GHackmann

If you're looking for free software, you can use Ghostscript (http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/) but it's a hard to use for .PDF conversions -- you have to set up a PostScript printer driver, save the output to disk, and then convert the PostScript file to PDF. WordPerfect 9 (2000) can also write .PDF files without needing Acrobat, if you're wiling to use a different word processor. It might be cheaper to just buy the standard WordPerfect Office 2000 and use WordPerfect to open the .DOC files (it should be able to read them just fine) and save them as .PDF files than to buy Acrobat. Distiller is a more expensive version of Acrobat that can convert from PostScript files directly to .PDF files. If you don't know what this means, then you don't need it.

If you don't notice EAX then obviously you haven't tried Unreal Tournament Seriously though, EAX is severely broken under Win2K; either it's barely noticable or it sounds like the developers really, really like reverb. Plus a lot of users (myself included) have problems with IRQ sharing -- the SB Live! is supposed to be PCI 2.1 compliant (i.e. it supports IRQ sharing) but enabling EAX with the SB Live! sharing IRQs either kills performance or causes BSODs. Creative is kind of dodgy about acknowledging that there's problems with EAX in Win2K, and their attitude seems to be that it works for most people, and if you shouldn't be using Win2K for games anyhow. Personally I'm giving Creative until Live!Ware 4 to fix the problems. If they don't fix it by then, I'm asking for a refund.

Quote: Originally posted by tristan777: hmmm well it's a 235w power supply. the guy i bought the A7V and tbird from said u needed 200. hmmm? Well there's your problem. You really should have a 300W PS if you're using an Athlon with a TNT2 card. The guy who told you 200 must have been smoking crack, because it shouldn't even boot with only 200W.

I've played both games extensively, and in defense of UT, I think UT is better than Q3A. A lot of people have said that Q3A is better at straight deathmatch, while UT is more well-rounded, and I agree. UT has much better CTF support, and it has other game types like Assault and Domination which Q3A can't even touch. Overall the mod support is better for Q3A (except with the newest beta patch, heh) but UT isn't too far behind. UT does have the advantage of having mutators, which are like mini-mods that are stackable (e.g. you can have a low-gravity mutator, and a weapons-changing mutator, and you can use both at once on top of an already-existing mod -- the Lazy Matrix mutator is terrific). AFAIK Q3A doesn't offer anything equivalent. Performance-wise Q3A has a higher FPS rate but UT looks better IMO. Plus with Loki's OpenGL patch the performance gap is a little smaller now. I think the UT lag problem has been fixed, as they have tweaked network stuff a lot in the last few patches. UT's physics haven't changed, but Q3A's physics changed in the newest beta patch, and they will change again in the release patch. UT doesn't offer a TFC equivalent yet (Unreal Fortess, UT's TFC clone, hasn't been released yet) whereas Q3A does (Weapons Factory). I don't know about FireArms clones specifically, but if you're looking for so-called "realism" mods, then UT has several (Infiltration, Strike Force, etc.), and I don't know about Q3A, but none of them are even close to the undisputed king of realism mods, Counter-Strike. [bows in homage] Both also have Excessive Overkill, which is a great mod if you haven't tried it yet. Are you sure you can only have one? In a lot of places, UT has hit the bargain bin, and I'm sure the price will be low especially now that the Game Of The Year edition (nothing special, just a few mods included that you can download seperately) is on shelves, so maybe you can have your cake and eat it too.

He's talking about the CD-RW drives, not the disks. While I can't talk from personal experience, the TDK website says that it is compatible, and it uses Nero which should be compatible too. You won't get packet writing yet though since it uses InCD which isn't Win2K compatible yet.

Stupid question: are you using a DMA66 cable? (You can tell if it's a DMA66 cable if the connectors are blue on the end instead of black.) DMA66 drives need a special cable (an electrical insulation thing or something) or they can act goofy, like refusing to run in DMA mode.

Try moving the DVD drive off of the primary channel and giving it its own. I had to do that to get mine to work right without skipping, since it didn't like my DMA66 hard drive. (Gotta love the KA7-100 with its 2 extra IDE channels. )

If the 32MB test wouldn't load, then it sounds like an AGP issue. This would also explain the miserable performance, since nVidia cards depend more on AGP than Banshee cards do. (Banshee cards didn't support AGP features very much -- they were basically PCI cards in an AGP slot.) If you haven't already, try installing the latest AGP driver from the Via 4-in-1 drivers (www.viatech.com). Also, run DXDIAG and check the Display tab to see if AGP acceleration is enabled. If not, then try installing the newest Via/Win2K patch that they released a couple of days ago. Also check your BIOS to make sure that AGP is running at 2x and that the AGP aperture is set to more than 4MB. (4MB and below disables AGP texturing.)

Ahh, the trials and tribulations of building an Athlon. Here's a few things that I messed up, I mean I hear that other people messed up , when I built mine: 1. Make 100% sure the Athlon is in all the way. That bugger is a pain to get in sometimes, and the first Athlon I built didn't even power on at first because the processor wasn't properly seated. 2. Make 110% sure the video card is properly seated. The second Athlon I built wouldn't boot because the video card wasn't in all the way. 3. Check to see the power connectors are all in the right place. While trying to figure out why my first Athlon wouldn't boot (that unseated processor again) I accidentally unplugged the case power connector, and then plugged it in wrong; I think I swapped it with the speaker or something else really stupid. Same goes for the ATX power connector, though that's not as easy to mess up as those AT connectors (why must they give you two identical-looking connectors that are not swappable?). 4. The floppy drive and hard drive problems sound all too familiar to me. Try disconnecting the floppy drive. My third Athlon did the very same thing and wouldn't boot because the floppy connector was in backwards. 5. I second euankirkhope's suggestion to get a decent PS. Your "computer expert" brother in law would be right, except that Athlons eat wattage for breakfast, and you need a minimum of a 250W power supply on most Athlon motherboards just to power the motherboard and processor, let alone peripherals. I'd be shocked if it even POSTed with 230W. Hope this helps.

How are your IDE drives hooked up? Because of the way IDE is designed, if you have more than one drive on the same channel (i.e. one drive as master and one as slave on the same cable) then they can only work at the lowest common denominator. So, even if your hard drive is DMA66, if it's on the same cable as a standard IDE drive, then you're not going to get DMA and it's going to work at lower than 66 Mbps. Windows 2000 especially gets confused about this. I was having loads of problems with DMA before I found out that my CD-RW drive was EIDE, not DMA33 as I thought before. Sometimes the DMA setting would disappear, and my DVD-ROM drive (which was on the same channel) would always throw fits if I paused a movie in the middle, and it would do random things like take a minute (!) to spin up a disc. (Fortunately, my KA7-100 motherboard has 4 IDE channels, so I was able to move the CD-RW drive to its own channel, and my problems disappeared.) Only one drive recognizing the change is a symptom of incorrectly mixing IDE types on one channel. Also, some motherboards won't recognize DMA66 hard drive drives as DMA if they only have DMA33 controllers. If this is the case, then look for a jumper on the back of the drive or a software program off of the drive manufacturer's Web site to switch from DMA66 to DMA33.

If you don't know what the CAS timings on your current memory are, then stick with CAS3. SDRAM can only work at the speed of the weakest link, whether that be MHz or CAS timing. If the rest of your memory is CAS3 (and if it doesn't say, it probably is) there isn't much point to paying more for CAS2 memory unless you're willing to ditch the other memory to reap CAS2's benefits. There is a stability issue, but as long as you buy decent memory and you don't try to run a CAS3 stick at CAS2 then it doesn't affect you. Unless, that is, if you have an Athlon with a Via chipset and you're running the memory at 133 MHz -- CAS3 is notoriously unstable at 133 MHz with Athlons. Personally, if the differerence is $20, then I'd go for it (for future-proofing) but the choice is yours.

I'm a GeForce DDR owner. So far, the last Detonator set has been pretty good to me -- very stable, nice image quality, excellent speed. I haven't had any compatibility issues related to my GeForce (a lot related to my SB Live!, but that's another issue entirely ). Overall nVidia has nice drivers. I've heard ATI's Radeon drivers are (for once) pretty decent, which is surprising considering how much flak ATI has gotten in the past for releasing *terrible* drivers for their new next-gen cards. So you might want to keep ATI in mind, but I think nVidia probably offers more bang for the buck. Important System Info: AMD Athlon Classic 750 @ 7.5 x 100 Abit KA7-100 motherboard 192 MB PC133 CAS2 RAM CL Annihilator Pro OEM w/TV-Out SB Live! 2.0 NetGear FA310TX NIC Maxtor 30GB DMA66 7200RPM IDE Mitsumi 4804TE CD-RW Win2K SP1

Well, aside from NVMax (which I've never used) there's no suspect programs there. Aside from disabling that (then reinstalling your video drivers to get the default settings back) there's not much I can recommend. Odd indeed.

Quote: Originally posted by tristan777: hehehe... yes i am runnin powerstrip... lemme try getting rid of it.... ok, i got rid of powerstrip, but i am still getting the error. here is exactly what it says: ***STOP: 0x00000050 (0x8149830, 0x00000000, 0x804A1D90, 0x00000002) PAGE_FALT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA ***Address 804A1D90 base at 80400000, Datastamp 384d9b17- ntoskrnl.exe that's about it. thanks. also, i found out that when i added a key to the registry, i was able to run UT in OpenGL now. (it works with 5.30, havent tried it with 5.32, or any Det. 3 drivers.) it runs a bit slower than D3D did, but it doesnt freeze. i was also having D3D problems in half-life and Diablo2, so i'm thinking that it might be a direct3d problem, eh? all my other games run fine in OpenGL(Half-life, Homeworld, Quake3, UT, Tribes). and Diablo2 runs fine in software mode, but it ran unbelievable slow in D3D. in HL i couldnt get back to the menus in D3D. and i have graphics problems with home-world in D3D. thanks again. -tristan [This message has been edited by tristan777 (edited 21 October 2000).] Hmm . . . that error is IIRC exactly what you get when Powerstrip is throwing fits over the AGP fix. I don't want to sound condescending, but are you absolutely sure that you got rid of all of it? Removing it from Startup probably won't help since it runs a driver at boot-up. Try booting up in safe mode or in the repair console and renaming WINNT\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\PSTRIP.SYS to something else if it's still there. I don't think it's a kernel problem, BTW -- programs can call kernel functions on areas of memory they're not supposed to, and then when stuff blows up the kernel sometimes gets blamed. Maybe another program that runs at start-up . . . list please? As far as the low performance in D3D goes, it could be a number of things. DirectX may be screwed up (seems unlikely since W2K is supposed to repair those things). Bad drivers, possibly. More likely, AGP isn't enabled. Try running DXDIAG and checking the Display tab to see if any DirectX features are disabled. They shouldn't be.

Benchmarks show that Win2K lags behind Win9x in games if you have DirectX 7. With DirectX 8, Win2K beats Win9x. Of course, there's always a catch. First, Win2K falls apart unless you have a lot of memory (I'd say 192 MB of RAM for games like Q3 or UT). Worse still, if you've got a Sound Blaster Live! card, depending on your hardware configuration, enabling EAX will throttle your performance and stability. Blame Creative's flaky drivers for that.

Quote: Originally posted by tristan777: Jedi- i installed all that stuff like you said, in the order you said, but i still get a blue screen on startup after i install that Athlon/Win2k patch... You wouldn't happen to be running PowerStrip, would you? PowerStrip causes BSODs after the AGP fix is installed. You'll need to uninstall or disable it before you run the AGP fix. Could you tell us exactly what the BSOD error says? Maybe someone here could help you with that . . .

Have you tried this? http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q270/7/15.ASP

Did you try the Via AGP registry patch? (http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q270/7/15.ASP)

Quote: Originally posted by Gambler FEX online: I have latest drivers and liveware, I have had this problem before (never been able to hear my mic in win2k). System specs: Asus P2B-DS Dual P3 CuMine SB Live! 1024 Gladiac The mic works fine in my brothers computer, it has win2k too but a SB AWE64 gold. Thanks you Can he hear you? If he can hear you but you can't hear yourself, then just double-click on the tray speaker icon, and uncheck Mute for microphone. If he can't hear you either, then go to Options/Properties, select Recording, click OK, and click Select for microphone.

Quote: Originally posted by captain winters: hey guys i have found the problem the voodoo banshee was causing the boot problem because win2k and win98 both froze when the drivers for the voodoo banshee where loaded A 3dfx product that causes system crashes, you say? Never heard of those! Seriously though, you might want to try making sure that the card isn't sharing IRQs with other cards. That might involve moving around or even removing some of your PCI cards, and your video card too if it's a PCI video card.

Quote: Originally posted by Goronok: If you run pc100 ram you can go into your bios and set the ram to a latency of 2 which will make the read/write time quite a bit faster (most motherboards automatically put the ram at a latency of 3. Putting it on 2 does not hurt your system at all if you are thinking that it might. Also your motherboard might have an option to set the ram at maximum performance which helps a bit. If you have pc133 ram do not change either of these settings because your system will not boot up the next time you restart it. pc133 cant handle a latency of 2 and cant be set at maximum performance. It has nothing to do with PC100 or PC133. It depends whether you bought CAS2 or CAS3 RAM. CAS2 can handle latencies of 2 and higher, and CAS3 can handle latencies of 3 and higher. My guess is that you tried this with CAS3 PC133 RAM -- most PC133 modules I've seen are CAS3, and you need to specifically ask for CAS2 RAM. I'm currently using CAS2 PC133 RAM from Crucial at 133 MHz with a latency of 2 and it works fine here.

Try changing the I/O Voltage. If it's on 3.3V, set it to 3.4V. And if it's on 3.4V, set it to 3.3V Asus boards in particular get much more stable with GeForces if you change the core voltage, since many don't deliver enough juice to them. If everything but the game keeps going then this is usually a good sign that the I/O voltage needs to be changed, especially with a power-hungry card like a GeForce 2. If you're willing to switch MBs, then I recommend the KT7 motherboard. It's very stable and overclocks well. I'm using the Slot-A equivalent (KA7-100) and I'm very pleased with it. It's stable even at 4x with SBA enabled with my GeForce DDR. Also try using DirectX 8 RC0. In my experience it's more stable (and much faster) than DirectX 7. Where you get it though is your problem, since you'd have to find a site that posts leaked betas. I can't tell you where to find it but I'm sure you'll manage. [This message has been edited by GHackmann (edited 03 October 2000).] [This message has been edited by GHackmann (edited 03 October 2000).]

Do you have an nVidia card? If so, it's a registry setting. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\nv4\Device0 and create a DWORD called EnableVia4X and set it to 1. More info on this is available at www.geforcefaq.com. [This message has been edited by GHackmann (edited 02 October 2000).]

My apologies . . . the link is actually www.highpoint-tech.com (note the hyphen). I also forgot to mention the unofficial KT7(-RAID) FAQ. You can find it at http://www.casema.net/~howland/kt7faq/kt7faq.htm. It's a great source for techincal info related to the KT7 series if you haven't tried it already.

I've got a KA7-100 motherboard, which is basically the Slot A equivalent of the KT7-RAID. This is what I did: What you want to do first is go to www.highpointtech.com and get the HPT370 drivers, version 1.20. Extract these to a floppy disk. Then, hook your hard drive up to the ATA-100 primary and set it as master. Put your other drives on the ATA-66 controller. Enable FutureATA in the BIOS and set boot order to CD-ROM, FutureATA, HDD0. (The last one doesn't really matter what you pick.) Then, boot off of the Win2K CD. When it asks for SCSI and RAID drivers, hit F6, insert the driver floppy you made, and select the HPT370 driver. It should now be able to find your hard drive. If you're using a pirated version of Win2K then this also might be the problem. Normally, when you try to copy the Windows 2000 CD some of the files (like the kernel) are corrupted, and it either won't install or if it does install it won't boot. (This is no accident -- Microsoft copy-protects all Windows 2000 CDs.) If this is the case then either (a) buy a legal copy of the Windows 2000 CD, or ( get a CD image from a program that can successfully copy Windows 2000 CDs (e.g. CloneCD).