Wolf87

Install Monitor in hardware device with the inf file. Use this utility to lock refresh rates with menu option in "About Multires": http://www.entechtaiwan.com/multires.htm

Let us hope they maintain that site active a long time because many others with abandonware collections are disappearing, probably due to FTP file storage costs. So it may be a good idea to download our favorite games and burn them on a backup CD.

Upgrade to DirectX 8.1. Check the DirectX Buster site: http://www.directxbuster.de/index_e.html

Check if the Bios have a line to set PCI or AGP. Push F8 at boot time to boot in VGA mode.

There are many sites collecting old classic games. Search engine: http://www.freeoldies.com/ http://21ct.gooddays.org/links.html (Return to Zork) http://www.abandonrom.com/ba/games.asp?list=main (System shock) http://www.classic-trash.com/gamelist.php (Syndicate) http://www.ggc.u-net.com/rpg.htm (Gamers's Heritage RPG) http://www.gooddays.org/pc.shtml (Gunship 2000)

SP3 folder of hotfixes was made available officially on the FTP site: ftp://hotfix.microsoft.com/winnt/windows_2000/sp3/

ACPI must be activated with compatible motherboard Bios.

When a Santa Cruz sound card replaces the Creative Live in computer, such problems disappear. I remember reading the Microsoft official denial of responsability about all Live sound card problems: it explained that Creative drivers coding does not follow the Intel and Microsoft standard rules and memory conflicts may result. Standard PC and ACPI PC rely on a different kernel. This kernel is properly chosen and installed on your HD only at a new installation. Get DirectX 8 Control Panel and lower all debugging levels: http://members.aol.com/axcel216/dx.htm Get DirectX Buster 2 to clean up old DirectX files here: http://www.entcity.com/sub/drivers/directx.asp Get DirectX 8.1 Release Candidate 2: ftp://147.46.236.164/yo/com1/e/Video/Microsoft/DX81NTeng.exe

Always try a second installation of same new drivers for full activation. Any new Nvidia graphic driver can also wipe-out your Monitor driver files. So re-install those. After previous steps, use the Windows 2000 Nvidia Refresh Rate Fix and check boxes identifying the graphic and monitor drivers. Find it here: http://ftp.planetmirror.com/pub/3dfiles/tweakfiles/video/nvreffix.zip

Reviews of DVD software and good information and tools: http://www.inmatrix.com/

This problem is most often related to a CD-ROM, CD-RW or DVD-ROM linked to a primary or secondary IDE Controller without Direct Memory Addressing (DMA) activated. It can be created also by the removal of A: drive in the Bios. Then Windows switches to a slow 16 bit mode, so called the ms-dos compatibility performance. Only HD rotational speed matters (7200 RPM). Since ATA 66-100 barely improves performance, check if moving the Hard Disk back to the Primary Controller restores the OS to normal full 32 bit performance. To get out of DOS compatibility mode, try these: A) Click on Start, go to Run, and type in Regedit. Make a backup. Search for the value NoIDE, if it's present. Delete it. Search for the file noide.inf on the installation disc then right-click and choose install. Reboot. Make sure your HD is setup correctly in the BIOS; it should be set to LBA (not Large or Normal) mode. C) Check all HD and CD-ROM jumpers for the Master/Slave setting. D) If the issue persists its a good possibility that either the hard drive is corrupted or Windows is corrupted (Registry corruption). First attempt to reinstall Windows. E) If it fails, use fdisk, format HD. Do not ever use a geometry translator like Ontrack Disk Manager or any other that came on a diskette with the HD. Then reinstall all computer software. Official literature on this problem: http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q130/1/79.ASP http://www.wdc.com/service/tip_dir/tip0698.html

Check Device Manager, Hardware, Ide controllers. Go to the Advanced Settings Tab in both Primary and Secondary Controller. Activate UDMA mode. Reboot.

The performance of the whole system decreases. It is due to IDE controller software, DMA desactivated, A drive desactivated and such. First check the motherboard Bios. Many options there can cause this.

No Vesa = no Svga, in Windows 2000.

Use AspiCheck to see that the Windows 2000 Aspi layer is not complete. Use ForceAspi to install full Aspi layer and forego the need of a full application: http://www.cyrus.troy.btinternet.co.uk/downloads.htm Or download DVD software (WinDVD) and it will install an Aspi layer.

See new thread in Games section about the Windows 2000 (not Whistler) DX 8.1 Release Candidate just now released.

This version is still a Beta of DX 8.1 found on these sites: http://www.neowin.net/ http://www.the-ctrl-alt-del.com/ http://www.warp2search.net/

Rockwell's HCF chipset is a software-based chipset (the HC is short for "host controller") that is used in popular PCI card modems. The modem need drivers that you may find on this site and do not forget the required Wave-modem driver: http://www.aopenusa.com/tech/download/ Also check on this very useful site: http://www2.driverguide.com Verify the FAQs: http://club.aopen.com.tw/faq/default.asp Check for any Firmware update that upgrades the modem capabilities. There are some other preliminary steps: create communication ports.

TB Santa Cruz has similar text in its manual but that does not answer whether hardware or software means are used to attain the result. SP-DIF outlet is no proof either. But is Digital Encoding also announced? Beware: most newer sound cards announce the same capabilities but that is where the PR people are in charge and not factual truth. Price and availability dominate choice of a sound card as they should.

Here are two texts gleaned from the Internet about the process: "Creating a Bootable CD with Easy CD Creator" <Bootable CDs for PCs use the El Torito! format. Put DOS onto the CD and enough other tools such as scandisk (or chkdsk), fdisk (for disk formatting), and installers and other information. To record a bootable CD, you must first make a bootable floppy. There are two ways of doing this, and they each create a different set of functionality: Creating a bootable floppy using Windows using Add/Remove Programs. Insert a blank floppy disk into your drive, and then open the Add/Remove Programs control panel. Click the Startup Disk tab and create a new disk. The disk that is created with this method also includes the drivers, autoexec.bat and config.sys files required to not only boot the machine, but also the other diagnostic tools and CD drivers. Check it by booting your machine using the floppy. Next create the CD itself: Open Roxio Easy CD Creator. Insert a blank CD into your CD-R/RW drive. Click File and select the New CD Layout menu item, followed by the Bootable CD from the submenu. You'll be prompted with the dialog box shown in Figure 2. Select the type of bootable CD that you want to create. There are four different types to choose from. If you want to use an existing image, click on the Browse button to find the bootable image file. Don't adjust any of the other parameters—you shouldn't need to change these figures. Figure 2: Adding the contents of a bootable floppy to the CD layout. Floppy Disk emulation (1.44MB)—forces the bootable CD to emulate a 1.44MB bootable floppy. Floppy Disk emulation (2.88MB)—forces the bootable CD to emulate a 2.88MB bootable floppy. Hard Disk emulation—allows you to create a 'full size' CD with as many installers and additional data as you need. You'll need to have a suitable bootable image file available to write to the CD, you can use a floppy image if you wish. No Emulation—Don't emulate a floppy or hard drive. If you've opted to emulate a floppy disk, you'll be prompted (see Figure 3) to insert the bootable floppy disk that you just created into the floppy drive. Insert the disk and click OK. Roxio Easy CD Creator will copy the bootable information from the floppy disk and store it within two files, BOOTCAT.BIN and BOOTIMG.BIN within your final layout. All you need to do now is add any further information, installers, applications, etc., that you may want to use on the bootable CD to the CD layout, just as you would for an ordinary data CD. Once you are finished, click on the Record button to write the information to CD. Once the CD has been written, you will need to configure your machine so that it can boot up from the CD in preference to the floppy drive or the hard drive. To do this, you will need to configure your BIOS, which you usually do by pressing a key (F2 or delete) during the startup process when you first turn the machine on. See Figure 3 for an example—in this case, we need to press F2. Dropping into the BIOS from the main BIOS boot screen. Once there, change to the boot options page, or the BIOS Features page using the on-screen menus. You'll need to change the priority with which the BIOS searches for a bootable disc and operating system. The default is normally to boot from the hard disk, or from the floppy if one has been inserted into the drive. Change the priority so that the CD-ROM is either first, or immediately after, the floppy drive. You can see in Figure 4 that I've configured the CD-ROM drive to priority over floppy and hard disk devices. Setting the BIOS for booting from CD. To boot from the CD, insert the CD before a restart or during the BIOS startup, and then wait while the system searches for a bootable device. If it doesn't boot up from your CD, something went wrong and you'll need to check the CD.> <From: Ron Lowe (ron'DOT'lowe'AT'bakeratlas'DOT'com) Subject: Re: Making a bootable CD Newsgroups: microsoft.public.windowsme.general, microsoft.public.windowsme.new-user Date: 2001-03-19 02:26:11 PST> <In response to the original request "How to make a bootable CD-ROM" The instructions below are for Adaptec EZ-CD creator V4.x Creating a Bootable CD ====================== A bootable CD is a CD from which a computer can be started up because it contains all the operating system software the computer needs to run. A bootable CD contains a bootable image, a file that is an exact representation of a bootable floppy disk or hard disk. Easy CD Creator creates a bootable CD by copying the contents of a bootable floppy disk to a CD. When you boot to the CD, the exact contents of your floppy disk are now seen on your CD-ROM drive. Under most configurations, the CD-ROM drive is accessible as drive A: while your floppy drive automatically moves from drive A: to B:. Note: Creating a Bootable CD-ROM is intended for the advanced user. It requires an understanding of how to create bootable floppy disks and how to create and edit DOS CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files. To create and use a bootable CD, follow the steps in each of the following sections: 1) Verify that your System Supports Bootable CD 2) Create a Bootable Floppy Disk 3) Create a Bootable CD with Easy CD Creator In detail: ========== 1) Verify that your System Supports Bootable CD: Easy CD Creator allows you to create a bootable CD; however, not all systems support booting from a bootable CD. Here is what you need to check: If your computer has a built-in CD-ROM drive, you should check your system BIOS settings and see if you can enable Bootable CD-ROM support. Most Pentium class systems (or higher) support this feature. If your CD-ROM drive is connected to a SCSI host adapter, and if the SCSI host adapter has a BIOS on-board, you should check your host adapter's documentation and see if it supports booting from a CD-ROM. 2) Create a Bootable Floppy Disk: The floppy disk you need to create is dependent on the system you are planning to boot from. The floppy disk needs to be formatted with the DOS FORMAT command (FORMAT A: /S) and also contain a CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT file. The CONFIG.SYS file typically contains the instructions to load your DOS CD-ROM driver while the AUTOEXEC.BAT file contains the instructions to load Microsoft's DOS CD-ROM Extensions (i.e. MSCDEX.EXE). Please consult your system's documentation for the proper way to load your DOS CD-ROM driver and MSCDEX.EXE. You should test this configuration with your bootable floppy disk before you create a bootable CD. If your target system boots properly with the floppy disk, and assigns a drive letter for the CD-ROM drive on that system, you are ready to create a bootable CD-ROM. TIP: When you add the command lines to the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT, do not use fixed paths. For example: Recommended Entry: device=aspicd.sys /d:aspicd0 Not Recommended: device=a:\aspicd.sys /d:aspicd0 3) To create a Bootable CD: Insert a blank CD into your CD-Recorder (the destination drive). Click the small arrow next to the New button on the toolbar and then select Bootable CD from the drop-down list. A dialog box appears that asks you to insert a bootable floppy disk in drive A. Insert your bootable floppy disk into your floppy drive and click OK. The contents of the floppy disk are copied to your system and stored in your CD Layout. You can see that two special read-only files have been added to the root directory of your CD Layout: BOOTCAT.BIN and BOOTIMG.BIN. From this point, use Easy CD Creator as you normally would for creating a Data CD. Note: When the CD has been created, take it to the system you wish to boot from. Make sure it has bootable CD-ROM support enabled, insert the bootable CD in your CD-ROM drive, and reboot the system. If everything worked well, you can see the contents of your bootable floppy disk as drive A: and the contents of your CD Layout as Drive X: (where X: is determined by how you configure MSCDEX.EXE in your AUTOEXEC.BAT) Best Regards, Ron> Since many newer sound cards do not work in real mode Dos unless a full Windows 95 or 98 sound driver installation is present and since a number of games play to perfection only on those OS (Wizards and Warriors; many of Janes's simulations preceding Longbow 2) the real need is not for a real Dos boot CD but for a Windows 95-98 boot CD. CD-ROM are now multi-read and read CD-RW like DVD-ROM always could so I wonder would a CD-RW boot CD starting Windows 98 SE work? Of course it would also involve choice of a possible Dos mode boot.

Combat Flight Simulator 2 would not be helped by the switch from ACPI to Standard Computer which can be done only through a new install. Most problems originate from the sound and graphics drivers. Start, Run, DxDiag and check Hardware acceleration. Install DX Control Panel 8 and use it to lower all debug levels.

Make a Boot diskette including all drivers and use it to create a Bootable CD on a CD-RW or CD-R. Modify the Bios to boot from CD-ROM.

The Italian page holds most resources: http://www.ita.sel.sony.com/products/vaioperiph/ Also check these: http://www.sony-cp.com/_E/Products http://www.sel.sony.com/SEL/ http://sony.storagesupport.com

Previous QSound algorytms used to be included in Diamond sound cards based on the ESSTech Maestro 2 chipset with good effect. They did not make headway in the gaming market altough used in G-Police and included in some internet appliances. The Santa Cruz has a 5.1 Dolby Digital (AC-3 audio) decoder built in. It also outputs 5/6 a sound source to speakers or headphones. See: http://www.dolby.com/tech/ac3flex.html What QMSS does is not any decoding but rather an upgrading of a typically stereo sound source or film soundtrack for a simulated 5.1 output. Which may be very useful and agreeable.

Most audio fans support this idea: avoid the Creative Audigy, only marginally useful for midi soundfonts or its EAX implementation. Turtle Beach Santa Cruz is excellent for use with headphones and DVD playback. DS3D and hardware midi are very good as also the Sensaura 3D positional engine. Universal VersaJack is useful. Good drivers. Philips Acoustic Edge uses QSound 3D engine which makes it very good with desktop speakers for DVD playback. Very poor hardware midi somewhat redeemed with the Yamaha XG midi software. Cable links for jacks. Good drivers.