Wolf87

Did you test different media? What was the brand name of the discs and did you try the Scandisk tool found in DirectCD folder? Do you use DirectCD 3.01, 3.03 or 5.0? If the Sony drive could write and read the media it formatted, the formatting cannot be defective but rather media or software.

This is more art than science & needs luck. Start, Run, CDpath\setup.exe -Lgntforce Then apply the update patches. Start the game from the CD, sometimes it works better than the disk command or a shortcut. Get a patch from Game Copy World removing Safedisk copy protection. Do not use Sound hardware acceleration. Graphic configuration 1024 X 768 at 32 bits. It should play but changing adapter drivers for older drivers is often necessary, as it is with Geforce2. Side note: Matrox maintain they will soon finish a driver enabling Thief to play on G200 and G400-450 cards. Tell us what you did when you make it play.

Try running them through Start, Run, Cmd or Command.

Go to Control Panel, Display, Settings, Advanced, Troubleshooting and move a notch to the left on Hardware Accelaration Bar. Changing to 3D cursor also might help along with removal of other mouse options.

Windows 2000 Pro will use whatever memory is available at its proper speed. Hardware and software limitations may have been what your friend referred to. What follows is not technically precise or certain but what I gleaned on this matter. Motherboard limitations determined if 256 or 384 or 512 Megs of ram would be cached. This involved a serious slowdown when increasing ram over this limit because ram being read from the top implied uncached ram would be used first. This slowdown nust be what your friend referred to. I was told by a knowledgeable computer technician that Windows 98 could not use effectively more than 256 Megs of Ram. Why would this be I wonder.

Do SP1 and SP2 beta seal those leaks? Syskey use: http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/1198 Linux and NTFS driver: http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/bootdisk.html Dos and NTFS driver: http://www.esiea.fr/public_html/Christophe.GRENIER/ Winternals contains a NTFS Dos.

Reduce pagefile so as to use ram rather than harddisk virtual memory. Minimal amount should be 12 Megs. This has been discussed before but that thread might bear any name. Increase Iopagelock in Registry and also use a ramdisk. The Speeddisk company has three sophisticated components that are offered on one month trial basis.

Did you read the PowerUser file found on CD disc one? It contains graphic tips and tweak ideas for advanced configuration.

Certainly an improvement for dynamic memory management and also prevents some problems with Nvidia Geforce 2 accordind to the FAQ. Highly recommended in AlecStaar's Game Guide found on main page of this site.

The solution that works most often is to run dxdiag.exe found in the c:\Winnt\system32 directory, go to Sound tab and move Hardware sound acceleration level one notch to the left.

The Adapter color mode has to be brought down to the lowest possible resolution which is 8 bit so as to free the utmost amount of adapter memory for DVD VGA overlay. DVD, even with a software decoder, uses a hardware decoder to downstream at very high bandwith directly into any free ram left unused by Adapter color resolution. The DVD video overlay sent into the free video ram is fixed at 24 bit true color. The higher the Adapter resolution, the lower the DVD quality. Optimal DVD playback would occur with an Adapter at 2 bit color. resolution.

3DFX cards do not offer motion compensation or ICDT. DVDGenie remains useful for all other settings, region and sound management. Best DVD playback is 800x600 or 1024x768 for Widescreen Anamorphic, at 120 Hz and 8 bit because DVD always plays at 24 bit. Anything over that creates artifacts, distortion and failure of VGA overlay with no picture. http://dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html http://home.clapro.com/widescreen/ http://www.dvdweb.co.uk/information/anamorphic.htm

Increase "KeyboardDataQueueSize" over 100 in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Kbdclass\Parameters.

I find Cyberlink's PowerDVD rather shaky, be it versions 2.5, 2.55 or 3.0, in Windows 2k. It easily conflicts with sound cards, aspi drivers and SP1 plus a number of bugs about regional code, hardware acceleration and DMA. The best way to be sure to have it work is to reinstall Windows 2000 with just minimum drivers and install PowerDVD first and then learn what devices and programs create conflicts. The following steps should help: A) Go to Inmatrix, get Drive Region Info 1.1 and check if Tohiba DVD is region locked: http://www.inmatrix.com/ Go to the Firmware page to get Firmware update for Toshiba: http://perso.club-internet.fr/farzeno/firmware/ C) Apply firmware update to make the Toshiba DVD RPC-1, check with Drive Region Info 1.1 D) Go to Inmatrix, get DVDGenie 3.85 install and configure region selection and PowerDVD controls since it will control DVD playback. E) Run regedit and since the Toshiba DVD is now RPC-1 find the very first key under line [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft]. It will be anything bizarre like {#"ll or m;-k. Just remove it after exporting for safety. F) Install PowerDVD and restart. G) Run DVDGenie and push the Run tab to start PowerDVD and after configuration (some choices are possible only at the beginning, other during play and other after a stop). WinDVD 2.3 available at Intervideo Website is much more robust and always works well in Windows 2000 with DVDGenie and all Nvidia adapters with a powerful CPU. Matrox cards works best with Cinemaster. The choice of DVD sofware remains closely linked with the kind of graphic adapter and optimization provided by the software.

Good thinking done at the right time. Using O & O Defrag I once lost contents of a Windows 98 SE Fat-32 partition defragged right after Windows 2000 on NTFS partition. Get Diskeeper 6: one month free trialware.

Hit Windows key and the M key at the same and all open screens minimize.

When does the blue screen appear? Fo you have the KT7A or KT7A-R (Raid)? Three possibilities come up. There is a partitioning problem causing the blue screen. Or presence of a bad memory chip to which Windows 2000 is very sensitive. Or the hard disk is on an ATA 100 controller and not on a standard controller which is necessary. After full install switch to ATA 100 and Windows 2000 will boot fine.

I did the change three times from ACPI to Standard computer by changing drivers in Device Manager with no ill consequences. This is possible if you use either Intellipoint 3.2 sofware or default Windows 2000 mouse drivers. Those drivers also control the keyboard. The lockup are due to the infamous Logitech drivers that adds filter drivers to enhance mouse and keyboard functionality. Those filters "Lkbdflt2" and "Lmouflt2" appear as entries in the following Registry locations: HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96B-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}: UpperFilters:REG_MULTI_SZ: Lkbdflt2 kbdclass HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96F-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}: UpperFilters:REG_MULTI_SZ: Lmouflt2 mouclass These entries require associated entries in the HKLM\System\services key to be added to work properly, but these entries will be missing when you switch from ACPI to Standard computer.

Some tips about mouse problems. A) Average pointer speed recovers accuracy: http://www.rojakpot.com/Other_Articles/Win2K_Tips/Accurate_Mouse/Accurate_Mouse.htm Choice of the 3Dmouse pointer 3Dgarro.cur prevents a second mouse cursor in 3D games. C) Disable Pointer shadow, Mouse trails and Snap to. They are knowen to create problems. D) Run regedit and first export a copy of the complete registry. Check if you find "Lkbdflt2" on the line: HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96B-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}: UpperFilters:REG_MULTI_SZ: kbdclass Check if you find Lmouflt2 on the line: HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96F-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}: UpperFilters:REG_MULTI_SZ: mouclass Those two drivers are Logitech software filter drivers and should not be there. Do nothing now that would not solve anything. Check if you find "IPFilter.sys" on the line: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\i8042prt] "UpperFilters"="System32\\Drivers\\IPFilter.sys" Check if this file is present in the folder C:\WINNT\system32\drivers Finally check if the following line is in the registry: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\msi8042prt] Those are the Intellipoint drivers.

Windows 2000 allows the use of freeDB, rather than CDDB2, due to NTFS file system: http://freedb.freedb.org/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=26 Winamp, Nero and Feurio use it and EAC may be configured to work with it.

Due to memory bandwith limitation you get nothing more with a Geforce 2 Ultra than you would have with regular Geforce 2. Because of this same bandwith limitation 64 Meg ram and 32 Meg ram on a Geforce 2 give almost same performance. The choice comes down to Geforce 2 regular or Geforce MX. Waiting a few more weeks or months until the market reflects the coming of the Geforce 3 would be advisable. Or wait until the Geforce 3 Ultra comes out in six months time and get a real Geforce 3, next generation hardware same as for X-Box, fully programmable special effects with no memory bandwith limitation. Unless you want to upgrade now, this would be most prudent. But is an Adapter the best upgrade path? Look at memory (lowest prices are now) and get either 384 or 512 total ram. Micron and Mushkin prices are going down too. Processor upgrades over 800 Mhz have no real effect on performance and are lost money rigth now. Competition between AMD and Intel shall bring further performance increases and better processors at low prices soon. I may have been influenced by "Geforce 2 Scaling Analysis" on Tom's Hardware Site: http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/01q1/010302/index.html

Download DirectX8 Control Panel from The- Ctrl-Alt-Del site and remove debug modes. Update Graphics Adapter to the latest driver. If the problem persists, give us specifics on harware and software (specially graphics).

Check those links and pick your choice: Nero: http://www.nero.com/en/index2.htm Exact Audio Copy version 0,9 pre-beta 9: http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/ Feurio 1.60: http://www.feurio.com/English/index.shtml Steinberg Clean 1.5 and Sound Forge 5.0 improve digital audio for encoding with: Monkey's Audio http://www.monkeysaudio.com/faq.html Lame http://www.mp3dev.org/mp3

Those were reported on this site: VDMSound: http://ntvdm.bizland.com/ VMware emulators: http://www.vmware.com/products/desktop/ws_features.html

On the Font tab of the property page of the Cmd.exe shortcut, appear only TTF fixed-pitch regular without Italics FF_MODERN fonts(or OEM_CHARSET for other fonts) without a negative A or C space. Use Fontographer and build your own fonts because Letter Gothic or Century Schoolbook Monospace do not comply to such conditions.