GHackmann

If you have an Athlon and a GeForce, then you probably *do* need a 300W power supply. I'm told you need 165W just to power the processor and the video card, let alone your other components. With 256 MB of RAM especially, 250W might not be enough, even if the PSU is AMD approved. Whether or not this is the problem you're having is another issue, but it's worth trying a 300W power supply to see if that fixes it. The fact that it crashes in 3D-accelerated games is a possible sign of this, since the video card is being pushed harder and draws more power. The KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED one is pretty generic. It basically means that you've got incompatible or malfunctioning hardware somewhere in your computer. UNEXPECTED_KERNEL_MODE_TRAP is pretty much the same, except that it leans more towards memory problems. What type of memory are you using? And what are your BIOS settings? Have you tried swapping out memory sticks, or running a diagnostic test on them? The DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL error is loads of fun to debug. It means that a driver is trying to access memory it didn't have permission to access. I've never seen Detonator drivers do this, but Creative's SB Live! drivers are really fond of throwing these errors. So probably either it's another component, or something's wrong with your hardware, making it issue bad calls. Just out of curiosity, have you tried pulling your sound card? Some sound cards (especially SB Live!s) can cause lots of problems under Win2K because typically the drivers aren't up to snuff. My crashing problems finally went away for good once I replaced my SB Live! with a Santa Cruz. If removing your sound card or cranking the sound card's hardware acceleration down one notch (from Sounds & Multimedia in Control Panel, Audio tab, Advanced under Playback Device, Performance tab) helps, then your sound card's probably the culprit. If that doesn't work, a more-detailed list of components would really help here.

Here goes a random stab: are you using a 300W power supply? If it's any less, then that could be causing the problems.

The mouse problems are probably due to your Logitech mouse drivers. They don't work well in some games. My Micro$oft (yuck) Intellimouse works fine with UT under Win2K. Try flipping DirectInput on (or off, depending how it's set currently) and see if that helps.

I have a CL Annhilator Pro (GeForce 1 DDR) and the TV out is just fine. DVD output quality varies from movie to movie -- The Matrix is only OK, but Princess Mononoke is astounding. Same goes for other movie formats -- some of my video clips look better than on my monitor (due to the low resolution -- less pixelation) and some are only marginal. If you're looking for consistently good DVD output, then I suggest going with a DVD decoder card, since most have a dedicated TV Out on them which provides direct output from the decoder to the TV (as opposed to decoder -> graphics card -> TV which can severely hurt quality). Gaming is great on it. UT looks fantastic, especially with frame rates better than most game consoles. MAME (an arcade game emulator) is loads of fun, too. The only problem that I had was with the drivers -- the CL drivers didn't work (even though they had a TV Out tab) so I had to switch to the generic nVidia ones. 800x600 quality isn't that good, either (the image is smashed and too dark, even after fiddling with the brightness), so stick with 640x480. Be careful about generalizing TV out on GeForce cards, since there are two different chips used for it. Mine has a Brooktree chip, so my experiences with it should be the same with other Brooktree-based cards, but the other chip (don't remember which it is off hand) might not work as well, or it could work better. It might work better if I used TV Tool, but I haven't bothered to lug a monitor into the family room to deal with it. (Apparently, while you're using TV Tool, the TV output gets corrupted, so I need both hookups to see what I'm doing.)

The PCTV Pro *does* in fact have Win2K support. I have one, and it works great. Highly recommended. PCTV USB does not, however, support Win2K, so stick with the internal PCI version. The Studio software that the Pinnacle web site is referring to is their bundled video editing software. Under Windows 2000, if you want to edit captured video, then you need to provide your own software. I use VirtualDub anyway, so no loss there. Everything else works just fine on my Win2K rig (specs below) -- TV, radio, capture, remote control, etc. I haven't had any problems with IRQ sharing or anything else people had been whining about with some cards (ACPI, hibernation, etc.). I've heard that installing DirectX 8 does wonders for TV card stability, so you might want to do that before you install any TV cards. I also recommend looking at Ubid.com since they have recently had PCTV series cards going for cheap. Pertinent computer info: Abit KA7-100 Athlon Cl***ic 750 (7.5 x 100) 256 MB PC133 CAS2 RAM Creative Labs Annhilator Pro GeForce DDR Creative Labs SB Live! (soon to be replaced with TB Santa Cruz) PCTV Pro Win2K Pro SP1 DirectX 8

Go to Sounds & Multimedia in Control Panel, then scroll about half-way down the list to Windows Explorer. Click on Empty Recycle Bin and change it to (None).

Widow: This depends on the CD burner. I'm pretty sure that Plextor recommends that DMA is enabled. I know that my Mitsumi drive (don't laugh, it was cheap) works much better with DMA on. Also, the lockups may be caused by the CD-RW drive being on the same channel as another IDE drive. The best advice for a CD-RW owner is to put the drive on its own channel as master, which will help prevent coasters and strange lockups. If you don't have a free channel, then get a PCI IDE controller card and put the CD-RW on that. (As an added bonus, if you get a HPT370-based card, then its BIOS lets you set DMA mode. Don't know about the Promise ones, but I'd be shocked if you couldn't.) That said, if you have a motherboard with a Via chipset, you can get the new Windows 2000 compatible IDE drivers (link anybody?) which come with a tool to let you set the DMA mode.

AnandTech recommends the AOpen MX3W. See the whole article here: http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1367&p=2 You might also want to keep Durons in mind if you haven't bought the processor yet, because they have a huge performance advantage over Durons. They cost a little more, so really it's a question of whether or not your kids need the extra performance and are willing to pay a little more for it. (What are your kids going to be using the computer for? Not Counter-Strike, I hope )

I've heard some good things about Pinnacle's PCTV line, but it's an all-or-nothing sort of thing under Win2K: either it works beautifully or it crashes and burns. Apparently it's a driver issue, so if you really need to you should be able to fall back on the Brooktree drivers and generic TV apps. I'm expecting mine to arrive either today or tommorrow (it's scheduled to get here today but my campus's mail system is pretty slow, so I might not actually get it until tommorrow) so I once I get it up and running (or not, as the case may be) I'll post the results. If you're looking to capture stuff, then quality is going to be the same for all of them, since they're all based on the same chipset. The only difference between them is the software, which you're best off pitching and replacing with VirtualDub (http://virtualdub.sourceforge.net) anyway. ATI's got some pretty nice recording software, but any of them should work with 3rd party VCR software like WinVCR or SnapStream PVS (the latter of which has a free version). 3rd party software should give better results since they support MPEG2 in addition to MPEG1.

PC133 CAS3 + Athlon + overclocked nVidia card = Bad Things. Get CAS2 RAM if you're going to overclock. Also, if the built-in fan died while your computer was running, your TNT2 chip may have been partially damaged by the heat, so you may have permenantly lost your ability to overclock. Try the card in another computer and see if it works.

Try taking the second hard drive off of the first channel (and using only the first drive on it) and see what happens. They may need to be on seperate channels. (Mixing DMA types on the same channel usually doesn't work.) Also, if you used the DMA66 cable that came with your DMA66 drive (it should have blue plugs on the end rather than black) then try using a regular IDE cable, and vice-versa.

I'm pretty sure your Iwill board doesn't support DMA66. You need to disable it on the DMA66 drive. I think there might be a jumper on the drive to do this. If there isn't, you should be able to do it by getting a patch off of the Maxtor web site (I don't know where this is, you'll have to ask their tech support). Or better yet, you could get a decent PCI IDE controller card that supports DMA66/100 and that way you get the full speed of your DMA66 drive. And (maybe even better) you can give each drive its own channel, which can help improvement some, and can really help if your CD burner is making coasters.

Quote: Originally posted by *Iblis*: what exactly does devldr32.exe do? it seems to be running in the background all the time and i can't kill it. DEVLDR32 is part of the SB Dead! . . . er, I mean, SB Live! . . . driver set.

I'm getting really frustrated with my SB Live! and I'm about ready to demand a refund. I'm really considering going with a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz card, but I have a few questions for anybody out there who has one: 1. Do the current drivers work right with ACPI (the whole IRQ sharing fiasco)? 2. Do they work with hibernate? 3. Does UT have the same massive slowdown with EAX enabled as with the SB Live!? 4. Are the reverb & 3D volumes right (i.e. not like the SB Live! which plays them really, really loud)? 5. Any BSOD problems? In other words, does it do what the SB Live! doesn't: work as advertised? Testimonials from GeForce and Athlon users would be especially helpful (KA7 owners especially) but if you've got any info at all then it would be useful. Thanks in advance.

Yeah, surprise surprise, both of their other posts are the exact same messages in the Applications forum. Come on, you really want us to believe that you'd answer the question the *exact* same way in both forums? Can one of the administrators please kill this thread?

Quote: Originally posted by Gambler FEX online: But what about A3D? Is A3D 1.0 accelleration enough for quake 3? That's what I wanto, play quake 3 with surrounnd in windows 2000. I currently have a SB Live and it crackles heavily with my SMP system. You don't need A3D acceleration at all. Shortly before their demise, A3D released A2D, which is a A3D-to-DirectSound 3D wrapper that works much better than what Creative supplies. Better yet, it works with non-CL cards. I haven't tried it personally with Q3A (don't like it, bought UT instead) but I've heard good things about it. You can get it here: http://downloads.aureal.com/pub/Public/Drivers/A3D/a2ddrivers312.exe

Well look at what came up on Anandtech today: a Socket A motherboard roundup. The winner really surprised me, because it's not one of the big two (A7V or KT7). Hopefully this is helpful. And I agree that with terrahk you need good RAM. I've had some good experiences with Crucial Technologies RAM, and there's plenty of other good choices out there.

The SBLive 5.1 series has 3 analog outputs (front/back/center) rather than 2 (front/back). That's the difference.

It's actually the other way around. DDR SDRAM costs about 10% more to manufacture than SDR SDRAM, and you get a 20% or more speed boost in real world applications, and an even bigger boost in some cases, like 3D games. You might have heard about DDR SRDAM GeForce cards, which is a whole different story. Yes, they're a lot more expensive than their SDR cousins (though not as much as they used to be), and most of the performance benefit comes at high resolutions. But the only reason why manufacturers charge a lot more than the SDR versions is simply because they can; the demand's there, and people will pay an inflated price for cards that only cost a little more to manufacture.

The KT7-RAID is the overclocker's choice motherboard. SoftMenu III is great for tweaking bus speeds and the like. It lets you go up to a 183 MHz bus speed (but something tells me that's kind of a moot point, since I doubt anyone could run it stably at 183), and if you unlock your TBird with a pencil then you get multiplier settings right in the BIOS. Plus you can change the voltage (I/O and core) in 0.05V increments, which is great for tweaking. They also throw in heatsinks on the KT133 chipset for good measure. DMA100 is a nice bonus, with the possibility of IDE RAID arrays . . . [drool] Seriously, either the A7V or the KT7-RAID are good choices, but I like the KT7-RAID better because of SoftMenu and the extra two DMA100 channels. You can never have too many IDE channels. Wow, I just found out that there's a SoftFSB plugin for the KT7-RAID. Bonus points!

You might want to try upgrading your SB Live! drivers. At worst, it won't work and you'll need to uninstall them. Another way to rule sound problems out is by temporarily yanking the SB Live! out of your PC (not when it's on, of course :-P) and see if it stops crashing. Somehow I doubt the network card is causing it, but just to be sure you might as well update your network card drivers. (It probably won't help, but it couldn't hurt.) What I'd try is pulling your sound card, then running 3DMark2000 in a loop a few times with sound disabled to see if it crashes. If so, then you're dealing with a system-wide issue. Otherwise, it's game-specific. I'm not sure if knowing that will help you any but it's worth looking into.

You can get DDR RAM from Crucial Technologies (www.crucial.com). There are not any AMD 760 motherboards that I know of that most people can get their hands on (Micron has an Athlon DDR rig but I'm pretty sure they make their own motherboards, which aren't for sale to the public). You might be better off waiting for the next Via chipset anyway since Via chipsets perform better than their AMD counterparts. AMD isn't really in the chipset business; they just make the chipsets as a stopgap until Via makes theirs.

Have you tried any OpenGL games? This way you could see if it's tied to Direct3D or not. Also try disabling EAX. From Control Panel, go to Sounds & Multimedia, Audio tab, Advanced under Sound Playback, Performance tab, and set Hardware Acceleration to one notch short of the right end. (This setting should say Standard acceleration below it.) Those SB Live! drivers love crashing when EAX is enabled. What slots are all of your cards in? SB Live!s are really picky about which slots they go in (especially in tandem with GeForces) and I had to move mine around to get it to stop crashing when EAX was enabled. If ACPI is enabled then this probably won't help much (Microsoft thinks there's no reason you wouldn't want all of your devices sharing IRQs, and you can't convince Windows otherwise) but it's still worth a shot. As a last resort you could try removing or swapping out the sound card. SB Live!s and GeForces don't play together very well, thanks to Creative's shoddy drivers. The restarting thing is really odd. AFAIK that can only happen when it crashes really, really hard. Because Win2K runs apps in a protected memory space, it shouldn't normally be able to do that, except maybe with problematic drivers. (Can anybody say "Live!Ware"? <g> ) But at least that rules out overheating since I don't think overheating can cause reboots.

The first thing to try is messing around with the motherboard's I/O voltage. Try moving it up to 3.4V or even 3.5V. (You might also need to bump up the core voltage to do it.) This can help if your card's not getting enough power even though you have a good power supply. Some Asus boards are infamous for not giving GeForce 2 boards the juice they need unless you crank up the I/O voltage. Try using Motherboard Monitor to make doubly sure nothing's overheating. Or try running your rig with the case off. If that doesn't help, it's not overheating. Is your memory maybe CAS3? (CAS3 + PC133 + Athlon = Very Bad Things.) If so, you try CAS2 memory, or run your memory at 100 MHz. Try cleaning out your TEMP directory too. It rarely helps, but it can't hurt. I'm assuming you've tried the Win2K Athlon AGP patch? Also try messing with AGP settings (turn off 4X, fast writes, and sideband addressing) until it works. Try checking out www.geforcefaq.com for some more ideas. It can also tell you how to mess around with those nasty AGP settings, since a lot of them are hidden registry settings.

Do you have a 300W (or greater) power supply? If not, get one. An Athlon + GeForce 2 uses a heck of a lot of power, and if you don't have enough then in can cause crashes in 3D games. I've also seen stuff kicked back to desktop if you don't have enough memory. Mind telling us what you're trying to run? You might need an extra 64 MB or so of RAM since Win2K is very memory hungry. If it keeps accessing the disk for a few seconds after the program dies, then that's a very good indicator that this is happening, since Windows had to reach into its virtual memory. Also make sure that you have enough virtual memory and enough free space on the drive with the swap file. It could also be overheating. If your 3D card overheats, then a lot of times you get kicked back to the desktop without warning.