SeBA

You're right. I think Windows 2000 is the best operating system around (for workstations and desktops at least). This doesn't meen that it's good enough Anyway, I just get angry when I see that big manufacturers like HP and Creative take so long to make win2k compatible drivers for their hardware. They had plenty of time, win2k has been under development for a couple of years... Windows 2000 is the OS of the (near) future. Not Win9x, we don't want that crap! I really hope for Microsoft and for everybody that there won't be a Windows ME "sequel"... we got enough **** around. Why don't they work on removing bugs in Win98 instead of developing other crappy OS? That's all, I'll wait for the new (and really working) Creative drivers and many others... I guess my computer peripherials will be fully supported and somewhat working not before October. Well, I'm going on vacation ;-) Cheers Seba

I recommend the Asus K7V (Via KX133 chipset). It is fast and stable, even at 1000 MHz. Don't get any board with the AMD 750 chipset (like the K7M), they are old. If you can, wait for the Via KT133 chipset to come out (July/August?). It will support the newer Athlon socket models (thunderbird), which will be just faster. SeBA

The problem here is that Creative doesn't maintain promises. LiveWare 3 for Windows 2000 was initially expected for Windows 2000 release, on February 17, but then we got that ****ing bogus LiveWare 1/2 mix in the end of March. Creative said that LiveWare 3 would come out mid-May, then it was delayed to mid-June. Well, it's the 22nd of June today, and I'm waiting for LiveWare 3 for Win2k since February 17... What I don't like about the actual drivers: - Many DirectX games have audio syncronisation problems. - The MIDI port doesn't work well/at all with the ACPI HAL. - Try to make DirectMusic test with dxdiag... humm... - The driver doesn't support EAX - The supplied software is far away from LiveWare 3's features There was, once, LiveWare 3 for NT by Anthony Toste... although it worked only in APM mode, that worked much better. Creative: WHAT THE **** DID YOU DO IN MORE THAN FOUR MONTHS???!??!?!??!?!??

Well, you certainly have some driver problems. Usually display drivers are the ones which make a computer reboot. Be sure to install all the latest drivers you can find for your peripherials. I had a VERY unstable system, then installed ALi AGP drivers (I have an ALI based motherboard) and the latest Matrox drivers and the problems went away.

I want to raise my VIO voltage from 3.5 to 3.8 to get (I hope) more stability on my AsusP5A (ALi V)/G400/SBLive combo. I have a K6-III 450 MHz and 128MB PC-100. Is it dangerous or is it doable? I don't want to blow my system up, even though I'm starting to hate it... Thanks Seba

Well, i did it. Nothing changed. Just crashes. I'm sick of it all. I will go back to Win98 (non-SE, also giving me problems) and keep a fresh win2k on a partition, ready to install new drivers for it as they come out. Thanks, and bye!

Before I even start: I hate DirectCD, so please don't reply to say me I have to use it. OK. Now I start. Is there any Win2k version of Cequadrat's PacketCD? If not, is there any trick to get the NT4 or 9x version running? Is there a beta around? Is anything planned? Are there other packet writing programs other than directcd which work with Windows 2000? Thanks Sebastian

I think you are talking about the actual LiveWare for windows 2000, which is the LiveWare 2 driver features (written in WDM), modified LiveWare 1 apps and some little tiny addons. LiveWare 3 for Win2000 will equal the other LiveWare 3 by 100% and will be out in some days. Seba

Thanks, I will try that later today and let you know what happened (If you don't hear from me for a couple of days, you know why). I had an Asus SP98AGP-X board which was running rock solid along with a K6 300. Then I screwed up the bios and took the chance (argh!) to buy the 100MHz board (the P5A). It (kind of) worked well until Windows 2000 arrived. Of course I never tried TNT/TNT2/Geforce cards Seba

I installed WinOnCD 3.7 and EasyCD Creator 4.02c as administrator. I can use them with admin and power users. I don't know about others. I heard about Nero working only in admin mode.

MacOS 9 sucks. You may not get BSODs, but you will get lockups like in Win9x. Even worse. You can't even find out what the hell is going on. BSOD is there to give you some information.

WAIT!!! In my manual, page 15, point 3m it says there is a jumper to switch from 3.5 (default) to 3.6 V. This is for DRAM, chipset, AGP and CPU I/O buffer voltage. May I try this? The CPU is running at normal 2.4 V. Also the other voltages are perfect.

The board is set up for 3.3V but voltage in BIOS says 3.552!!!! I think this is common for board rev. 1.04 and below. If I'm going to throw out the P5A I'm NOT going to buy another Super 7 board. This is for sure! My problem is that I wanted to wait until september and get a win2k fully-compatible Asus K7V board... Well I guess that I will have to use Win98 till then. But with the new AGP drivers from ALI (0.10 beta) the system is more stable. The G400 now doesn't crash in 3D mode, but is still sloooow!

Bad experiences with it. It screws up the system, makes it unstable as hell and disables hibernation. I tried the latest version, 3.0c... So I'll just wait for a new version of dcd. Seba

Dammit. I always get intermittent and various crashes (mostly BSODs) under Windows 2000. For example PAGE_FAULT_IN_NON_PAGED_AREA or KMODE_EXCEPTION NOT HANDLED or FAT_FILE_SYSTEM etc. Hardware: Asus P5A (latest bios) K6-III 450 MHz 128 MB PC-100 (2 x 64 MB DIMM) Matrox Millennium G400 (latest bios + drivers) SoundBlaster Live! (win2k original drivers) Pinnacle StudioPCTV (drivers not installed) Adaptec AVA-1515 SCSI card Software: Windows 2000 English build 2195 (latest updates) Office 2000 premium SR-1 (+ win2k fix) Norton AntiVirus 2000 for NT This system works perfectly under Win98 and I don't understand why it always crashes under Windows 2000. I have disabled K6 write allocate, agp turbo, frame buffer posted write and I still get those crashes... I don't know where to start as the BSODs don't indicate a driver but usually ntoskrnl.exe or just nothing. Why is Windows 2000 doing this to me? I was so kind to adopt it and he refuses to obey! What a shame! So I have to go back to Win98 SE?? Never in the world! Any suggestion is really appreciated, I'm terribly suffering from these problems!

News! Well, I finally tried the 0.10 beta AGP drivers from ALi. I installed them without problems. And I also bought a new CPU cooler 'cause mine was vibrating sometimes and running slow. The system seems stable now (no crash yet). I used a specific patch from ALi to boot up win2k with the G400/SBLive combo they have found a problem with too. I also disconnected the chassis fan to "save" some energy... 3D apps are running very slow but stable, with hardware acceleration. I hope this is not a temporary thing! Seba

OK, so I'll experiment all these things during the week-end. I know a guy who has an Asus P5A-B, G400 and SBLive (so almost identical setup) and he has the same problems. Let's hope for the best. I don't want to buy a new computer now... Thank you guys!

So I might use the VIO jumper to increase voltage by 0.1 V? This is recommended by Asus when overclocking... My Matrox and everything works just fine under Win98, no power problems whatsoever. Why does Win2k need more voltage? Sebastian

Well, I have the latest drivers for the Matrox (5.04, certified by Microsoft). There aren't any 3rd party bus master drivers yet and there's a beta v 0.10 AGP driver, but I didn't install it. The default Windows 2000 AGP driver is installed. I remember I had much more problems with Matrox 5.00 beta drivers with for example easycd creator and winoncd... I hope these problems are going to be fixed soon! And I hope that Matrox are getting their butts moving and making decent drivers, as ANY 3D application/game crashes here. I contacted ALi (the chipset maker) and they told me they tested it and found the same problem. The system works fine when just the G400 is installed. When the SBLive is installed (win2k original drivers or liveware 2000) the system hangs on 3d apps. This doesn't annoy me much 'cause I have a dual boot with Win98SE, but I would like to get AT LEAST a stable system for surfing the internet, working with office etc. Which I haven't got yet. Sebastian