the above way try this.....
Go find say video/sound/any other pci cards and note down irq's (in the above way) (sb-live cards are mostly cause of common lockups nowadays) if say s-card is irq 11 with video you can goto bios as pc boots up and in there under PCI section usually you can manually assign an irq to any slot/s you want
I have had an A7v now got A7a266 put my sb-live in slot 3 and manually assigned irq 5 to slot 3  vids on irq 11
Best to check in motherboard manual which slots share with which
If you have tried this then all i can suggest is checking for new mobo drivers etc etc

Goodluck

Have Fun

Def

[Greebo]

Thanks for the suggestions. I should have mentioned that I'm not using RW, I'll try the IRQ tips tomorrow though.

[bloom25]

I would probably try the 7.78 drivers instead of the 12s.  I'd only use the 12.xx in win2k.
 www.the-ctrl-alt-del.com  has all the drivers.



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bloom25
-MAW-
(Formerly of the)
THUNDERBIRDS

[DB603]

S!

 Also download the lates VIA 4-in-1 drivers.They have the nasty 686B Bug for SB Live! fixed in them.Can be found at www.viatech.com  There's also a new BIOS for the Asus board U use at www.socketa.com  Also remember to disable RW from AH's own setup if You don't use it,causes trouble if enabled and no RW in use...



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DB603
3.Lentue
Lentolaivue 34

[SeaWulfe]

Did you check your vid card CPU for overheating? Do you have any cards sitting in the PCI slot directly below the AGP card? If there is, you might want to move all of your cards down one slot to give the GF3 more breathing room.

-SW

[SeaWulfe]

 

Originally posted by DB603:
Also remember to disable RW from AH's own setup if You don't use it,causes trouble if enabled and no RW in use...

I've had RW use enabled since it was coded in to be autolaunched. I run it minimized and almost never have it turned on.

Aces High works as advertised and runs great on my C466, V5 5500PCI and 392MB PC100 SDRAM machine.

I've also never done a fresh install of AH since 1.04.

Drivers, misloads and hardware tend to be the root of everyone's problems..
-SW

[Greebo]

Quick update. I've applied Def's suggestion WRT moving the SB Live. It was on slot 4 sharing IRQ 10 with the MB's USB hubs. Since putting it in slot 3 and forcing it to use IRQ 5 I've not had a lockup, so hopefully it's fixed now

Thanks again for all the suggestions guys.

[Defiance]

Hiya,
     Good to hear all maybe fixed

test it with a good session of a well known addictive online wwii sim   sheesh what's it called ??? come on it's on the tip of me tongue begins with ahhhhh dang  hrrr   AH  that's it  

Have Fun

Def

[Greebo]

OK, quick update to my previous update. :-)

It seems it wasn't the soundcard after all. Further crashes led me to borrow a friend's Diamond Monster card, but even this didn't help. I also retrieved an old copy of EAW from the loft and this was doing the same thing.

I think I've found the real culprit now though. I disabled the Z buffer for the GF3 and now it seems stable in both games. I'll probably still try the latest drivers though, tosee if that fixes the Z buffer.

[Flares]

Try disabling AGPX4 in your BIOS. This works for me.

Running in AGPX2 with fsaa@2x2 in 1024x768x16
and z buffering disabled I manage an average 60fps with the modest system below without a problem.

Duron 800
256mb pc133
Abit Kt7a mobo
Geforce 2 MX 32mb@200/174
SBlive! 5.1
USB Logitech Wingman FF stick
4.3gb HD
1.6gb HD
x32 LG cdrom

Directx 8.0a, Nvidia 11.01 drivers and VIA 4:1 v4.31 final mobo service pack installed.

Nvidia drivers - http://www.the-ctrl-alt-del.com/
Viahardware - http://www.viahardware.com/download/index.shtm#4in1

Hope this helps.

Flares.  


[This message has been edited by Flares (edited 05-29-2001).]

[This message has been edited by Flares (edited 05-29-2001).]

[Voss]

Greebo, the number one fix for all of this is the 4in1 drivers from VIA, and the 7.97 NVidia package available at the-ctrl-alt-del.com (and just released), as Bloom and others stated above. Your video is a 4X card and changing the bios setting in that regard will not help. You also want to make sure you are using the latest/greatest Glide package, just in case you use this card with other games (like Quake3).

Good luck.

[This message has been edited by Voss (edited 05-29-2001).]

[Lephturn]

You lost me Voss.

There is no "7.97" Detonator driver package that I can find.  The WHQL (Windows Hardware Quality Lab) certified drivers are available in a 7.78 version, and more recently in a 12.00 version.  The latest driver packages are betas up to version 12.40.  I tend to stick to the WHQL certified versions, since they are better tested and more likely to be stable.  Also as some have mentioned above, for a GeForce 2 card, the 7.78 version driver package (WHQL certified) are likely the best version to try.

A video card is capable at 4x AGP, but it will run at whatever AGP mode you set the mobo for.  So if 4x AGP is flakey for some reason, setting it back to AGP 2x mode can sometimes keep things running better.  Just because the card is capable of AGP 4x doesn't mean you have to run it that fast.  It will run at AGP 1x if you tell it to.

Also, I don't know what you are talking about saying "Glide".  Glide was the the native 3DFX API that some games used instead of OpenGL or DirectX back a year ago or more.  Since we are talking about an nVidia card here, there is no "Glide package".  I presume you mean OpenGL?  If so, the OpenGL drivers for the nVidia cards are included in the Detonator driver packages.

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Sean "Lephturn" Conrad - Aces High Chief Trainer

A proud member of the mighty Flying Pigs
http://www.flyingpigs.com

Check out Lephturn's Aerodrome for AH articles and training info!

[SKurj]

I am using the 12.00 whql drivers on a gf2 mx with via chipset no probs.  Duron 800