tony1c

I solved most of the terrible problems I had with the nvidia 5.13 drivers by setting my FSB speed to 90Mhz (from 100Mhz). I think I'm buying into the theory that the new drivers just enable too many features on the chip and are overloading it somehow. It's worth noting that I had _nothing_ overclocked previously and that I've got fans all the hell over the place. Anyway I've been up for over a day now, and I've been playing Quake 3 and Thief II (amazing game BTW). Hope this helps some of you, Tony [This message has been edited by tony1c (edited 09 April 2000).]

Well here's the specifics: With 5.13 my comp either locks up or reboots. This is spontaneously and at random. No BSOD. It happens any time in 2d and 3d apps. All OpenGL games (Q3, Q2, Half-Life in OpenGL mode) work fine (except for above problem). All 3D DX7 games (Thief II, Half-Life in DX mode, etc.) have the flashing 3d textures and polys as soon as they start. These anomalies are worse at lower rez (I assume because of the higher FPS). I'm still convinced that V-SYNC isn't on in DX7 3d games. I've got to do my taxes... then I'll play around with the 5.13 drivers some more. =) Thanks for the reply, Tony

I can't play any 3d DX7 games (Thief 2, Half-Life) w/o terrible graphic anomalies (flashing polygons, flickering textures, and smeared lights). This is on a CL GeForce/PIII. I've tried all drivers for my video card and monitor. 5.13 cause my system to reboot so I can't use them. My roomate has a very different system and has the same problem (flashing polys). The only thing common between us is the GeForce and Win2K. So I assume I'm not the only one. I suspect it has something to do with VSYNC, but there's know way I know to force it on. And help would be appreciated.

I can't run Win2K for more than 5 minutes now. I think it's the video driver... the one that I've been using for weeks now without incident. How can I determine if something got corrupted? Will reinstalling Win2K solve this? *SIGH* Tony

It's not necessary to understand WHY so many people are having problems, only that they ARE. This sort of severity is highly unusual. I'm being harsh here only because it took me an hour to get my computer into working condition (we're talking about being able to boot here) after installing these drivers/software, which as far as I could tell was NOT beta. Considering I have heard MANY similar "horror" stories I consider it a serious violation of professional ethics for Creative to make these drivers available publicly. Tony Tony

I can't imagine how a prominent company like Creative can have something like this available for download on their site. If you feel you must install Liveware for Win2K go ahead. You might want to have a spare computer available though. TOny

I'm not a pirate. I generally pay for all of my games and consumer targeted products. That includes Win98 I haven't paid for Win2K pro, Outlook, Office etc. Why? Because the pricing is based on a coporate sales model which I am not part of. I don't use Win2K pro, Outlook, or Office for any professional use (at home). In fact I hardly use them at all. From what I've seen corporate customers pay HUGE sums of money to Microsoft for liscenses to these products. That's where MS makes their money. BTW I have paid for MS Software... like Age of Empires II. I did this because it was targeted toward a home consumer (their profit source for the product) and didn't cost $200-$500. Tony

A problem I have frequently at home while playing games is that the screen will become garbled and unusable while everything else works. I assume this is becouse the DX7 video driver has failed somewhere. Problem is I want to shutdown normally, but since I can't see the screen I have to go for the reset. On my Solaris box I'd just log in from another box (not that this would happen to begin with) and do a shutdown. Any advice for doing this on NT? How 'bout a hotkey combo (CTRL-ALT-DELETE-INSERT-END-PRINTSCREEN) that invokes a shutdown script? Tony

I apologize profusely for for using the "B" word. I lost my senses for a moment and for got that this is a family-oriented site. Tony

I installed Win2K on my IBM ThinkPad 600X, and I have to take back most of the bad things I've said about Win2K. Installation was flawless. Only problem was with the sound not working. With some research I found that I could get sound working by a little trick -- turn off "mute". ;p Truth as far as I can tell is that Win2K is a wonderful Notebook OS... almost like it was desinged for it. Hibernation, Synchronization, APCI, it's all great... Don't worry... if I have problems I'll start *****ing. Tony

Well, I installed Win2K on my ThinkPad 600X, and it's been the cleanest OS install I've ever done (aside from sound not working which I think is a known issue). Seems rock solid, and the built in hibernate mode is great. So I'm guessing that for now Win2K + nVidia = BAD. Even the 3.78 drivers don't come close to cutting it... Tony

I'm very suspicious of a) my nVidia 3.78 drivers for a Geforce DDR DirectX 7 on Win2K in general. I've tried running the 3D Mark 2000 demo and benchmark loops as stress tests... but they're too stressful for my box, which gives out after about 15-30 mins (these ran indefinately on Win98). Anyone else tried this (especially w/ nVidia 3.78 drivers)? I'd like to think these drivers are the source of all my Win2K problems. Tony

Well, all my crashes seem DX7 related. FYI My config is: Win2K Pro Release Pentium III 500 320MB RAM ABIT BF6 MOBO CL Geforce DDR (nVidia 3.78 drivers) SB Live (the drivers Win2K installed) 27GB ATA66 HD I used this configuration with Win 98SE and would go for weeks w/o reboots. Right now I'm mostly surfing and playing games on this computer. Currently I'm playing Planescape: Torment, which locks up the display or (less frequently) causes a BSOD about every hour or so. Torment is just about the best game I've ever played... so NOT playing it is NOT an option. Tony

I've been running Win2K at home for several weeks now and still haven't broken the 24 hr uptime mark (though I got to 23.5 recently). I'd say mean time between failure on Win2k is about 30 minutes. My computer at work (NT 4 SP6) has over 600 hours of continuous uptime now, and that's only because I had to shut it down a few weeks back to replace a power supply fan. So is 23.5 hrs on W2K the record so far? Tony

Has anyone installed Win2K on an IBM ThinkPad 600 series? I'll be getting one with Win98 and am wondering if I'm taking too much of a chance by installing Win2K at the outset. Tony