PsychoSword

I have a 30 gig IBM drive and it crashed. It's still usuable, but I wouldn't trust it. [This message has been edited by PsychoSword (edited 25 March 2001).]

Use Nero, EZCD is trash...

Which version are you using? Are you clicking on the zonelabs splash screen at startup? I use zonealarm and don't have that problem. It will go to it's website it you try and click on the splash screen when it's up for 5 seconds though.

I'm not so sure about that Brian. I've seen some benchmarks on Tom's Hardware comparing the VIA DDR and the AMD 760 chipsets and the 760 smoked the VIA version pretty handily. This was over a month ago however.

I also have an A7V. Still, believe me it's not a good idea. Always flash your Mainboard's bios off of a DOS/W95/W98/WME boot disk.

I Have had many VIA chipsets, each one having compatibility and other issues. They release patches and fixes that never really work. For years now their excuse has been that they are new. They have never followed Intel's AGP spec in any of their "AGP" chipsets to date. That's why their are Geforce and Matrox video card lockups. Their northbridge chip in their KX & KT-133 chipsets are not true ATA/66 controllers, they actually operate at about ATA/33 speed even though they are advertised as ATA/66. I will never own one again that's a promise. VIA = Garbage.

It doesn't look like the Kyro II's drivers will suck, in fact quite the opposite. I've seen the Windows 2000 benchmarking scores for it last week and it is already smokin in our favorite O/S.

Nothing, never done it myself, but I've heard plenty horror stories about Windows crashing right as the bios is being updated. Or something in Windows causing the bios to corrupt. I think it should be common sense to any semi computer illiterate person not to update your bios from within Windows.

I like the Kyro II card and am interested in anything that has good speed and doesn't cause lockups on crappy VIA chipset motherboards. I'll probably buy a Kyro II when they are available.

I don't know what the excitement is all about, I've seen the benchmarks and the GF3 actually did worse on some tests than the GF2 Ultra. nVidia's probably going to use all the hype surrounding their new card to release an inferior product. At least it wouldn't surprise me if that happened. I'm not real happy with their business practices either of stealing other companies technologies and then buying/absorbing the company they are being sued by for patent infringement. a la 3dfx.

Arg, don't ever flash your bios from within Windows! Even if it's Windows 2000!!! AAAAAHHHH!!! NIGHTMARES!!!!! NIGHTMARES!!!

It would still be advisable to get the latest A7V bios 1007 as it contains many fixes over 1004. Starting with 1005b there was a fix that stopped most lockups with nVidia and Matrox video cards (though not mine of course) and in 1007 there is a fix that solves the long in the tooth conflict problem with the Promise controller that plagued anyone who wanted to use that and put certain types of cards, mainly audio, in slots 4 or 5. I have tried all the bios's 1003-1007 and 1007 is the best so far, but there still are improvements that need to be made.

BTW, after all this time VIA has YET to produce a chipset that has decent AGP support. I will never buy another VIA chipset MB even though I said that with my last super socket 7 board, but this will be my final VIA board for sure.

I'm assuming your using an Asus A7V. Get bios number 1005b or later to fix the lockup issue with nVidia and Matrox video cards.

Whenever I run a 3D app such as 3DMark or Counterstrike after a while I will get yellow lines all over my screen and then it will lock up in OpenGL or Direct 3D. I've tried so many different things that it would take an hour to list them all here. I believe it is hardware related. It seems to start happening after I updated the video bios, but I can't confirm that.

You guys are assuming a little too much I'm not overclocking at all.

Is service pack 2 ever gonna come out? I'm waiting for the finally version of VIA AGP support among other things. What seems to be the holdup?

That sucks I only get about 4180 in Windows 2000 with my Geforce Sdram. Glad I only played 69$ for it.....

I used to get those errors in hotmail and just reading message forums and I couldn't figure out what the hell was causing them all the time. I finally figured out the problem about two months ago, it was an automatic configuration script provided by my worthless @home cable modem service. I took out the configuration script and IE hasn't crashed once since then. I have 5.5 sp1 [This message has been edited by PsychoSword (edited 18 February 2001).]

I think the latest Yamaha model is the fastest CDRW out right now.

I saw the one about not being able to convert a FAt32 drive larger than 20 gigs to NTFS. I have an IBM 30 gig drive that I converted from FAT32 to NTFS without any problems.

I thought DVD players only had one lazer they just focused at different wavelengths depending on what media they were reading right?

They are superior drivers to the older ones as far as benchmarking, but they have an issue with them where they may cause your CDROM or CDRW device to be detected as a SCSI device and quit functioning. It's not a big deal since if you have this problem you can simply uninstall and reinstall the old drivers, but just so you're forwarned.

I also have approx. 5 devices on irq 11. ACPI is supposed to allow the harmonious sharing of memory resources and irqs, but alot of devices seem to have problems under W2K. If you truly want to disable ACPI you will need to format and you computers mainboard will need it's plug and play setting turned "off" before you format. If there are any other ACPI features you will need to make sure they are disabled before you format/reload your system. That's the only way your going to get rid of it now. Sorry!

I screwed with the services of course too and ended up reformatting because I didn't know how to fix it W2K was hanging on the desktop and was responding supersluggishly. Supposedly W2K is alot easier to **** up than a Windows 9X installation even though it is 1000X more stable if you don't **** with the wrong things such as remote procedural call or whatever that is. That's a bad one to mess with. I think that's the one that ****ed me over.