Brian Frank

There won't be any XP driver---ever---unless a 3rd party releases drivers. Nvidia was never going to support any of 3dfx cards. 3dfx would release and support their graphics cards until they went out of business, which they did. It's not Nvidia's fault. Basically, you have two options: Don't use XP, or get a different video card. There is the possibility of a 3rd party releasing 3dfx drivers, but there is no guarantee to think this will happen. You could try the last version of the Win2k drivers, but that's about it. Yeah, it sucks, cuz early on, with the Win2k drivers, the V3 was great under XP. There's really not a whole lot more to say.

I'm so stunned over all this. Sure I live in the Midwest, but it's chilling to have two of our major cities attacked, especially considering one is the capital.

Nope. I do take things for free...

What's yer specs?

Part of the agreement between 3dfx and Nvidia was that 3dfx would continue to support their own cards until the company died. Nvidia never has to do anything in the way of support. I'd guess that that that PC World store didn't get the message: 3dfx is dead, so buy the Voodoo's at your own risk. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for Nvidia to put out 3dfx drivers---products for which they are not experts on or designed---which have no guarantee that Nvidia may be able to get them to work well under XP, and face stubborn 3dfx users who will expect the V5 to compete with the GTS and up. I personally think the V5 is the best match to a GTS, but there are still some situations where a GF 2 MX outperforms it. If your not going to move to XP, 3dfx cards will work fine, but I wouldn't use them for any normal operation. Backup, yes, but not for primary use any more. The cards are a bottleneck, especially the V4: it's just a 32MB V3 with no TV-out function.

Pentium, ya. Or a top secret, never released PII. I do know what yer saying. Out of sheer curiosity, I took a peek at tapek's website. According to his profile there, he's 17... ;( I really don't give a rip what OS you use, whatever works for you. I do mind being told without any sort of backing that there is one superior OS, all other's are trash, and anyone to disagree is a moron. If someone want's to use Windows 3.1, I don't care. If ya think one OS is trash, give your reason(s) why you don't like it. This guy can't possibly be serious about WinXP being sooo much better than 2k. It has some good things about it, but that doesn't mean those extra's make it walk all over it's predecessor. XP is a slick version of 2k. It truly brings the best of both worlds together. It's not for me. Also, as with any new OS, there seems to be some nasty problems popping up. One happens to be with the mighty GeForce 3...

Still questions remain... If I got a dollar for every post somebody ditched their SBLive! card because of support and other problems, I'd be stinkin' rich. Creative's lack of support will have an impact of some sort, as several people have vowed never to buy another Creative sound card. I'd say there is a cautiousness from users who got burned from the poor support, and are wondering if Creative will pull this crap driver support later on.

Half-Life and that whole series runs fine, as well as most games pretty much. Newer games usually will offically run on 2k right out of the box, but not all, so check before you buy. The only major trip comes from EA. They adamantly refuse to support nearly all of their games in Win2k. Most FPS games run on 2k, and even if 2k isn't listed, I've had no problems running games that are listed to run in NT4. Get the latest drivers for your motherboard, video card, and other hardware in your system first. Games that I've run in 2k: Half-Life series, Unreal and UT, Descent 3, Serious Sam, Quake 1. Most games will work, and people have gotten some of EA's games to run in 2k. Check the games database--it's not in the forums, look on the main page. You can see which games work under which OS and which don't.

Yeah. If you're mad cause you won't see XP drivers for your Voodoo, you have two options: Don't upgrade to XP, or buy a new video card. Even if Nvidia decided to write drivers, it would be on technology they haven't created nor had to make work before. That could mean 3dfx users might get poor drivers, which they'd probably complain about and start up with something about Nvidia trying to screw them over, regardless of wheter this was true or not. It would've been nice to see XP drivers for my Voodoo 3 3000 AGP, since it ran very well in XP considering its age. However, Nvidia is the only graphics company that I'm confident will provide good driver support that works in future OS's and is fast. If 3dfx had done things differently, they could've been around still. But when their V5 and V4's got pushed back for release that gave Nvidia and ATI time to get newer and better solutions to market. In most cases Nvidia and ATI's cards beat 3dfx solutions. One of the many mistakes leading up to 3dfx demise, made by 3dfx. Not Nvidia. Life sucks people, get used to it. Oh, and do you really intend to keep that Voodoo 2 for the next few years? You'll have something much better in a few years and forget about the lack of driver support.

Do you have the latest patch?

I don't think we'll see anymore driver updates from 3dfx. If they do appear, the best bet is to hope that a 3rd party comes through. I doubt we'll see that happen. Nvidia is not responsible to hold up 3dfx end of the bargin. If they do hold anything that could help 3dfx owners, they have the right to do what they wish with it. They have no obligation to support 3dfx cards, even if they were given the choice to do so.

Yup. If filesystems had to be read across networks, I'd assume there would be a unique hell to being the admin for that setup. Windblade: Make sure that XP has the guest account enabled and that the all the same network protocols are installed on each OS. Personally, I've found ME very unfriendly when networking with NT-based OS's. What you're discribing was almost the same scenario I had trying to access my dad's machine running Win2k. I switched over to Win2k, and the problem went away. I don't remember the error code, but it's been over a year since I actively used ME on my primary system. I do know that ME wasn't very friendly with Win2k, and since XP is very similar to 2k, it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that the problem could still happen. I'm not sure if clutch might have something that you could try, but he's the first person I can think of to recommend to you. ME seems to have a lot of problems in general, and is rather picky about almost anything. One guy I know had problems networking his sloooooow 95 box with his brand new box running ME. He said he used Apache to get them to work together, but I don't know what his settings were nor anything about Apache itself. Heard of it, but never used it.

If you've got your stuff backed up and have the time, a clean install wouldn't hurt. If the situation were reversed, it's a piece of cake to take care of.

What other games are you having trouble with? What motherboard do you have? Win2k wasn't really intended to be a gaming OS, but the games I run work quite well. If you want to look for your games to see if they work, check out the Games database here. You may have to use the Application Compatability program to get some of your games to run. If you don't have Service Pack 2, I'd get that before doing anything else.

I think some people just choose to be ignorant, regardless of the facts out there.

You might think it sucks, but that doesn't mean that we are wrong to use Win2k. You have your opinion; I have mine. This does not mean that you should use the OS you don't like, but telling everyone here that XP is the only OS that they should run is crossing the line. XP is not the best for everyone. Hell, any version of Windows isn't for everyone. I've run XP's beta's too and I don't XP to be worth it to me. Newbies, yes, it's a very good OS. I find that there is more items I use that I have to find, more things I have to change around for me, things that are not optional, except through manual edits... If you want to use XP, go right ahead. Whatever works for you. I will use which OS I want to, and that is my choice. I don't want another situation where I or anybody else is told that their OS choice sucks because one person is too close-minded on the subject. I don't care what OS you use. XP is fine, but it's not for me.

Tapek: was that a serious comment? Or are you just trying to start a war here? If so, you've got one. You do know there are quite a few people here that use, and like Win2k. Win XP is just Win2k with some extra goodies, and for me a few extra perks isn't worth $200-300. I've found many of the extra items in XP that I don't want are not a choice, unless you go ahead and edit this and that. Win2k is stable, runs the games I want, doesn't have a ton of stuff I don't want, use or need. My hardware works fine, I can burn a CD and play games without either program hosing up. I can change my hardware as often as I want without worrying if I can use my system after I boot up into Windows again. I also leave both of my machines on all the time, except when I'm on vacation or changing a part. I don't have lockups, errors, or other stability problems. It's safe to say that other's have had good results with Win2k. Have you really evaluated Win2k, or did you just take a glance at it and decree that it "sucks donkey nutz"? Oh, and I don't think these posts in this thread suck. I know for certain DosFreak is well educated on his stuff, and has more than enough knowledge to state and backup his say. BladeRunner and ThC are also knowlegable guys here too. You say Win2k sucks and have given no reason why, except that you think so and everybody else is totally wrong to disagree with you. I'd like you to back up why Win2k sucks, with some intelligent reasons. If you don't know what that means, a "because it sucks" *reason* doesn't count. You seem pretty juvenile for a 30-year old.

An army of idiots is a dangerous thing, Spyder. Unless I'm wrong, Nvidia never said anything about giving any support from the start, and that driver support for 3dfx cards would be exclusively from 3dfx. I've heard about a movement to make drivers, but I don't think we'll see much from them. If 3dfx had gotten the V5 and V4 out much sooner than they were released, they might have been in business still. Your competitors won't sit around until you release your killer product. If they're smart, they'll be working on an even better product to grab more of your market. That's what happened. Nvidia is making sure to stay on top of its product support, which I can't say for some of it's competitors. I refuse to get another ATI card again if the product is hindered by drivers. While their DVD playback is supposed to be great, the ATI DVD software has caused problems in one form or another in the systems I've seen. I do hope that ATI does get their drivers straightened out or Nvidia will remain on top. Doesn't matter how good the hardware is if the drivers are bad.

I wish there would be drivers for the Voodoo's under XP, cuz my V3 3000 ran very well considering it's age. However, I'm not getting my hopes up on seeing XP drivers. It would be nice, but I'd be surprised to see them come out. I feel that it a lost cause on their part. If you have to go to XP, then get a different card. Plain and simple.

I need to get this for some people with a 56k modem because Outlook Express got screwed up by their son and this guy doesn't have a way to get his e-mail otherwise. If someone could post the link ASAP, that'd be great. I'd look for it myself, but I'm in a rush right now to get to work. Thanx.

Yup, Xiven's solution worked. For some reason I got sidetracked with Wolf87's suggestion, and ended up barking up the wrong tree. I do have it all sitting on my hard drive right now waiting to be burned. Don't know what I was thinking, I just missed something that was right in front of me. Go figure. ;( Thanx for the help guys!

Free stuff is cool. I probably won't be using it at the present, but hopefully I can use it later on---when I get a real job.

You may have to use two different sound cards in this case.

Hmm...maybe not. Now that I've had some time to browse the forums for this, I've come up empty handed still. I got on the corporate updates page and have the installer for IE 5 for 98, but not the whole thing and that's what I need. I want to burn the thing to a CD and put it on their system. I'm not sure how screwed up their version of IE is, so I don't know if I'll see corruption or not in the download. What I've found has been close, but no cigar.

Oops. Sorry 'bout that. It was a spur of the moment thing unfortunately and I was just about to leave for work. Thanx, clutch.