HarU

Thanks brian....i applied the patch... Anyone else have any comments on driver situation?

I know this game is old as dirt and most people have given up on it, but i got this urge to play it the other day, and my computer gaming life has been a living hell ever since. I did everything i could to get it to work in win2k (even registry tweaks, and all of the other things mentioned by this forum and activisions and planetvampires). So, after reinstalling the OS once and having even more problems, i tried it on my Windows ME partition. I had a little better luck here and i got the game to install. Well, after this, i tried to install the patch 1.1. It says that it completes fine, but in the game, the changes have not taken place. So, with that said, here is my question. Has anyone been able to get the patch installed and working under windows ME? Thx for your help. specs: asus a7v-133a mobo Tbird 1.2 Gforce 2 pro 512 megs pc-133 ram sblive.

Okay oxide, i will give it a go now. Why don't you just "nix" the router and let your dsl provider/modem do the routing for you? Do you have access to another machine to make a small server? Okay, well, try this out....it should help, and if it doesn't, you know the problem lies in your isp. Okay: 1.) Put a second network card in your machine. 2.) Plug the dsl into this nic card and enable internet connection sharing for this new card. We will call this card the dsl card. 3.) Let the DSL card get an ip address from modem. (dhcp enabled) 4.) Now, go to properties for your other card. We will call this card LAN card. 5.) specify the address as 192.168.0.1 make subnet 255.255.255.0. Make DNS 192.168.0.1. Make gateway 192.168.0.1. 6.) Now, run a crossover cable (you can buy it at a comp store) from LAN card to the network card in your other PC. 7.) Configure the other pc's network card to use 192.168.0.2. Make its subnet 255.255.255.0. Make its DNS 192.168.0.1. Make its gateway 192.168.0.1. 8.) Now, make sure both pcs are in same workgroup (for file sharing purposes only) and do a reboot on both machines. When you boot up, you should be able to go to the internet with both pcs. If you can't, then ive left out a step, in which case i will fix that (this is all of the top of my head, so its possible to have a left out step). You should also be able to share files and such with each other. Now, test out your internet speed. Also test out your internal file sharing. If everything is running fast and normal again, then you know the problem lies either in the hub or the router. Now, we've narrowed the problem down to one of those two. If it still runs like crap, then you know the router and the hub work fine, and there are some bad hops somewhere in your isps routing tables. That is not your fault, and you need to contact them. Either way, through process of elimination, you will discover the true culprit here. Good luck, and if you have more questions, ill be glad to help.

You wanta no problem vid card that is just decent and good for your money? get a voodoo 3 3000. Simple, yet less problematic than any card ive ever owned. (which is a lot due to the amount of extra money i have to burn on computer components.) 3dfx's driver support for win2k is absolutely stellar compared to the competition. Funny that im saying this, cuz i am currently using a Geforce 2 ddr 64 meg. Anyway, this is a fact. And even though it isn't the best gaming card by far, it sounds like it will suit your needs perfectly.

Brian is right, ive heard about this too. But before you do that...i have a simple suggestion you should DEFINATELY try first. Reinstall the game.

While i agree that schooling is very important, i did not follow the same route as these guys due to the fact that i didn't want to be in debt for the rest of my early adulthood. Anyway, when i was 18 i got a job building PC's for a web-based software company. I did not know half as much as these guys at that time, but i was extremely anxious to learn. Anyway, it was a low-paying job, but had a lot of room for advancement. I am almost 20 years old now, and I am a Network Engineer at a large web-software/telephony company. School will never teach you the same stuff that hands on experience will. And, if you get lucky, and find a company that will give you a chance without schooling (which i did), then i would not hesitate. I get to play with all kinds of things now.. ie: cisco switches, routers, pix firewalls, fiber, VOIP technology, basically you name it. I am starting my own business now with some co-workers of mine, so i won't need to adhere to others' requests of education necessities. Again, i guess you could say i got lucky. Anyway, to make a long post end quickly, my point is simply this. As a 19 year old, i would be involved in interviewing other MCSE's that have their degrees, but didn't know there a$$hole from a phillips screw driver. Experience will get you higher paying jobs faster, but in the long run, if you have education and you work on the experience after, it will pay off. Just some thoughts you can ponder.... [This message has been edited by HarU (edited 10 April 2001).]

Okay....so why did the chicken cross the road? A: To take up space and get the 976 post.

Hehe, np brian. Actually, if you remember my posts back then, i stated that i have more win2k machines than win9x. I just think that ME has some good things about it...thats all. I know win2k is better OS.

I've been kinda on JJ's side this whole time, because i agree ME has its benefits, just like any other OS, but, i couldn't resist this: http://www.campchaos.com/cartoons/napsterbad/napsterbad_56k.html Couldn't you see JJ like this in real life? (the main guy) No offense JJ, you're just kinda high strung. hehe

Technically, with dual procs, the speed performance in Windows (not in games) is kind of disapointing. Your approximate total speed is 1cpu + 1/3rd of the second. Two 450's would mean you run at about 600. Thats approximate, and you won't see this in games. Games will seem like you are running at 450. If you did a bench between a singl 600 and two 450's the single would whomp on the duals. But, like someone mentioned earlier, multitasking is SO much easier with duals.

Boot into dos and run fdisk... see if it will format there.

@

Think of it this way....how am i going to get billed for my hotmail account if its under the name "joe shmoe" who lives in antarctica?? see my point. Not even microsoft could bill this guy....

Have you checked to see if the vp6 could support drives that large? Im not familiar with that board, so i couldn't help you there. Also, are you trying to format it as a secondary drive while you are in windows? Or, are you doing this during the win2k install? Another thing is....are you making that all one partition??? You should think about breaking up the drive into multiple partitions. for instance, this is how my 40 gig is set up: C:\ 4 gigs (used for system only) D:\ 11 gigs (used for applications and miscellaneous file storage) E:\ 25 gigs (used for games and mp3's) This will give you much better management over your storag space; plus, it will keep you organized. Also, this way, if you ever need to reinstall OS, and you want to format your drive, you can leave the D, and E drive alone and just format the C:\. You should think about doing this. So, during the install, make a 4-6 gig C: drive to install win2k on. Then, once you get into windows you can creat the other 2-3 partitions that you want and format those. This may help you get around your problem. Good luck

Clutch once again shuts down a thread where a lot of the posts pertain to something the posters don't even know about. hehe bravo on that novell info.....ive worked with it some, but i did not know all that about it. thx.

Vampyr, as far as winme not booting after dual boot, which os did you install first? Im just curious, cuz i can get them to dual boot....if you were interested in help, let me know. The hardest part is booting off the linux cd to get into a command line, and from there, you must edit the lilo.conf file. But, no big deal, i just thought i would help if ya wanted it.

Narcotic influence huh? Well, you think what you want. Did you read the rest of my post? I described in detail what i meant by that, and it is in fact a very intelligent and helpful piece of advice. Cardinal, i don't attack people on this board unless i am personally attacked myself. If i made personal comments to you or brian, they were most definately provoked prior to my remarks. I believe this thread should've ended after my long post on page 2 where brian replied with something that was acceptable and neither of us said anything until JJ. My points have been more than supported in detail, and ive done it in a professional way. My posts were more of a general look on uses of all OSes, WinMe included. Before any flaming continues, i encourage you to re-read, and maybe re-analyze what was said in my previous posts. WinMe, just like every other OS has its uses. That's the bottom line. If you, or anyone else can't accept that, then truly you have proven yourselves to be too narrowminded for me to even bother wasting my time explaining myself. Just to let you know, I've been running ME on ONE of my FIVE machines at home since the day of its release. I don't know what compelled me to buy it, but i did, and i found it to be a great gaming OS. So, i believe that is longer than the 3 month test you wanted. And, of course it has locked up, but not nearly as much as Win98. HarU

LOL JJ.....you are right....should be: Beer and...ummmm beer, HarU

Also, now that i think about it, you might want to look into how you do your DNS and WINS. Pretty much exactly what clutch said. Clutch, your original solution is exactly what this problem is based around. Definately a name resolution problem. First, make sure you are running WINS. Its real easy. Just start the service on your DC and have all of the workstations enter the DC's ip in the WINS portion of your Network properties. If you have multiple DC's, you can just use one, or have two of them run WINS so you have a primary and a secondary. Second, i recommend running an internal DNS between your workstations to provide for faster replication between your whole network. For instance, have your DC's run DNS. Set the primary DNS on your DC(s) as its own ip. Set the secondary DNS as the "static" ip that will provide for internet connectivity. Now, set all of your workstations as using the internal DC's ip as their primary DNS. So, ultimately, what will happen is, the workstations will always look to the DC's ip first for name resolution, then, from there they will have the gateway to the internet. This is how our internal network is set up at work. But, there may be differences between mine and yours. All of the internal boxes have an ip of 10.50.2.x, or 10.50.1.x. There are 4 DCs. The DCs use each other for primary DNS, and they use the 63.x.x.x.(i am not going to reveal this string) as secondary DNS. This way the internal network is very quick. The DCs also have each other entered into the lmhosts file to provide for faster replication between them. I hope this helps....i am sure i left out some details, because its hard to think of all the steps to take right off the top of my head. Clutch, please add something if i missed anything.

Just to let you guys know, Western Digital uses the SAME EXACT hardware as ibm to make their drives. There is absolutely no difference but the name. On that note, i bought a 20 gig IBM deskstar in December of 1999. I used it until about November of 2000, then it crapped out. The disk tries to spin up, but it just clicks for about 20 secs and it won't work. The only way i was able to get a bios to detect it one last time to retrieve my data was to set it upside down. I now own a 40 gig ATA-100 Western Digital, and ive had it since November. It has been running perfectly fine, but, who knows, it could crap out in a year also. I think the durability of a hard drive relies on how the user treats it. This kind of goes for most hardware. I LAN A LOT, and my case has been banged around a lot. This could be very good reasoning for hardware failure, but thats just my opinion. I think IBM makes good drives, but so do many other manufacturers. I was kind of disappointed when it crapped on me in under a year's time though. But, i still trust em.

"You've bled with Wallace.....Now bleed with me!!!" -Robert the Bruce p.s. god, what a masterpiece of a movie.

Damn JJ32, finally someone helping me out on this thread. If you go back and read these posts, you will see that ive been stressing your points this whole time. Here is a good tip that i use a lot when people rag on MS. I work in a Unix based environment, so naturally, they all talke sh*t about MS and how unstable it is. But, I tell them this: Windows isn't an unstable OS. 90% of the time, windows crashes and locks up because of improper installation. If you know how to set up windows correctly (and this goes for any version) it is suprisingly a very stable and productive business OS. Since ive completely switched my network at work from NT4 to Win2k, I've been keeping uptime programs on my DC's just to prove to these unix guys how stable Windows really is. So far, 3 out of the 4 DC's i setup have been up for 127 days. Kind of impressive huh? Most people wouldn't expect windows to stay up that long without the emminent reboot! hehe Anyway, my point is basically what JJ said. ME is as stable as the installation. If you do it right, it will run with little to no problems for many many days. Brian, unfortunately, your run-ins with ME have not been as promising as JJ's and mine. But, that really has nothing to do with the OS as a whole, but everything to do with how it was set up. love and beer, HarU

The problem is that the workstations are having a hard time locating the fastest route to the Domain Controller(s). Do you just have 1 domain controller? If so, then you can edit the lmhosts file on the workstations. This file tells the computer to automatically search for the specified entry at the time of login. It will directly go to your domain controller which will allow for replication faster. The file can be found in c:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc There are samples in there to guide you. If you have more than 1 DC, then you want to edit their's as well. Have them point to each other. Good luck

Brian is right on this. You will continue to have problems if you try to install it on the ATA-100 controller. I have the EXACT setup as you, and it didn't matter how much i tried to get win2k installed, it would not work with the hard drive on the ATA controller. Hook the drive up as single master on Primary IDE controller and install win2k. Boot into windows, then install ALL motherboard drivers, including Promise drivers. You should flash the bios to any version equal to or later than 1004. Thats the one i have. I think it is the latest, but i may be wrong. After this, you should put it back on the ATA controller, and it will boot. If it does not, i recommend getting a new drive or motherboard. Either the controller is bad, or the drive is. Thats IF you try what brian and i suggest, and it doesn't work. Good luck. Let us know what happens. Oh yeah, one other quick thing, make sure you don't have any pci cards in slot 2. Slot 2 shares IRQ with the promise controller. [This message has been edited by HarU (edited 26 March 2001).]

Service??? You won't need any specific services turned on that aren't already defaulted on. If you do it the way i told you, that is all you have to do. Then, from the firewall software, you can open certain ports to route to certain internal ips. You won't be able to give all of the internal machines routable ips. The one ip that you get from DSL will make a gateway for the internal machines. From the software that you download, you can open a port to, oh, say for instance, 10.7.6.3. Now, all of the packets going to your DSL ip will route specifically to that internal machine. This is really only useful if you wanted to host multiplayer games and such. Let me know how it turns out.