Mike Zamarocy

There ARE problems with the SB Live! - you are one of the lucky ones. Just take a look at an SB Live! newsgroup! It is larger than any other I have seen. Anyway, here is a response to a similar post as mine from a CL tech person: Actually it has been reproduced and it is indeed in the drivers. It looks like it is related to CPU utilization. And it will be an issue that must be addressed in the next set of drivers.

But from what I could tell, only the Santa Cruz has WDM drivers, though they are in the Beta. The Live! has no (known) WDM drivers. And from I gather, the WDM drivers are what gives the card the ability to do EAX in hardware? And if that is so, no wonder the Live! stutters or locks up games. In Everquest I have had to turn the music off to stop it from locking up - and even still some other sounds will go nuts. Makes me wonder if the Santa Cruz would be better?

Some of you keep saying tha the SB Live! has REAL drivers for Win2000, and that is somewhat true. But I have read on the CL newsgroups that there is no HARDWARE EAX yet in Win2000, only software emulation. Also something about no WDM drivers yet for the Live! card. But I did see that the VTB Santa Cruz DOES have WDM drivers in its Beta set. Does that mean it has HARDWARE 3D then???

A CL card not ACPI compliant??? Geez! There was a time that the Soundblaster was THE one and only soundcard that set the standards. Everyone else rushed to make theirs SB compatible or could emulate the SB. So what is THE soundcard to have now a days?

Ok, I had the Indexing turned on, I just shut it off now. But didn't have that Fast Find or anything loaded. It will be a few hours before I can try it out, but I will - thanks! But I seriously do really want to find a way to at least just put the SB Live! on IRQ5. Cause when Win2K starts up, the thnderclap sound that is played occasionaly stutters. This leads me to think that though ACPI is doing its thing, too many on one IRG is too much.

Thanks, but I already knew about that one with the DEBUG problem. I meant the other file he was talking about - unless its the same thing???

Really folks, which is the better driver for the games, and works with DX8.0a? The 6.62 seem to work fine, but it has been said many times that the 7.xx drivers were MADE for DX8.

Ok, I understand that the 6.67 are the latest (leaked) out there, but. What I am asking is that we are all told the 7 series drivers are special DirectX 8.0 drivers that were made to take all advantages DX8 has to offer. The 6 series are, at least to my knowledge, still DX7 aware drivers. Or am I wrong? Are the latest (and dated NEWER than 7.17) 6.62 and 6.67 drivers now DX8 specific too now? What really is the differences between 7.xx and 6.62 or 6.67??? What are the gains of one of the other, or the cons?

Please try and find that link. I'd be very interested to see if it helps in other games, such as Mechwarrior 4 and Everquest.

Oh well, the DEBUG part still did not solve EAW locking up. I still get to only play for about 5-10 minutes, or . . . . it does seem to lockup mainly when I shoot the guns. I wonder if B17 is much better anyway??? Next I will try the DX8.0a to see if that helps??????

WOW! That one about the DEBUG LEVEL being on is TRUE! I never realized that, nor would many others!!! So I set it to off. Will test it later for sure! Might also be the thing to fix the MW4 problems as well!!!!

I have the CL Anihilator Pro and using the WHQL 6.62 drivers. As for the patch, I got the 1.2a (unofficial), but that only helps to allow me to play for about 10 minutes now before locking up.

When I try to play Mechwarrior 4 (and it is MS's own game too!), no matter how low I set the detail, it pauses a lot! This makes it hell to complete missions as you can berly aim at the enemy. Any ideas? Also, I have a lot of loss of sound in Everquest. Any ideas on that one as well??? PIII 933 256 RAM Intel D815EEA mobo (9p BIOS) Intel ATA 100/drivers loaded Maxtor 40 GIG ATA/100 HD SB Live! with latest CL W2K drivers

Seems that a lot of us on the Thrustmaster Tech Support Forum are quite pissed off! I have recently bought the Afterburner (stick/throttle), but many others are having problems with the steering wheels and gamepads. Their damn software just will not work in both ME and W2K!!! The button mapping software that came with my stick, 2.13 will install and (appear to) work, but no game will see the stick, even if seen in the control panel. Their newest for download, 2.19 is even worse!!! The program that loads at Windows start GPF's - and without it, again nothing will see the stick. It was said a new program, 2.29, was going to be released in a week - but that was near a MONTH ago. Many are complaining on the forum that the phone tech support is clueless and have no answers, and there has not been ONE answer to our posts on the forum, even though it is THEIR FORUM on their website. What a shame too, as the stick is really nice looking and could be usefull - IF it worked.

Seems that a lot of us on the Thrustmaster Tech Support Forum are quite pissed off! I have recently bought the Afterburner (stick/throttle), but many others are having problems with the steering wheels and gamepads. Their damn software just will not work in both ME and W2K!!! The button mapping software that came with my stick, 2.13 will install and (appear to) work, but no game will see the stick, even if seen in the control panel. Their newest for download, 2.19 is even worse!!! The program that loads at Windows start GPF's - and without it, again nothing will see the stick. It was said a new program, 2.29, was going to be released in a week - but that was near a MONTH ago. Many are complaining on the forum that the phone tech support is clueless and have no answers, and there has not been ONE answer to our posts on the forum, even though it is THEIR FORUM on their website. What a shame too, as the stick is really nice looking and could be usefull - IF it worked.

Never mind, I finally found the 1.2a patch. But guess what? First off, I still get the error about the CD missing (even though I did the ini hack), but if I click on continue, it will play the game. BUT (secondly), . . . I now can play for about 10 minutes, but it still locks up on me So now what is next???

Where can I find the 1.2"A" patch????

Isn't it kinda funny though??? How as much things change and IMPROVE(????), the more they seem to CIRCLE BACK??? Some years back, I got the job of replacing ALL the old IBM XT's in our company! YES!!! I SAID XT's. These boat anchors were still working after all these years, too!!! Well, you could go out and eat breakfast off campus before one of these would bootup. Then we got the IBM model 330's with a 486 in them and Windows 3.1 (and that was a battle up against the OS/2 guys!!!). It booted up quite a bit faster than an XT!!!! Then on to Pentium, Celrons, PII, PIII, etc, etc, as well as on to Win95 then 98. Well, after we replaced nearly everything for Y2K with all new equipment and W98, I got a call to fix a pc in one office. Guess what??? It was a IBM PS/2 Model 55SX - meaning it was a 386!!!! And it had WFW 3.11 on it as well - all SUPPOSEDLY NOT Y2K COMPLIANT! Well, all I had to do was change the date, and both the 386 and WFW 3.11 worked FINE! Just not the Gov software we needed to use. But what am I getting at here???? This 386, which should have been considered a slooooooow CPU by today's standards (1ghz++++), booted up sooooo FAST, and into WFW 3.11, that it made my head spin!!!! So, as I said way above, here we now have superfast PC's, but we have reverted back to XT boot times - WOW!

There is no "NT5" in the Acompat.Exe I have, only Windows 2000 or NT4 SP5. I take it you mean Win2K by saying NT5??? And it is quite interesting that you do it on the AutoPlay file!

Now someone here is saying the 7.17 drivers are better - what about the WHQL certified 6.62 drivers??? In answer to my post about these two, the one person said that the 6.62 were faster and more stable.

Panzer Elite now works fine! But though I got EAW to install, it will only run for a few moments, then lockup my system hard. I used the SETWIN95.CMD on it which helped me get at least that far. If I use the acompat.exe, it either does not run, or say the MSCVRT.DLL is missing or not the Win32S version. Any clues??? Or should I go with the MS Combat Simulator instead???

We all know by now, that the 7.17 Det drivers for Win2K ARE DX8 compatable. But now a newer 6.62 driver (with a more recent file date) is out, and is even WHQL certified. Is this also DX8 aware too? Anyone try them? Cause I am having a lot of hesitation in Mechwarrior 4 and wonder if it might be the video drivers????

But does anyone know if these new 6.62 are designed for DX8 as the 7.17 drivers are???

A question on the 6.62 WHQL drivers - I am using the 7.17 "leaked" drivers as they are DX8 specific drivers. Do the official WHQL 6.62 drivers also work with DX8???

But my main question for PE is HOW did you get it to install? I get all sorts of errors and it won't complete the installation. Thanks