Dragon-Lord

So.. LiveWare 2000 are the drivers that suck today. LiveWare 3 are the drivers that will suck...tomorrow. :}

yeah, I am still running at the higher res, but I just thought it was mighty pretty with the AA on... :}

Frogmaster, I agree with your assessment. However, at 1024x768 with all settings maxed, your FPS is probably fill rate limited by the bandwidth of the system/card itself. With or without SMP, you aren't likely to get significant improvement at those settings. However, if you dropped to 640x480, SMP might make a substantial difference. When SMP is more stable, I am looking forward to dropping to 640x480, enabling Anti-Aliasing, and still getting 60+ fps... Have you looked at the AA on? 640x480 looks as good/better with AA than 1024x768 without...gorgeous. :} PS For me, even without SMP on, I still notice a huge "smoothness" difference playing under W2K over w98. I assume that is because much of the system/OS chores are shared/offloaded as part of W2K.

geforce 256/ddr here under an SMP P3 system. The 5.14 betas finally allowed me to get past the open animation (the ID logo) on Q3 under SMP. The game still froze after a few minutes of online play and there was obvious texture management problems and corruption. Under non-SMP (grin), directx (unreal tournament), showed marked improvement in texture management/playablity. I was able to throw all the texture settings to high, and return to 1024x768, with improved playability over 5.13 and before. Not perfect yet, but getting closer every day... :} PS Someone should check to see if the Special Enhanced Antialiasing settings now work under DirectX. Under 5.13, this setting was kept for opengl but lost for dx.

Look at the bottom of the first tab in DXDiag.exe. It will say DirectX 7. The DirectX files tab (the next one over) shows that all Directx7 files have a version number of 5.x I agree that this in confusing, but it is correct. :}

yes, I was able to do the "upgrade" option of a reinstall and it worked perfectly (keeping all installed software, drivers, and settings). :}

I do not believe there are unified drivers for Win2k released yet, so installing them over top of the beta 5.13 drivers would be... all together now "A bad idea" TM :}

thank you all for reinforcing my faith in migrating completely to W2K. Man does not live by work alone... :}

DirectX 8 only for win98/se/me? Why would MS go through all this work to get directx 7 fully in sync across both platforms not to keep it upgraded from now on? Anyone know for sure whether this is the case? I would like to dump my WIndows 98 dual boot, but won't if this is true. I am very happy with the few games I play under W2k. It blows w98 away. :}

uh, that's Aspi 4.60...doh! :}

Yes! I installed Nero, removed wnaspi32.dll *and* uninstalled Easy CD Creator 3.5c, and now *everything* works great. Burning CDs again...Aspi 4.50 from Adaptec is also installed. Until I removed the wnaspi32.dll, my CDROM drives were getting *Huge* errors trying to read any CD I had burned. Now, smooth as silk... :}

Yes, this IRQ9 only problem sounds like a Mobo Bios problem. I have ACPI enabled on my SuperMicro p6dbs and W2k has assigned IRQs as high as 20. Some are shared, most are not. Regardless, the SBLive! drivers suck... :}

can't you force the installation of new monitor drivers? :}

I agree, Hibernate kicks ass... :}

For those of you who say the Live! works perfectly, I have a serious question. I agree the new drivers allow you to play and record sound, when on the standard acceleration setting, just fine. But then again, so have all the past driver sets... Our problem is specifically EAX support and hardware buffering, only enabled when setting the hardware acceleration to its full/maximum setting (through the sounds/audio control panel or through dxdiag.exe). I have yet to hear a single report of EAX working under W2K with these (or any) Live! drivers. So, when any of you state here that the drivers work great, are you taking into account the full settings, or just the standard default. You'd have to manually enable full acceleration after installation, and test it with a product like Unreal Tournament (with 3D sound specifically enabled) to provide this affirmative to those of us who are griping so loudly. :} It is indicative of Creative's own lack of faith in these drivers that under W2K they install at standard *by default* whereas all driver sets under W98 install at *full* acceleration. On my system, a dual boot shows that under w98, EAX etc. works fine, but under W2K it does not. Thanks, :}

I just checked the site and V2.1 (I tried v2.0) says it now DOES work with ICS but not NAT...cool beans!!! :}

Perhaps...I will check it after my next re-install... :}

Nothing in Task Manager. The programs aren't actually running twice. The Adaptec software is reporting itself...very strange. :}

Their own site says it doesn't work with ICS, and when I installed it on my (gateway) machine, I lost all connectivity from the other machines when I locked it down. I will try your suggestion to install it on both of them. :}

Let's try this again... If I run Adaptec CD Copier (v3.5c), it gives me a message saying it the CDR is in use by Adaptec CD Copier. If I run Adaptec Easy CD Creator (v3.5c) it gives me a message saying it the CDR is in use by Easy CD Creator. The task is not running twice, or already running in the background. Any ideas? :}

Hmmm...I follow all the directions, install away. No crashes. But, when I run any of the Adaptec tools (Easy CD Creator Deluxe, Copier Deluxe, etc.) I get a message saying (from Adaptec CD Copier, for example) "This application is unable to use your CD-Writer because it is currently being used by Adaptec CD Copier." So, the program says it is use by itself? Now, I can read from the CDR and I can write to it (or at least I don't get error message when testing)using the latest MusicMatch, but the Easy CD Creator 3.5c package won't work. It works fine under W98se, and I know I have gotten it to work in the past... So, what gives, experts? :}

Note that ZoneAlarm doesn't work with ICS under W2K, so if you are sharing an internet connection to the rest of the household, look elsewhere. :}

Sounds like LBA mode is off for your device (check bios/auto-detect). LBA is required to show large hard drives as greater than 2gb, so it seems a similar problem. I just checked mine and Ghost in the Shell shows as 4+gb. Hope that helps, :}

I ran the test and it only played samples with the message "...from a software buffer." It doesn't even seem to have tried the hardware buffer. How do I force this, or make sure I am trying to test the hardware buffer (and get whatever error message you are seeing if it doesn't work)? :}

One revision...if you select "size with window" in the menu, the player keeps that setting until you change it again. For me, that is perfect, so I can scale the window (even maximize it) and it works fine. So, here is one of my gripes that was in error. :}