Damien

Without knowing what graphics card you have, this answer will have to be somewhat generalised: 1. To enable AGP 4x either a: download a registry hack program for the card in question from the manufacturer's website (I know Matrox do one of these for the G400, not sure about the others, but check anyway) or b: Download Entech's Powerstrip = which is easy to find if you type Powerstrip into any search engine. Once the program has installed, right click on the little icon that should have appeared on you're taskbar (bottom richt - monitor icon I think) a menu will appear go to advanced options - a sub menu appears, go to diagnostics. A window will open, and within it you can see you're current settings. If AGP 4x is avalible, then you'll be able to click on the box beside it, which will force you're computer to use that speed setting. If you're machine hangs, it might be because it is unable to run in 4x mode reliably. This can be cause by a number of factors - noisy motherboard, too many cards to mention the two most common (ensure that the slot below you're AGP card is free - this cuts down the amount of electrical interference and might be enough for the card to work at 4x). If you can't get 4x - don't worry, the difference between this and 2x or even 1x is minimal - there are no games avaliable at the moment that swap enought textures across the agp bus to make the speed setting important. 2. I'm afraid I don't really know how to check for UDMA66 speed (I'm running a scsi rig so I don't come across Ide controllers very often), but you might try downloading SI Soft's Sandra (again use a search engine). This isn't entirely WIn 2K compatible, but most modules work to a degree. It might be able to tell you the current protocall in use. I hope this rather long reply gives you some ideas, and helps solve your problems. Regards Damien.

Sounds like a dodgy cable to me, I had a similar problem and found this to be the cause. Remember to check both the power and the IDE cable - replace the Ide cable if possible. It could also be a loose solder connection on either the cd rom or the motherboard - so if after cable checks the problem persists, chech the contacts. Also try swapping the CD drive for a spare if you've got one, this would diagnose whether or not it's the drive at fault. hope this helps a bit Damien ------------------

I expect Win ME to be little different than the other systems based around the old dos and win95 kernal i.e prone to crashes etc. My advice - stick to Win 2K it works and works very well - Yes I know it doesn't quite have the hardware support of the Win 98 range, but I'd swap support for stability any day. Futhermore, the glitzy bits bolted onto ME - Media player 7 etc. are in most part avalible for Win 2K anyway.

My plextor reads everything fine - but I haven't tried 80min cd or ones which have been overburnt since my HP 9200 won't do overburning.

Have you tried it without the AWE64 installed, I say this because I've recently experienced exactly the same problem as you and it turned out to be my SB AWE32 - Having recently bought Cubase VST, the card failed all of the tests and actually locked up the machine in the process. I also have a SB Live which is now used for Cubase (the reason for the AWE 32 is the Yamaha DB50XG midi card that piggybacks it) I've disabled the AWE32 for every thing except midi and since then no more lockups. I'm not too convinced by creatives drivers under win 2k for these older cards. This may not be your problem - but it's worth a try.

I'm using TDK media (reflex X)with my HP cd writer (9200i) without any problems - TDK seems to work best with HP writers (IMO)

I think that there is a slocket A convertor in production, AMD said it couldn't be done due to the longer wires to the processor, but several third party companies think otherwise. Keep your eyes peeled, and visit the AMD appreciation website - http://www.k-power.co.uk/index they will probably post info about these devices in the near future.

Inaccessable boot device usually means that NT was unable to detect your scsi card. If you look at Adaptec's website, they have instructions for installing drivers from floppy during NT setup - I think you have to press F5 to specify additional device drivers. At this point you need to insert a floppy containing the scsi drivers. These have to be set up a special way so NT can read them - again Adaptec's website has instructions on how to do this. [This message has been edited by Damien (edited 22 July 2000).]

I read some time ago that the AWE 64 only runs with basic support under Win 2K and that Creative had no plans to make it more compatible - If this is true, you might have to get a Sb Live instead.

I'm not doing much better, I've installed LW3, but I can't adjust any mixer settings, speaker configurations etc. All I get is ctsurmix.exe has generated errors and will be closed by windows - this is several steps back from the preliminary Win 2K driver kit which at least worked albeit with reduced access to the card. Has anyone else had this problem? If so, do you know the fix?

Iy maybe worth the wait - I know it's taken ages, but at least when the drivers are released they will be the full Microsoft Approved version - so hopefully there will be no bugs or glitches and we might just be able to use the card properally under Win 2K - Horay!!

It's good to see that Intel have taken the first initiative towards solving the boot floppy bios update problem. Lets hope that other follow their lead.

Ah yes, but you're forgetting one thing - what if you've just bought your first ever PC, which comes preinstalled or with Win 2K - no dos boot disk - so in this respect there could be a problem.

While it's possible that drivers will be included in SP1 - it's more likely that you'll see a release from HP themselves. HP have been especially slow in releasing drivers for Win 2K, but hopefully they'll be along soon. It's annoying I know but sometimes it's the price we pay for adopting new technology.

I've said this before and I'll say it again, why is it so difficult for Microsoft to provide a utility on both the Win 2K and ME cd that creates a basic MS DOS boot disk which will allow users to update their bios? It seems like a simple thing to me so why don't they just do it instead of saying there will be a problem for users of these operating systems. Bios updates have become increasingly important recently, what with fixes to ACPI etc. that multiple updates seem more the nore these days.

As DosFreak and others point out, there is still something of a blatent misunderstanding going on here. Some owners of Win 2K assume that we all have Win 98 too! This simply isn't the case. Okay so I do indeed have 98 SE and can boot from the CD, but what about the poor sod who got Win 2K full edition with his machine? What the hell is he supposed to do? No old copies of dos, no older copies of Windows - so bios update - at least not without breaking the law! I suppose it would be possible for a bios manufacturer to write a program that generates a boot disk to write to the bios - technically they wouldn't have to illegally use MS DOS code, they could write their own custom program that loads from the boot strap. However this would take time, and I doubt many companies would be willing to do this.

Has anyone managed to get this working properally yet? The forums are full of issues wilth this game and Win 2K, I can't get the game to run past Marsh part 2 - it creashes with: 'The instruction at "0x0046687c" referenced memory at "0x0f2838c8". The memory could not be "read"' I heard of a lot of other people with similar problems. I've tried the game on three completely different machines, all running Win 2K, all with the same result. It clearly says on the game's box and in the enclosed readme that the game is designed for Win 95/98 and 2000 so whats up?

Well I've taken the game back now and swapped it for soldier of fortune - just pissed off with all the bugs.

Right: 1. You may need more cooling - expecially is you're using a standard Athlon Heatsink. Try getting hold of a Globalwin VOS32 or something similar - http://www.overclockers.com has info on these or similar. 2. You're memory might no be up to the task, even though it's rated PC100 - not all memory is alike, and yours might no be of a high enough quality to guarentee stable overclocking. 3. Win 2K is very fussy about an overclocked system - far more so that Win 98 - you may have found your limits - although I admit that this is unlikely.

A loose connection might not cause the mouse to stop working, however, it might cause it to report itself wrongly. A reconnection usually causes the computer to reconfigure itself - in your case it looks like this is exactly what happened.

Okay: 1. At best the Win 2K Liveware drivers are a stop gap, the readme file that accompanies them openly abmits that they do not support all the features of the SB Live. Like Ronin, my computer functions just fine with the temporary drivers - however, I would like to use my sound card to its full potential. 2. Creative have handled this very badly, a sketchy driver release schedual, where dates appear not to have been met. This has infuriated some people, I myself feel a little concerned that nothing has arrived yet and for those with problem, the situation must be a nightmare. I'm sure everyone understands that there's probably a good reason as to why the drivers are late - but I think that Creative could at least tell us that they have got a delay and give regular updates as to when we can expect the Win 2K Liveware release. The real problem here is a lack of communication from Creative, for all we know they could all be dead! I've sent them emails, as I'm sure others have, a response would be nice, or at least a post on their website. Come on guys, it's good PR.

In general, if the game uses directX and is a recent release, then it should in most cases run under Win 2K. To check this out before you buy, see the game compatability page on this site. If the game runs under dos - it might work under Win 2K, but you will loose the sound. There is a utility that allows the sound to work under Win 2K - Sound FX 2000, (if you do a forum search you should be able to find where to download it). The only other problem you might have with these games is a restriction upon the screen modes you can select - usually 320 * 200 * 8 I believe. [This message has been edited by Damien (edited 03 June 2000).]

Graphics card? Well I like the Matrox G400 Max - the drivers are very stable under Win 2K (unlike the Geforce), and the card gives good 3D performance coupled with excellant image quality. It's not state of the art, but it is still good enough to run all the current games smoothly. Sound card wise, I'd choose the SB Live (especially with Liveware 3 drivers imminent). I think the Diamond card uses the Aureal Vortex chipset - if this is the case, please bear in mind that Aureal have just filed for bankrupcy - which puts future driver releases in a somewhat fragile state.

This is a significant issue with machines that only run NT. It would be nice is Microsoft could include an option to boot to a Dos prompt in their NT startup menu. This doesn't need to be anything too elaborate, just a dos prompt from Ms Dos 6.22 or later.

I'm not so sure, if you read the latest reviews on the Abit KA7, I think you'll find that it's the easiest Athlon motherboard to set up - simply a matter of plugging in the processor etc. and going on your way. The Athlon has needed a good stable platform for a long time, and it seems to me that the Via KX133 chipset has at last provided this. You may argue about this, but I have an Abit KA7, which is running very happily in my system - what's even better is the fact that my Athlon 800 knocks the socks of Intel Pentiums running at the same speed. Intel needs some serious competition. At last, I think it finally has it.