Da_G

Refer to the following post of mine... In a nutshell, it's how to get Hotmail support integrated into Outlook 2000 a'la Outlook Express. -G

I'm running SMP, 2x Celery 366 clocked at 518 or something like that, 94mhz bus speed i belive.. (on an Abit BP6) All the 5.x drivers have run great for me, i havent run into any problems except one of the sets had the problem where it would cause you not to be able to uninstall/add any drivers cuz of a file not found problem, and opengl dying once.. and a problem with a few of the older sets playing vids all farked up and sleeping the monitor. Otherwise, I havent had any problems with OpenGL or Direct3D in w2k.. my only gripe is the fact that you hafta reboot to enable TV-out, i hope they change that.. I havent played with SMP in Q3 (mainly because i dont have Q3 anymore) but I know with the 3dmark thing, i read on a site somewhere (forgot which one, it may have been http://www.firingsquad.com) that the P3's SIMD instructions make it almost as fast if not faster at T&L than the GeForce.. however the GeForce still is offloading those instructions off the CPU which leaves room for other stuff, so it's still an advantage. On a celeron system (like mine) the T&L makes a noticable difference. (enabled vs. disabled in SoF) but, like i said, rock stable. Running 5.30 drivers right now.. ------------------ -Da_G

I just finished assembling a system for a client of mine with a Voodoo 3 3000 in it.. it was a Celeron 500 on a Tyan Trinity 371 mobo or something along those lines.. 128MB ram.. anywho, i couldnt get ANY OpenGL stuff to work with the latest win2k drivers from 3dfx, so I went and got the Wicked3D OpenGL drivers.. installed em, and installed em in the various games they supported.. a few games that didnt work before did now, but SOF didnt.. i ended up having to delete config.cfg in /user, then it loaded.. I quit out and it wouldnt load again.. did it one more time and it loaded fine again.. I was confused.. played the game for a minute or two, quit out, and then it would load fine.. probably had to play first for it to save the config.cfg.. anywho it works fine now. ------------------ -Da_G

I use my Intellimouse Explorer on top of a peice of cardboard.. it works perfectly.. cardboard has the texture neccessary for the intellieye to find it's way around.. The mouse lag thing in UT I had, but fixed by turning off DirectInput.. the button sticking problem I still have, however... ------------------ -Da_G

Anything with 'debug' in it, as far as programmers go, means it hasnt had the debug code stripped from it.. this is code only useful to trap errors when they occur and report them to the developer so they can fix whatever problem is happening.. not only is the extra code not useful to everyone else, but it slows things down.. retail, as they refer to it here, is the 'stripped' version of the code, which has debug code removed and thus runs faster. ------------------ -Da_G

I get not what I would describe as weird texture problems, but more of the entire area beyond my vehicle past a certain point flashing all kinds of different colored polys at me.. the workaround is to hide pedestrians in either the graphics section of options or when you go to choose the amount of traffic/cops/weather.. ------------------ -Da_G

Microsoft doesn't make a registry-watching program AFAIK... try doing a search at http://www.winfiles.com for one.. there are various programs that do this, I dont know any of their names unfortunatly.. What they do is let you watch the registry real-time so you can see as things are added, removed, changed, or accessed.. this might make allow us to find out what file exactly win2k is looking for.. ------------------ -Da_G

I've run into the same problem too. It seems only a clean install fixed the problem. It also seemed to only happen after installing the 5.13 drivers and running OpenGL applications.. maybe it corrupts something in the registry? It causes the file not found error on all drivers you try to install.. I couldnt find a way to fix it, unfortunatly.. I ended up having to clean install. =( If it's a problem with the 5.13 drivers, however, we cant really blame nVIDIA, because they're leaked drivers.. that probably means there wont ever be an 'official' fix for them.. If I still had the problem I'd probe around more to see if I could figure something out.. I'd suggest starting with driver-related registry entries.. it sounds like something corrupt in there.. Maybe run a registry-watching program while installing new drivers to see what exactly is going on? ------------------ -Da_G

I belive I answered this in your previous post.. This appears to be a bug with Win2k to me.. ------------------ -Da_G

tweak3d is at http://www.tweak3d.net .. they have butt-loads of stuff on tweaking software, hardware, etc. to run at it's best.. http://www.win2kworld.com has TweakUI in it's downloads section, i belive.. ------------------ -Da_G

heh-heh-heh.. lucky you. I had the same problem when I replaced my TNT2u with a GeForce (Elsa Erazor X2) without changing the drivers to VGA first.. I belive I posted something about it here: http://www.ntcompatible.com/ubb/Forum3/HTML/002062.html Here's the relevant snippit from it: GeForce demos from dell: When I first stuck in the GeForce, w/o changing the drivers from the TNT2 (Seemed to auto-detect the GeForce and install the drivers, this was 5.13 drivers), After installing the demos and before rebooting everything worked fine.. After rebooting, The bubble demo seemed to lose it's 3D acceleration (.3 fps) and the bubble just wasnt there, only the background. All OpenGL acceleration seemed to die too. I then went to uninstall/reinstall the drivers, and it gave me a file not found error upon trying to reinstall the GeForce drivers. Everything seemed to copy over okay, but I got the error. Just for the hell of it, I tried to uninstall/reinstall another driver and got the same file not found error installing them. Had to format/clean install to get it working again (Booting off the CD and upgrading over win2k didnt help any) There's a wack ass bug. ------------------ -Da_G

I belive as part of that tweak guide it has you get Tweak-UI 2000 and change a few settings in there.. under the 'IE' tab you may have accidentally unchecked 'Enable Windows+X hotkeys'.. it requires you to log out and log back in again (or reboot) try that and see what happens =D ------------------ -Da_G

First off, my system specs. Abit BP6 w/latest BIOS (QQ-2?) 384MB PC-133 SDRAM Dual Celery 366 o/c to 523 or something like that, 94 Mhz bus @ the mo Elsa Erazor X2 (32MB DDR GeForce) w/5.13 drivers (O/Ced to 333Mhz/140Mhz) IBM 20.5GB HDD Sony CRX-140S/C + Adaptec 2930CU (SCSI Burner + Card) Linksys 10/100 Ethernet Card 3com 56k PCI voice modem (not winmodem sh*t) SB Live! (using win2k-included basic driver) MS Intellimouse Explorer (using Intellipoint 3.1a) GeForce is at a 1/1 AGP ratio, btw. It's totally stable at up to 110 Mhz (but my CPU's arent) and yes, i've tried putting it back to 2/3 ratio.. I used to have a TNT-2.. Diamond V770 Anywho, I've played alot of games on here.. My expierience with hardware/software interaction is as follows: The Sims: Worked fine on both the TNT2 and GeForce, with 3.66, 3.81, and 5.13 Freespace 2: Ditto Grand Theft Auto (1 and 2): Both work fine with the following exception: GTA2 plays at like half-speed when im using SMP.. seems to be the way it calcs out the framerate limiter.. cuz if I turn it off, it works just fine. Kingpin: Just fine under all drivers Midtown Madness: Only tried it with 5.13, plays fine, no crashes, but heavy graphics corruption (seems to be related to the 2d dashboard, etc being on, if i move the camera outside the vehicle and turn off all the gauges, it goes away) GL Quake 1: Works fine Quake 2: Works fine (can you tell i play games alot? hehe) Soldier Of Fortune: Here's where it gets weird. Only tried it with 5.13 so far, it works fine on the TNT2.. With the GeForce, it seems to hard-freeze my whole system after about 15 minutes or so.. This seems to be due to the speed i'm running the core of the GeForce at, though, and not the drivers.. Turning it down 5Mhz to 140Mhz, which is what i use now, makes it completely stable. Half-Life: Under all previous drivers when you hit esc to go to the menu screen, it gives you a black screen, but the computer isnt frozen and the monitor isnt asleep.. it's just black. I have to find my way blind around it. Havent tried with 5.13. NFS 5: Porche Unleashed Demo: Works fine with 5.13, didnt test w/previous drivers. Unreal Tournament: Works perfectly. No problems whatsoever. (5.13 Drivers) w/previous drivers it would freeze on switching to the 3-D mode about one out of every 3 times.. Tracked that down to the player skin resolution, eventually. If it was at high, it'd get the freezes, if it wasnt, it'd work fine. Oddly enough if you changed it in-game to high after loading it, played, and then changed it back before closing it, it would work perfectly every time. Must have had something to do with initialization. 3Dmark 2000 Crashes reliably every-other-time the demo/benchmark is run when it gets to the part where the 2 helicopters are fighting and one explodes (with 5.13) With previous drivers it crashes much more often, more like 4 out of 5 times. GeForce demos from dell: When I first stuck in the GeForce, w/o changing the drivers from the TNT2 (Seemed to auto-detect the GeForce and install the drivers, this was 5.13 drivers), After installing the demos and before rebooting everything worked fine.. After rebooting, The bubble demo seemed to lose it's 3D acceleration (.3 fps) and the bubble just wasnt there, only the background. All OpenGL acceleration seemed to die too. I then went to uninstall/reinstall the drivers, and it gave me a file not found error upon trying to reinstall the GeForce drivers. Everything seemed to copy over okay, but I got the error. Just for the hell of it, I tried to uninstall/reinstall another driver and got the same file not found error installing them. Had to format/clean install to get it working again (Booting off the CD and upgrading over win2k didnt help any) There's a wack ass bug. SB Live!: With the release Liveware it stutters and all that crud.. you know the drill. In addition, it seemed to pause for 5 seconds or so during boot after the GUI was loading and explorer was loading all the startup files just after playing the startup sound that comes with liveware, and then once again loading the Creative Launcher. S'why I use the basic drivers.. i'm not THAT desperate for 4-spk out and EAX, I can wait till it WORKS. PowerStrip 2.65.02: Before I clean installed (and after putting in the GeForce), if I didnt close PowerStrip manually, windows wouldnt reboot/shut down/sleep (wouldnt give me an end task window either).. After the clean install, it works fine. Other anomolies: Dragging Windows Media Player around while playing a movie halts the movie for a fraction of a second, and the window doesnt move.. then works just fine.. (this is, however, a big improvement from when it'd put the monitor to sleep) Before the clean install, Nero (which had been working fine prior to me putting in the GeForce) wouldnt finish burning a CD.. it'd get about 75% thru and just die. HPT366 Controller: With the drivers I was using before clean installing, (I dont have any loaded for it now) when I had my boot drive (the IBM 20.5GB) hooked up to it, it would time out the IDE port 4 times on each boot (about 15 seconds each timeout, for a total of 1 minute doing NOTHING during boot) before it would continue loading. Worked just fine after that. I seem to remember new drivers for it are out, i'll hafta try it with those.. SPD/IF input on SB Live!: When I had my 8x CD-ROM hooked up to this with the creative released Live ware loaded, i'd hear clicks in the speakers every few seconds randomly.. Unplugging it would make them go away. After the clean install, and w/o Live ware loaded, I dont hear those clicks. I never tried the leaked Creative Live ware drivers at full accelleration (at least, if they dont default to it) So I dont know if that worked with them, But I do know that they worked just fine for EAX etc... and the released ones.. suck. Other than the file not found error I had, Win2k is an excellent operating system (considering it comes from microsoft), the drivers just havent matured yet. (Although I must add, my Epson Stylus 900, NIC card, and modem work perfectly fine w/the win2k included drivers) I use it at work on the 3 machines I use, and here at home.. At work I use 3 gateways, all nearly identical, P3 550's w/ATI video cards.. using the supplied drivers it's rock stable, one is running Win2k Adv. Server and is a fileserver for 50+ Mac computers and 100+ Windows 98/NT/2000 boxes, In addition to being a print server for those machines, and an actively-used computer (We're stress-testing it for deployment as a school-wide server, using the clustering feature for reliability) Aside from a few user errors with Active Directory (I managed to get it to not let me see the user list at all somehow) It works perfectly. I can even play a game of quake on the server while it's serving out to everyone and it wont slow down even 1k/sec. Quite an improvement from the old PowerMac we had serving all those machines.. it was slower than !#&*%(!#% with background tasks (more the fault of the OS than the CPU, for sure) And if you've read this far, you must be insane.. But hopefully this info helps someone figure something out with the driver issues.. Edit: Forgot to add that any textures going thru AGP (for instance in the 3Dmark texture speed test, at 32MB, or Final Reality at 32MB) slow the card from 100+fps down to like 2-3 FPS.. is AGP really there...? Edit: Added Unreal Tournament. ------------------ -Da_G [This message has been edited by Da_G (edited 11 April 2000).]

I've done 2 clean installs (format C:, even quite against my will, D: and E: =( As a side note, win2k makes (at least with me) an 8mb partition to go with every other partition on a drive.. well, on a clean install i had everything backed up on D: and E:, and win2k reported 8mb 'not allocated' on D: and E:.. so i deleted em.. bout 5 seconds later i remembered the 8mb partitions it had made, D'OH, lost *ALL* my files.. =( Lesson: dont do that.) Anywho, from a clean-as-the-virgin-marys-child-on-the-day-he-was-born install i immediately installed LW2k off creative's site and then the 5.13 nVIDIA drivers.. Got the crackling, cutting out, etc. That other people got.. wtf?! =( Is it just me, or.. the leaked liveware drivers worked perfectly fine for me.. anyone still got em layin around? They arent on any of the sites anymore.. =( Email me? gpx69@hotmail.com .. I'll gladly use those, they actually WORKED for me.. System stats: Abit BP6 w/Celery366(2x) @ 539Mhz (98Mhz bus) Elsa Erazor X II (GeForce 32MB DDR 6ns SGRAM) SB Live! US Robotics 56k Voice PCI modem Linksys 10/100 Ethernet Adapter 384MB PC-133 SDRAM ------------------ -Da_G

First, my system stats. Abit BP6 (QQ-2 BIOS, fresh install w/ACPI) 366x2 @ 539MHz (98MHz bus) 384MB PC-133 SDRAM Diamond V770 @ 185/160 Adaptec AHA-2930CU SCSI Adapter Sony Spressa 140S CD-RW (8x4x32x) FUNAI 8x CD-ROM Western Digital AC26400B (6.4gb) UDMA33 C: Samsung WU33205A (3.2gb) UDMA33 D: MS Intellimouse Explorer (USB) Generic 33.6 ISA Modem Linksys LNE100TX 10/100 Eth Adapter Creative SB PCI 128 Epson Stylus 900 Printer (USB) Based on a post a read on http://www.bp6.com I tried clocking my CPU's back down to 366 and it didnt freeze at all switching resolutions where it would freeze 75% of the time beforehand... anyone expierience similar results? (not freezing at a lower clock speed) The post follows... --------- I've seen/heard and experienced first hand a lot of problem regarding w2k and Nvidia reference drivers. I found most of troubles/crashes are related to change screen resolution, but NOT during the game play itself. After I set my dual 366 back to default 366, guess what, no more crashes during resolution change, not a single one. Returning to 528mhz, the intermitent hanges are back. This got me thinking: obvisouly this can NOT be a problem relating to overclocking instability, because my 528@1.9 is so rock stable that I've never experienced 1 single crash during prime95 in many months. Plus the fact that I don't think there would be many intensive cpu instructions during a simple resolution change that lasts only a fraction of a second. The most likely reason is probably what's similar to k6-2 and win95A where certain loops are so short that it causes division-by-zero crash on high-speed cpus. To verify my hypothesis, I wonder if anyone has tried Nvidia w2k drivers on a NON-overclocked 500mhz+ cpu and experinced the same crashes when switching screen resolutions? --------- The URL for the thread is: http://bp6.hypermart.net/discus/messages/3162/3241.html?TuesdayFebruary2920000651am ------------------ -Da_G

My clean install procedure: 1.) Boot into win2k, hit windows-break, go into device manager and uninstall the TNT drivers. 2.) reboot, F8, safe mode.. scrap nv*.* in /WINNT/SYSTEM32, nv*.* in /WINNT/SYSTEM32/DRIVERS and oemx.* in /WINNT/INF (x being whichever one is the NVIDIA driver) 3.) win-break, device manager.. do the 'scan for hardware changes' deal and point it to my drivers (show me a list/have disk yaddayadda) 4.) regedt32 and scrap /SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Services/NV4 from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG 5.) reboot, change video settings as a side note, i've noticed hard-freezes nearly 100% of the time running a D3D app or playing a movie (including with hardware acceleration OFF in media player, oddly enough) with the distributed.net client running.. my system stats follow: Abit BP6 (QQ BIOS, fresh install w/ACPI working, MPS 1.4) 366x2 @ 539MHz (98MHz bus) 384MB PC-133 SDRAM Diamond V770 @ 185/160 Adaptec AHA-2930CU SCSI Adapter Sony Spressa 140S CD-RW (8x4x32x) FUNAI 8x CD-ROM Western Digital AC26400B (6.4gb) UDMA33 C: Samsung WU33205A (3.2gb) UDMA33 D: MS Intellimouse Explorer (USB) Generic 33.6 ISA Modem Linksys LNE100TX 10/100 Eth Adapter Creative SB PCI 128 Epson Stylus 900 Printer (USB) ------------------ -Da_G

There's a file somewhere on the Win2k CD (forgot exactly where, i made a backup to my hard drive so i could easily find it) it's like 14K.. called apcompat.exe you run it, select the program that's misbehaving, and you can choose what operating system to report to the program in addition to doing a few other things that may make it work. Try it.. if you cant find it on the CD (or if im smokin crack and i got it somewhere else) email me @ gpx69@hotmail.com and i'll fire it off to ya.

I used to get problems with playing mpegs, avis, mov.. any type of video on my Diamond V770 (O/Ced to 185/160 mem/core) like when i double clicked the video to play it'd immediatly freeze the computer as soon as you played it.. that happened sparadically with previous drivers, it usually took 2 or 3 reboots to get it to work, then it'd work perfectly that whole session until the next reboot.. that seems to have been fixed in the 3 times or so i've rebooted to try so far. One problem i've been getting since the beginning is that with video acceleration on full in windows media player, moving the window around while it's playing video (I belive it happened even while paused) would cause the monitor to go into sleep mode.. thankfully i have powerstrip installed (it's what i use to overclock) so an alt-f4 to close windows media player and a ctrl-alt-s to turn the video driver to safe mode (640x480x256x60hz) would get the screen back to where i could restore my video mode.. that problem still persists. Real Player did it too i belive.. work-around was to disable enhanced video acceleration or whatever in real player, and turn hardware acceleration in windows media player down to nothing.. My system stats: Abit BP6 (QQ BIOS, fresh install w/ACPI) 366x2 @ 523MHz (95MHz bus) 384MB PC-133 SDRAM Diamond V770 @ 185/160 Adaptec AHA-2930CU SCSI Adapter Sony Spressa 140S CD-RW (8x4x32x) FUNAI 8x CD-ROM Western Digital AC26400B (6.4gb) UDMA33 C: Samsung WU33205A (3.2gb) UDMA33 D: MS Intellimouse Explorer (USB) Generic 33.6 ISA Modem Linksys LNE100TX 10/100 Eth Adapter Creative SB PCI 128 Epson Stylus 900 Printer (USB) everything's working flawlessly except them video drivers. they give me so many problems.. and yeah, i did a 'clean' install of 3.76 by booting into safe mode and junking all the nvidia related files in C:\WINNT\System32, C:\WINNT\System32\dllcache, C:\WINNT\Inf so it's not that they arent installed correctly.. or the overclocking cuz i tried turning that off and workin with it.. or any programs i have installed cuz a base Pro Final install + 3.75 did the same thing with mpegs.. could it be an SMP issue? Or do other people have these problems..?

Win2k comes with DirectX 7.0a, I belive...