kearos

Howdy everyone I've recently updated to DX 8.0 and at the same time, I decided to update to Det 6.47 drivers as well (using a TNT but I figure I'd do the latest drivers). It wasn't until then that I've started experiencing occasional freezing when I try to play my games. By freezing, I mean, as soon as the game starts to load up, the entire OS freezes. Games include Q3A, NHL 2001, and NFS Porsche Unleashed. Something that comes to mind is that I heard the 6.47 drivers are defaulted at AGP 4X whereas if you see my specs below, I only have a BX mobo and a TNT, therefore I'm suspecting that I need to edit some settings to enable AGP 2X instead. Does anyone know how I can achieve this? Perhaps you have other suggestions for me? Thanks for your help. Always much appreciated. Cheers, kearos. ------- System Specs: Windows 2000 Professional SP1 Intel Pentium II 450 Abit BE6 384mb PC100 WD 418000 ATA66 7200rpm (2) Diamond V550 TNT AGP SB Live Value 3Com 3c905B Adaptec 2940UW Pioneer DVD-113 Matsu****a CW-7502B [This message has been edited by kearos (edited 07 December 2000).]

wow That isonews.com place is really cool. How do I get these isos?? I have a burner and I didn't know I've been sitting on gold all this time. =D

okay. cool. now that makes more sense to me Thank you everybody.

I still don't get it It's not so trivial when you DON'T know what's happening at all. "god" What's RTM? And I detect some sarcasm from STi Sev when he said, "'pre-release' copy. hehe (big brother is watching)"

wow you guys are good. How have you had Mech4 "for a while"?? I thought it was only in stores a most two days ago. And why do you refer to the 'pre-release'??

oops my bad just called up EB and they have it in stock now looks like I'll have to pick it up tomorrow morning

awesome work! please add Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed. Cheers

I don't think the rated refresh limit is any problem Even the lowest end Viewsonic E790 is rated to run 1024x768 at 116Hz. (however, 1280x1024 is rated at 88Hz) Do you think that there might be some driver issues with DX8 for that monitor? Have you checked to see if there are new Win2k drivers for your monitor? Good luck. Cheers.

*gasp* How did you guys get Mechwarrior 4?!?!? I swear it's not in any store I've been to.

Dear all, I just went to pick up EA Sports NHL 2001. I know the box doesn't say Win2000 supported but I decided to take a chance because the demo ran beautifully. I install the game and run it with absolutely no errors. To my surprise, when I clicked on "Season" mode, it gives me "Error: hard drive is full" once I've gone on to the second screen; AFTER entering Season name and inputting season parameters. This happens to all the tournament modes as well. Strangely, when I play in "Quick Game" mode, the game runs flawlessly. Moreover, I booted up into Win98se, installed NHL 2001 onto that partition and NHL 2001 has no problems. I play NHL 2000 among many new and old games, and I have never had a problem like this. I have read on other forums and friends who are experiencing the exact same problem in Win2k as well. Has anybody else experienced this in Win2k with NHL 2001? I find it hard to believe that EA Sports would leave out the entire Win2k community. I know all previous versions of EA Sports NHL hockey series runs fine in NT since NHL 97. I am extremely disappointed because I have bought every single EA Sports game since NHL 94. Also, the error isn't like NFS High Stakes where the installer wouldn't install in NT. NHL 2001 installs fine and it even RUNS fine in Quick Game mode. It's just PART of the game that is flawed. This leads me to think that it's not a critical design flaw that cannot be fixed. So why didn't they fix it? I quote my friend, L|ghtning, regarding this: "There are basically 2 scenarios: 1) They had no idea, which means that their design process is incredibly incompetent. OR 2) They knew about it all along and didn't care - which means even worse, that they don't give a sh*t about their customers." Thanks for your time. If anybody has any good ideas, I'm all ears. All I have to say now is that EA Sports has just lost a LOT of respect from me. Yours Truly, Kearos. and btw, I have 2.5 gigs free on my HD. =================== My system specs: Intel Pentium II 450 Abit BE6 384mb PC100 SDRAM WD Expert 418000 on UDMA4 Diamond V550 (5.30 ref drivers) SB Live Value Pioneer DVD-113 Adaptec 2940UW Matsu****a CDR-7502B 3Com 3c905B

are you referring to file sharing from a Win98 machine to a Win2k machine? or are you referring to remote desktop?

Hi MugenC Your questions are not "junior". I'm glad you're asking for advice and not going to buy something blindly. After all, I was asking the same questions at one point in my life too. Each of the other cards have their advantages but when looking at each, I think the GeForce 2 MX suits you best. You will use EVERY feature of the card without paying too much. You also get superb driver support from NVidia as well as game developers too. After all, even if your CPU is the bottleneck, you can always put in a new CPU later or just put your MX into a new system. Either way, you can't lose. As for a particular brand, they're all pretty much the same. If I had to make a choice, I would buy the Asus V7100 Pure. It's $210 Cdn (about $150 US) There are other models that offer TV out or TwinView (dual monitors) but you make the decision there. Also, I chose the Asus because that price is for the retail box so if anything goes wrong, you get the added support and warranty of Asus instead of some half-ass local shop technician. Cheers kearos

Spastic Computer Guru, what motherboard did you have?

Hi Dosfreak no, we're not saying Win9x/ME is easier to 'use' but rather we're saying it is easier to maintain and troubleshoot. Also, as NT_Worker put it: "Win9x is for people who have a wide variety of software and hardware that may not be of high quality." In terms of user-interface, it's very similar and Win2k gives the added stability as well. However, in terms of maintenance, Win2k gets a little bit more complicated. Especially with software. For an inexperienced user, it's frustrating to not be able to install something. After all, they wouldn't understand why it wouldn't work. Even for me, I just got some banking software I just picked up and it wouldn't work in Win2k. I figured out how to get around it but imagine somebody installing the same banking software and it turns out to be incompatible. The bank doesn't really give much technical support and the sheet they gave me just gives installation instructions. There's no FAQ about compatibility. Yes, Win2k is great and I don't deny that, but Win9x/ME is more beneficial to somebody who is just starting out on a new PC. NT is just as easy as Win9x/ME only up to the point where nothing changes. I don't believe that a family won't get to the point where they try to start troubleshooting their PC on their own. And yes, it is not "that hard even for a newbie to figure out Windows 2000" BUT is IS hard to figure out how to do things PROPERLY. Not only did I build systems everyday, I provided OEM technical support. Some sales colleagues of mine insist that Win2k would be better for newbies but in the end, I just spend the better part of my day answering questions about Win2k that would be avoided in Win98. The reason is that people *think* computers are not complex machines and they dive into it right away because their friends and neighbour tell them "there's nothing to it." This is their mentality. But in contrast, computers ARE complex machines except everyone has been trying to make it seem easy.

Hi Mugen it seems like you're not ready to spend a lot of money on the video card upgrade. Also, since you have a PII 450, I would presume that you have a BX motherboard. In this case, I would recommend a GeForce 2 MX. It should be around $150 US and I haven't come across any major problems with the MX and the latest Detonator 3 drivers. I wouldn't really think about anything else because at that price, nothing compares. Cheers

agreed. damn EA Sports. I ought to march down to their Burnaby studios (like 10 mins drive from my house) and give them a piece of my mind. Incidently, that's where NHL 2001 was made...among other games cuz that's their newest and largest studio in North America (so I hear). I knew the project lead for NHL 99 and NHL 2000 but he's not working on NHL 2001. *sigh* Maybe it's not a surprise that NHL 99/2000 works in Win2k but NHL 2001 doesn't. heh

Hi NT Worker I think you're absolutely right and I failed to point out the benefits of Win9x/ME. I also think I may have misled people to think that there is a 'conspiracy' with Microsoft. The point I wanted to get across is with Microsoft's marketing strategies. I wanted to point out that they 'isolated' uses of their Operating Systems through marketing campaigns. I think they should've played each OS on level ground because I think it is this that made gaming developers back away from Windows 2000. But on hindsight, it seems that Microsoft made the decision FOR everyone and that they tried their best to target as large of a group as possible with each product. It would definitely be better if an inexperienced user used Win9x/ME and that Windows 2000 is intended for people who are experienced or are backed by an IT team. I do not deny this and I want to stress that. I have no intention of making an inexperienced user use Win2k. However, in light of this, we now know there are two 'Microsoft OS communities.' (we'll leave out the communities using Linux, BeOS, etc...or MAC) One community consists of inexperienced/semi-experienced Win9x/ME users. The second consists of experienced/semi-experienced-but-with-IT-support Win2k users. Now back to what I've said earlier, gaming developers have excluded the entire group of people who use Win2k. The Win9x/ME community would be somewhat larger than the Win2k community but why did they leave Win2k community in the dark? It is due to the fact that "Win2k is for businesses." My original argument questions why Microsoft didn't include a little statement that says "Win2k is not only for businesses, you can play games in your spare time at your office too!" (hypothetically speaking...heh). This way, the Win9x/ME people would have their way with a cheap, multi-purpose, easy-to-use OS and experienced users would have our way with a rock-solid, high networking capability, workstation OS. We would STILL have two communities but then now, gaming developers wouldn't tend to exclude the Win2k community. Earlier, I also questioned why Microsoft released WinME. It's not because I don't recognise the group of inexperienced users, but I would rather Microsoft recognise that Windows 2000 kicks a whole bucket of ass and they shouldn't have continued the WinME project. Instead, they could release a Windows 2000 Home along with the Professional. Then I said that they already put funding into WinME so if they cancelled the project, they would lose a lot. *shrugs* I know Whistler was intended for this exact situation but by releasing WinME, this just makes Win2k users wait longer for full game support. I suppose I'm just bitter because NHL 2001 didn't work in Win2k. It almost seemed like EA Sports purposedly made it so NHL 2001 wouldn't work. Oh well. I hope everything is clear as mud now. =D Cheers. kearos

okay buddy.=D I wanted to wait for a genuine EA fix too but I figure if the 3rd party fix works, then I might as well enjoy it. I completely agree with you that there are clearly gameplay bugs. (I seem to have overcome them already though. hehehe )

Hi guys I agree with Inferno2000 completely. I think he makes a good point with the Feb 17th date. Also, it is definitely comforting to have "Windows 2000 compatible" on the box, and it certainly should prove that QA has adequately tested the product on Windows 2000. I don't have TOO much of a problem if that label isn't there but at the same time, I would feel better if gaming developers will just flat out say "our product does not work in Win2k" rather than try to weasel around it. I take NHL 2001 out AGAIN because the label isn't there but EA doesn't want to admit two-thirds of NHL 2001 doesn't work in Win2k. Their readme file CLAIMS that they have NOT run into ANY problems in Win2k. (read section 15 of NHL 2001 readme) I wish they hadn't put that in their readme because they just reassured their incompetence.(it means they DID test NHL 2001 on Win2k and *somehow* failed to notice that two-thirds of the game doesn't work) If that statement WASN'T there and I find that two-thirds of the game doesn't work in Win2k, I would feel much better because I would think they didn't do QA on it therefore I'd just go about minding my own business. Just a small comment away from this topic about DOSfreak's remarks. I think Blizzard WAS kickass but Diablo 2 was kinda disappointing to me. That's because Diablo 2 has problems with Win2k and NVidia Detonator X drivers in D3D. In that situation, the OS would freeze after exiting Diablo 2. I've confirmed this with Blizzard since their open beta. Even till now, they have not fixed that problem and haven't replied to me again. Cheers, (Go Canucks!) kearos

I see so on the Win98 machine, all I need to do is use a login name that is the same as a Win2k account. I see. That would certainly avoid 'free' guest logins, right? excellente. Thanks. kearos

Let's consider a LAN not connected to internet. If guest access is disabled in Win2k, how will a Win98 machine enter a login name when Win98 tries to connect to Win2k machine? I tried this and Win98 only gives me a space for password, I don't know how to enter a login name

http://members.nbci.com/mcmcc/nhl2k1fixw2k.zip somebody posted this on the other NHL 2001 thread. I don't remember how it works. There's an info file that comes with it. This is the fix that worked for me.

I haven't come across any crashing myself. The fix worked perfectly for me and I'm already halfway through a full season

too bad the win2kgames.com posts don't have user databases because I would REALLY like to know how that one guy claims to have NHL 2001 running flawlessly. I'd like to find out if he's a genius or if he was just really stoned out when he wrote that comment.

Hi jdulmage, there are THREE comments about NHL 2001 at http://www.win2kgames.com compatibility search and TWO of those comments say that they cannot create a season/tournament. THIS is the problem I'm talking about. The game itself runs great if I go to Quick Game ONLY. Even the readers here at ntcompatible.com confirm that it runs perfectly BUT cannot create season/tournament modes. Therefore it IS MS and the software makers, no? kearos