ejsmith

I had a 45gig 75gxp fail on me about 13 months after purchase. It took right at 3 weeks, but they sent me back a 60gig 120gxp. Yeah, the whole ordeal was a headache. But as far as customer support goes, I found the swap out acceptable. I'm still using that 120gxp, and it's speedy as far as I'm concerned. I don't run a server on it, but I usually run it all week long; using it off and on for gaming and various media stuff.

Quote: This is the old dos xcom and since I couldn't get it working on xp I took one of my computers, partitioned it and dual boot to xp and 98se. I have this set up in 98se and it STILL won't work. I've tried rebooting to dos and everything. Downloaded the newest video drivers, disabled video acceleration, etc. Anyone have any other suggestions? I'm going to download and try vdm next. The old DOS version will crash on you at the base naming screen. I don't know how to get it past that point.

That is a good board you're getting. Both the KT400 and the Nforce2 boards have some serious compatibility problems with AGP 2.0 cards. They will work with Geforce2 GTS cards (and the Nforce2 will work with an Ultra), but they won't work with a Ti4200 4xagp card. They work very well with all the 8x cards that are out right now. Even the Ti4200 64meg 8x agp cards. There has been a slew of low voltage bios batteries out. When you get the board, pop the battery out and check it. It should be 3.2v or above. Brand new, out of the package from Walmart, they test at 3.3v. It's a function of alkaline batterys to be way overvolted. If it's at 3.05 (like mine is) or under, seriously consider swapping out that battery before you start getting glitches and bios setting defaults. You can mod the mainboard (short out pins on the backside) of it rather than unlocking your processor. It's easier, and considerably more safe as the soldier points are further apart than the bridges.

I don't remember the exact number, but right now my "Windows" folder takes just under 600meg. Before I start loading programs and all the junk that goes with them, it's probably around 550 or so. For playing dvd's, with a 128meg swap file, you could setup Windows XP to play Dvd's for about 700meg. Maybe 720.

I've played IwD and HoW, under Win2k and XP. They work, perfectly. Try deleting the game folder (don't bother uninstalling), and reinstall the game. Install Icewind Dale, then Heart of Winter. Then install Trials of the Luremaster (it's about 70meg), simply because it is a patch, as well as an addon. Your version should be 1.42. What video card are you using? Don't bother loading downloading the OpenGL drivers for the Geforce2-4 cards; just use the default one.

Yeah. I've gotten Mechwarrior Mercenaries (the real one) to work. I believe it only works in dos mode, and it's kind of quirky. I know I installed the 1.1 patch (or whatever it is; it's been a while), but I don't remember if I let it code through the d3d stuff. I think I did. I believe it had mouse pointer issues. Like, the pointer was invisible. THAT'S RIGHT! I remember now. You can get up to the very first Iceberg mission. The one where you're in space. And the game will crash on you when the fighters attack, and you have to defend the engines. I Mickey Moused with it a little there, but gave up. I don't think I tried *everything*, though. Anyways, Mechwarrior 1 will play; but you have to use a slowdown like Cpukiller. Which makes it tough to navigate Windows, so you have to have set everything up on the desktop. Mechwarrior 3 runs perfectly, with the patch. 3.12 or something, I think. One of the trainers I have also works outstanding with it, too. I have the Mechwarrior2 disk back somewhere, but I never really liked it, so I've not tried it out much. I believe it works, because I vaguely remember running through the opening movie and the config. I don't remember if it crashed on mission load, or not.

I got the three disk Nemesis to play under Win2k a while back. I could get about 1/3 through the game, and it would crash at this one spot every time. If you use Winme/98 to get past that part, the rest of the game plays fine. So you have a device or disk conflict...

Dunno 'bout xcom3. Xcom1 will crash at the "make base" screen. I think xcom2 will work, but it's been so long, I don't remember. I actually think xcom3 will work, but I think it has problems with the sound. As in, no music and the videos play at 1/16 speed, so you have to skip past them.

Sorry. I've been away for a while. Yeah, I play JA2 under XP all the time. And it plays so much better than under winme/98, that I would never think of doing otherwise. But the catch here is, you have to have win98/me to be able to run it under XP. I used whatever the safedisk .icd extractor is that will handle the .exe. I installed the game under winme, patched it to 1.06, then ran the extractor. The extractor will crash under winNT, so you have to use 98/me. Then I installed it (full or partial, it doesn't matter; both work fine) under XP, patched it, loaded the v1.06 crack, and copied my extracted "crack" .exe over the other crack. Basically, the v1.06 crack won't work with XP, for whatever reason. Works wonderfully on a p2-266 laptop. Much, much faster than that same laptop under win98/me...

You're not going to find a bootcd, perfectly customized with your necessary drivers, on the net. You can, however, make your own perfectly customized bootcd, packed and ready to burn to a cd. If it's going wrong for you, try this method. Use a floppy disk to make your own boot floppy. 1.38meg isn't much, but can be sufficient. There are other wayz to make to make 10+meg boot images, but this is a simple answer. Use disk image 5.0 (shareware) to make an .img of the disk. Use nero (demo) to burn your .img file to a bootcd, at 1x. Boot with your fully fuctional boot-cd. Remember to change your bios first-boot-device to cdrom.

Thief1 runz just find on my 1.4ghz tbird with a GF2 ultra. I end up having to turn on the vsync though. For whatever reason, it plays at 2x speed without vsync. Like when you run an apple2e emulator at 2mhz instead of 1mhz...

123: You haven't made it to the Chochobo races yet. Or the minisub. I'm gonna give this patch a whirl this weekend. I have the old 4 disk version of FF7, so I'll load up the Riva/Laptop patch, and hammer on it. Kudos! to whoever has been sloughing through assembler code to find this null ref...

"Diablo 2 great story, not so great gameplay" Ummmmmmmmm...I think you got hit with dyslexia. Correction: "Diablo 2 great gameplay, not so great story."

Personally, I attribute half of the problems to all the services/bugs/features that load with Me/Xp. There's a whole chapter/short-story for the stuff that just needs to be deleted from the install cd...

I'll have to go with IwD on this one. Bg1's character interactions are fairly decent, and the story isn't terrible. But IwD is (more-or-less) a book. It's so linear; almost like living through Lord of the Rings rather than playing a game. I hacked through Bg1 one time, and I have no doubt that in it's day it ruled all. But IwD was the little b*stard son that overthrew the king, had the body dumped in the lagoon for the alligators to snack on, then married the queen and was later accused of incest.

"Guys what really makes WinXP better than Win2k pro?" Winxp is Nt 5.1. That's what really makes it better than Nt 5.0. The tenths numerical place.

Have you tried editing the 'default.pif' entry in your windows folder? It's the default settings for the command prompt.

"Does anyone know how to force Windows Explorer to display folders without ever changing them unless I do?" Without using a +4 tHAC0 ball-bat, I know of no way. I hate it when NT 5.1 decides to flip on large icons/detail mode. And don't get me started on the search function. Msft takes 3 steps upward, and slips 5 steps back down the slope.

Windows NT 5.1 has a few tweaks over Windows NT 5.0. I'll go with NT5.1. There's a few little things that msft did that were worthless (search function, driver setup), but everything else was a step-up.

Give Xteq X-Setup a go. You can download it by doing a search for 'xteq' at www.download.com.

"it's not gonna work on all boxes running XP" Worx just fine on my P2 266 laptop. I'm even playing the Montezuma series *without* cheating. I confessed that to my Priest yesterday, and the guy ran OUT of the booth to check the color of the Moon and the temperature of the seawater. Actually, it worx a heck of a lot better/faster under NT5.1 than WinMe (dual boot). I get better frame rates with Commandos and Jagged Alliance 2 as well...

Yep. Copy protection. If you're using your burner to run it, it'll read the atip info. Since mastered disks (i.e. 'originals') don't have the atip stuff, it knows it's a cdr, and no worky. If you're cd reader/writer doesn't handle the protection well, it won't reprodue it well enough and the program knows it isn't the original. Most likely it's just doing a cd check. But it could have one of the 'encrypter' ones too.

Sounds like a difficult receipe. Can you duplicate it? =)

Gunner: Do you know I'd prefer to just Nuke It From Orbit? Spyware rulez!

That's better than I can do. I still have two 12meg Diamond voodoo2, and the sli cable, but can't get it to work with Winme/98/NT. When I pull up the video control panel, the system locks up no matter if I'm using just one card or both. So, I moved to a Geforce2...