Mondain98

These drivers suck, hard. So far, I have lost: Hibernate mode, Standby mode, and the ability to run Half Life... all due to the Windows2000 "compatible" Liveware 3.0 drivers. I own a SB Live! X-Gamer, and well, I'm pissed. So far Creative Labs support for this card in Windows2000 is extremely poor. What kind of comapany releases drivers that inherently BREAK integrated Win2k functionality. Does Creative know their drivers have major, major problems? Has anyone called them, or taken the time to rip open their case and find their serial numbers, just to send them a tech support email through their website? If you are having any problems with these drivers in Win2k, feel free to vent here.

Well? Where the hell is it Creative? It's only a month late...

Hey I have this problem. I go out and buy hardware that was designed for a completely differeny operating system, but when I bring it home it just doesnt work! The manufacturer says I am a putz and cant read. I have tried everything except buying hardware that is certified to work in my OS. How can I fix this?

Every OS will have buggy drivers. Hell Win2k is what, around 5 months old? Companies are still releasing buggy Win98 drivers for petes sake (cough nvidia..) I'm still angry that 3dfx let microsoft remove "detached devices" support so a Voodoo2 would never work on Win2k.

I'd like to address a few things here: NetZero: the problems you are having are probably driver related. That, and I hope you added the second CPU before you installed Win2k, otherwise the HAL isnt using the second CPU at all (unless win2k is somehow different than winnt in that regard). "The DirectX layer is low-performance and low-reliablity" Performance is subjective, but I would bet money it's more stable than the DX on Win9x. You have already raised issues about the stability of nvndia 5.32 drivers (which I use with no prob on win2k) and your mobo. Seems less and less likely the problem lies in Win2k itself, but your poor implementation of it. I would definitely look into power and cooling problems. Bladerunner: "If the game doesn't run under Win2k (And most do I should add) then it was a game I wasn't worried about." That's the best line I have heard so far, hope you dont mind if I borrow it now and then Ultima IX worked flawless in Win2k, and thats all I cared about. Hell, most people couldnt even get it to run in Win98.. "If that user is having so many problems then maybe he should consider Windows ME, it's designed to be a 'little easier to use' than 'big boys Windows' :-P" Another hilarious line, and so ****ing true.

Why do people post their system specs in their signature? We dont really care. I'm running Win2k Pro with 384MB SDRAM and I didnt notice a huge improvment over 128MB, however it is apparent when opening up many images in Image Ready 2.0 (or photoshop / illustrator). There have been times where that program has eaten up around 400MB of "memory" from all the stuff I have open, not including other programs running (FP2k, winamp, FTP, telnet, etc). I must admit that while the overall speed of win2k hasnt really improved past 128MB that speed has stayed constant no matter how many programs I run simultaneously, which to me is more important than having a program load a second faster than before. The difference between developers and end-users I guess..

I agree with most of you: 1) Nvidia's driver "leaks" are not accidental, but extremely deliberate. What company wouldnt jump at the chance to increase its driver beta testing by 5000% and simply sitting back and reading the gripes people leave on message boards. And, like the lemmings we are, we completely accept this as "normal" development and roll over. I have no gripes with nvidia's final drivers; why would I, hundreds of thousands of consumers have already tested them for nvidia. 2) Microsoft's infamous "game patch" for win2k is another example, I agree, of why the OS is aptly suited to run games. The patch contains minor code changes people, it doesnt contain any insane amount of new stuff; merely a tweak ehre or there, remember win2k stores some registry entries in different places than win9x. As much as they (Microsoft) deny it, they know full well that any Microsoft OS is going to a) be extremely popular, and people will want to run all applications on it, games and apps alike. People ran games on NT. Even Blizzard (makers of Diablo I and II, among others) made their games specifically NT-compatible. If it werent for the lack of a current DirectX on NT, Nt could have just as easily been a gaming platform as win9x... with the exception that it would require a more robust system. We now have the security, stability, and performance of NT coupled with the hardware support (or fourthcoming support), experience, ease-of-use, and increasing popularity, of Win9x. Does that sound like a system that should be ignored by *any* respectable game developer? I can only imagine what Whistler promises.

Uhh yea... Anyways, so I hear Creative still hasnt released Liveware 3.0 for Windows2000? Oh, and on the whole win2k/not-a-gaming-platform issue, I think thats garbage for several reasons: Historically speaking, when Windos95 came out, all people did was ***** that their games wouldnt run in a dos window (DOS4GW anyone?) After enough development, look where we have gone. Given a decent system, win2k is capable of running almost any game that currently runs on win95. It's all in the drivers, people. Considering that WinME is nothing more than Win98SE with all the current patches, updates, and drivers, coupled with a Win2k interface.. its still based on an outdated and error-prone kernel. Lastly, with the superior memory handling, SMP, stability, security, network performance, and no-reboot policy, game developers would be insane to ignore what is becoming a very popular OS. Remember folks, it isnt rocket science to make a game work in Win2k if it doesnt already. We arent talking about a complete rewrite of code. Hell if its a DirectX game it has native support for gods sake! If our hardware manufacturers would get off their asses and pump out working drivers, all this arguement-counterarguement crap would go away because everything would work. And whatever uninformed moron who claimed that WHQL driver certification is useless, you can take your head out of your ass now. WHQL is the only driver release delay I will tolerate, because it ensures that: the driver will absolutely perform as promised (none of this beta driver nvidia crap "5.22 gave me .038 less FPS whaa." **** nvidia and their guinea-pig beta "leak" public testing.. get a ****ing QA dept already and do your damn jobs.), it will work 100% smoothly with the OS, and I wont have to reboot. I cant think of anything more worth waiting for than perfect drivers. That's all for this rant. Flames can be directed to that brick wall over there.

I think we can all agree that the Liveware for Win2k drivers released are substandard. Hell, they completely break StandBy and Hibernate modes in Win2k. And someone is going to tell me they passed QA at Creative? How long does it take to write working drivers, when win2k was over 2 years in development? I will be nothing short of insulted if the Liveware 3.0 drivers dont contain an apology for the LW/Win2k drivers. I'm sorry, I thought when you spend $100 on a piece of hardware you actually got timely support. Bah dont get me started..

Oh BTW.. those changes "supposedly" made to the final build of Windows2000 were, in fact, actually made. They consisted of a single, text correction in a Help file. That's it. The build was increase to 2195.1, however they wound up implementing the change in 2195, and didnt increase the build number (which would mean another day of delay for RTM, since all build increases are automatically recompiled and rebuilt every morning.) Rest assured that 5.0.2195 Build 2195 is absolutely the final build.

WinME is nothing more than Win98se with the most recent "Winsows Update" updates, as well as some driver updates. Oh, and the GUI of Win2k. It's still based on the outdated and problematic Win9x kernel. Have fun rebooting. BeOS? BeOS is useless to 99% of the population. If you arent in a serious multimedia editing position, BeOS isnt worth your time. It's a free download? So what. As much as I am anti-Microsoft-juggernaut, Win2k contains more advancements in OS technology than any other OS on the market. Any informed expert on operating systems would agree. Games developed with Win2k in mind will, hands down, blow away the experience of gaming on a Win9x environment. IMHO.

While we're on this subject, how can I find out what my system uptime is? In win9x, it was reported using sysinfo I believe.. How in win2k?

Which is the Liveware that wont break my system? (thats rhetorical ) [This message has been edited by Mondain98 (edited 16 April 2000).]

Crazy **** is happening with Half Life in Win2k for me. It would start, lock after a few seconds, then bring me back to the desktop with an error dialog, saying I cannot "remove a physical drive while it is in operation" or something to that effect! The dialog mentions how to "remove a device", etc. Did the same thing with my cdrom too. The ***** of it is, when that happens it totally removes that physical drive from my system.. ie- any logical drive letters i had on that physical disk are no longer listed in Explorer (including the cdrom when it happened with the cdrom). Why am I the only person on the planet who cant get Half Life to run on Win2k!? I'm even using an actual, legit, storebought Win2k Pro cd.. I mean, wtf..

Sorry, I know the Live!Ware 3.0 drivers for Windows2000 arent out yet; they are due out mid-may. The suck-ass drivers I am referring to are the "Live!Ware for Windows2000", currently available at http://www.soundblaster.com/liveware/w2k/ THESE are the drivers that blow

oops, apparently "Liveware for windows2000" and "liveware 3 for windows200" are 2 totally seperate packages. "liveware for windows2000" is what is available now, and what sucks. "liveware 3 for windows2000" is coming in mid-may. Just want to make sure I get my versions straight

These drivers have major problems. I'm surprised you even got games to work in Win2k with liveware 3 drivers. So far, Half Life locks after like 10 seconds sitting at the menus, even if i touch nothing.

This problem just started. When I go to standby mode, I hear my drives power down and click off, yet the monitor stays on and freezes, forcing me to cold boot the system. It does the same with hibernate. Now, I have the Liveware3.0 for win2k drivers installed, however this problem just started after the drivers were installed for a while. It wasnt like I installed the drivers and everything stopped. I also went from the 3.5beta of AIM to the standard release, as I heard the beta doesnt play nice with Win2k. I am going to begin uninstalling all my software, testing standby after each uninstall, starting with the liveware drivers first. Has anyone else had this problem? My mb is an ASUS P2B-LS, and is fully ACPI compliant. This shouldnt be happening, and it wasnt up until recently. Help

Oh also, does anyone know how to log everything that happens from a certain point on in Win2k? I want to start logging then go into standby, and see whats the last thing it does before it hangs. Maybe that will help. I cant figure out how this kind of logging is done in Win2k.