Schrullenhaft

Reducing your AGP Aperture is done in your BIOS/CMOS setup. Some motherboards/systems don't make this option available (usually name brands may not have this feature). To get into your BIOS/CMOS setup you will need to reboot your computer. The screen where your memory is counted up is usually where you can hit a key to access your BIOS/CMOS setup. It may be DELETE, F1, F10 (for Compaqs), ESCAPE, etc. It will usually say on your screen. If you just get a splash screen of the manufacturer's logo you'll usually need to press the Escape key to see the screen that may mention the key to press to access BIOS/CMOS setup. Once in your BIOS/CMOS setup you'll have to look around your menu structure to see where your AGP Aperture size is configured from. For some of the Award BIOSs it may be in "Chipset Features Setup". For others it could be in PNP/PCI-type menus or buried even deeper in the menus for the setup. Again, a number of name-brand systems may not offer the ability to adjust your AGP Aperture. Typically 64Mb is considered the default. Depending on your BIOS/CMOS setup's range you may find that you can only go down to 16Mb on some systems, others may allow you to reduce all the way to 8 or 4Mb. Reducing it may help in certain situations with certain video cards. Reducing the aperture may reduce your video performance, but it may allow you to run CM with fewer or no lockups. Strictly something you will have to experiment with.

Lane - Steve has been out on vacation for the last week or so. I don't think Charles has been processing all the M.O./Check-based orders as of yet. So your order may have not shipped yet (and it ships from a warehouse in Vermont - from another company that is providing the shipping/handling service for BTS).

I'm not sure if that actually indicates a corrupted zip file or not (it most likely does). Do you have an unzipping program like Winzip, etc. ? Try to open the archive with that program and see if you get an error. On occasion some people had problems with the self-extracting zips (but this was the old Beta Demo that mostly had that problem). If that doesn't work then you'll need to download again. First I would suggest running scandisk on your computer though, just in case you have a corrupted FAT, etc.

I'm guessing that this behavior is normal. I get the same thing with a TNT2 Ultra. I don't know if anyone can see from inside a building to the outside utilizing transparencies. The old Beta did this by just "killing" the wall once a unit occupied a structure. I'm quite possibly wrong about this, but I'm guessing that is the way the transparencies are programmed in CM (DirectX limitations, etc.). [This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 07-17-2000).]

It almost sounds as if your voices are running at the wrong sampling rate. You're not using any of the mod packs on the Gold Demo are you ? If you are then the Gold Demo will not handle the 44kHz audio very well. But it seems as if everything else is running ok sound-wise, so it doesn't appear that you're doing this. What sound card are you using (or which Mac if you're playing on a Mac) ? If you're using a PC run C:\PROGRAM FILES\DIRECTX\SETUP\DXDIAG.EXE. Go to the Sound tab and play around with the "Hardware Sound Acceleration Level" slider and see if it helps with your problem. Depending on your soundcard you may also want to check if there are any newer drivers (though I haven't heard of this specific complaint before).

The Guillemot Cougar PCI should work for you. They have a 32Mb version and it is based on the TNT2 M64. One version even has video capture (at a higher price though). To my knowledge it should support fog and transparencies properly. I can't remember whether or not any problems exist with the Voodoo 3's latest drivers. If not then a Voodoo3 2000 PCI should be an economical purchase. Check out Pricewatch (at the main page go to Multimedia > video cards, then select PCI from the list on the next page): http://www.pricewatch.com/ You can find some good prices there, but be weary of whom you purchase from. Many companies charge outrageous shipping fees, get orders wrong, have bad return/exchange policies, are slow in shipping your order/backorder or lie/don't know about their actual stocking of the item. A good site to check out the reliability of an on-line merchant is Reseller Ratings: http://www.resellerratings.com/ The site seems to be uncharacteristicly down at the moment however. Cards based on the TNT2's and maybe Voodoo3's (of which only 3dfx should be selling) would be your best bet for PCI. [This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 07-16-2000).]

You may want to check your DVD-ROMs firmware to see if you may need an update. Go to Control Panel > System control panel > Device Manager > CDROM (DVD) (click on plus or double click CDROM) > Highlight your Pioneer DVD or double click on it > Click on the Properties button (not necessary if you double-clicked on your Pioneer DVD) > Settings tab. In the upper right of this tab there should be info on your firmware version. About mid-way through this webpage is the firmware updates for ATAPI DVDs. Read the disclaimer carefully and look for your model (if it is listed). Compare the version number to see if it is any newer than yours. Pioneer Driver page: http://www.pioneerusa.com/tec.html To be honest this will probably not fix your problem, but you could try it to see if it is something that was addressed in the update. The copy protection scheme defeats "standard" CDR copying of CM (that works). Unless you have a different method available to make copies to a CDR, then you will have to use the original CD.

Assuming that you've used the v. 1.01 patch (and your CD wasn't originally v. 1.02)... Did you copy the new BMPs (1720-1729) to the BMP directory ? They can't be in a subdirectory within the BMP folder or they won't be "seen".

I'm guessing that the Game Wizard is a Voodoo 1 or 2 based card. If that is the case, then I don't think you'll be able to get it working at this point. To my knowledge the Voodoo 1 & 2 cards have been disabled for CM on the Mac. I'm under the impression that there were too many problems with their RAVE implementation for CM to work correctly. This may be changed by a patch in the future. Some members on this forum had hinted that some developers from 3dfx were in contact with BTS about some of the changes they could make to their RAVE extensions. Whether this is true or not I don't know.

There are major coding changes necessary for CM2 (from what I recall Steve mentioning months ago). The idea isn't to make the game completely different. There's probably a better than good chance that the interface will remain the same. However a lot of the details of warfare on the Ost Front will require a number of changes in the way CM does things (code-wise and display-wise). How different it is going to be from CMBO is only something that Charles and Steve know (and even then they'll be open to rational opinions on inclusions and changes). CM is a work in progress and changes are inevitable. BTS has mentioned that they will try to make the changes backward compatible (not really the correct term here) so that you could possibly update your CM1 to a CM2 standard. There will undoubtably be caveats regarding this, but this is what they would like to do.

PraetorianXXI - As others have suggested - use Hypersnap. The reason you're getting the desktop instead of CM in your screen captures is that you are probably using a separate 3D video card (Voodoo 2 ?). Your screen grabs are getting what the primary display card has in its memory. Hypersnap should be capable of grabbing your 3D card's image. Well... if you wanted to know...

The AGP aperture size is the memory range that is reserved for addressing the video card's memory by the CPU (or, uh... something like that). By reducing the size of the aperture you may be forcing the CPU to send data in smaller chunks to the video chip/video memory. This Intel article explains a little, but is a bit dated (Win2K = NT 5): Intel AGP Aperture defaults: http://support.intel.com/support/technologies/graphics/agp/aperture2.htm Though I don't think you'd have to change the caching of the video from USWC to whatever the other option is (USW). Tinkering with the video caching may help, but I'm not sure. As the article indicates it is a function of the AGP aperture. Another thing I forgot to mention. You may need to turn off "PNP OS" in the CMOS set of PNP. By turning this off you can keep the settings that the BIOS sets for PNP devices. With PNP OS On - the OS can reassigned the resources as it sees fit (which may often be what it was beforehand - and different from what you've set in the CMOS). To my knowledge ACPI is a power-saving/configuration scheme (I'm not sure what its PNP configuration aspects are). Often it will take its own IRQ (can't recall if the P2B-F will allow you to turn off this IRQ grabbing). I believe Win2K has been programmed to support this standard as the preferred one. [This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 07-16-2000).]

That's a strange one. I guess you should be thankful that the lockups aren't in CM itself. Apparently your Gateway Destination has an ATI chipset for the primary display (from STB no less - 3dfx's subsidary). I'm not sure which Destination system you have, so there are two possibilities for the primary video driver. ATI has the latest drivers (the Gateway approved ones are a bit older to my knowledge). If your board is based on the Rage I/mach64 GT, then Windows 98 will have the latest drivers for it: ATI drivers (Rage II/II+): http://support.atitech.ca/drivers/3drageII+.html If you're lucky it is an issue with the video reinitializing (since CM should be using the Voodoo2). I don't know if a BIOS update would help or not. You'll need your system info (model #, order #) or some other info to determine which BIOS to download and update (if you even need an update): Gateway Destination BIOS upgrades: http://www.gateway.com/support/techdocs/references/motherboard/destindex.shtml

My video card shares an IRQ with an as-yet unused 3Com NIC. My SB Live has its own IRQs that it isn't sharing. With the amount of data that CM is generating I believe it would be bad for the video card and sound card to share the same IRQ. Windows does allow for IRQ sharing (if you look around the IRQ listing in Device Manager you'll see IRQ Holder for PCI Steering). Unfortunately some drivers may not cooperate very well with IRQ sharing. They may be able to handle small amounts of data, but with the almost constant sound generated by CM - that solution runs into problems. If your sound card and video card are sharing the same IRQ, then I would guess that your sound card is in the first PCI slot next to the AGP slot. There is no other way around this than to physically move the sound card over to another PCI slot, preferably the next one down. This is something that you'll see in every motherboard. The AGP slot gets the same IRQ as the first PCI slot - it has been designed that way. If you have to share an IRQ try to share it with a device that won't get a lot of concurrent use. If you can get a free IRQ check to see what IRQ is free in the Device Manager > Computer (highlighted) > Properties button (Oooppss... I forgot you're running Win2K - hopefully you can find the IRQ listing, I can't remember the exact location myself at this moment). This will list the IRQs used by the system. If you can find a free one in here (which won't be listed as free, just not present) then note that number down. When you boot go into the CMOS setup and then PNP/PCI (can't remember the exact name of the menu). In here you should be able to assign an IRQ to a specific PCI slot (you will need to know which slot number your sound card is in). This is one of those nice features that Asus usually implements in their BIOSs that few other m/b manufacturers do. Assign the free IRQ number to that PCI slot. If you move your sound card you may have to reinstall the driver. Sometimes the drivers can "adjust" themselves to a new IRQ, but often this just may not work. The best solution may be to uninstall the drivers completely and then reinstall them and then the latest patches. [This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 07-15-2000).]

My guess is that you have a piece of software that is running that may be interfering with the CM setup. There is a process to manually install the files. It is posted elsewhere in this Tech Support forum. To my knowledge the following should work: 1) Open up the Explorer File Manager (just called Explorer). 2) Go to your C:\PROGRAM FILES (or whatever it may be called in Deutsch) and with that directory highlighted go to the menu File > New > Folder and name this new subdirectory CMBO. 3) Put the Combat Mission CD in your CD drive. Exit the autoplayed CM installation (if it comes up). 4) Copy the following directories and their contents (by click-dragging the directory) into the CMBO directory: BMP, Mov, Scenarios, Wav and Combatmission.exe. 5) If you want to see the intro movie you will need Apple's QuickTime installed. If you don't have it installed it should just skip the movie and go straight to the Main screen. 6) Depending on what version you have on the CD you may want to apply the version 1.01 patch (some people who've recently ordered have v. 1.02 - check the bottom right corner of your CM Main screen and you should see a small number there for the version). 7) When you extract the patch look over the readme.txt file that comes with it as the extraction process does not copy the files to their final destination. [This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 07-15-2000).]

It's not the answer you want to hear.... I'd suggest getting a hardware-based rather than a software-based modem. Then your communications will not be so dependent on CPU cycles in order to maintain the connection (on software-based modems the flow control is usually performed in software running on the CPU). [This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 07-15-2000).]

This is going to vary from brand to brand and from card to card. Some manufacturers supposedly purchase higher-rated chips or install better memory on their cards. However someone else could be running the exact same card as you, but get noticeably different results. You will have to experiment with these settings yourself to get a definitive answer as to where your overclocking boundaries exist. Tom's Hardware has some benchmarks on overclocked GeForces, but no exact methodology on overclocking is posted there. Since CM is very sensitive to overclocked cards then this may be a good test for your overclocking. I'd suggest cranking up the clock speeds at 10Mhz a try. Run through several large scenarios (for a few hours of continuous operation) before upping the clock again. Usually the Core clocks can go quite high (within their range), but you'll see little performance difference. Memory on the other hand is going to be a lot more touchy in regards to overclocking but it will also reap the biggest speed benefits. If you can, increase the clock on the memory at 5Mhz a try (or whatever is the lowest increment). [This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 07-15-2000).]

I have the exact same motherboard and video card and can report no problems with either the Gold Demo or the Full version. Where my setup differs from you is I'm using Win98 2nd ed. and an SB Live (different CPU, memory and a couple of other additions, but nevertheless). This is probably where your problem lies (unless you are overclocking your CPU and/or video card). On my TNT2 I have the clocking set to 166Mhz Core and 190Mhz Memory. If I crank up my memory clock beyond that I will get freezes. Of course this will vary card to card, but you may want to check your clock settings, especially for the memory. Some people have mentioned problems with the Aureal soundcards, but I don't know if it is something consistent with the drivers or not. As for Win2K... well... some people are having graphical problems with it. So there may be some sort of Win2K-video driver-CM issue going on here.

Your "video control panel" could possibly exist in several different places (if your drivers installed one). The most common is to go to Control Panel > Display > Settings tab (or you may see tabs that mention your video card/chipset at this point) > Advanced/Advanced Settings button > Here there should be tabs for your video card/chipset. One may be labelled "DirectX" or "D3D", etc. In here is where you may find settings for "Enable Fog Table Emulation", though many cards may not have this setting. If you're running an ATI Rage/Rage Pro/Rage 128/Rage 128 Pro, then you will not have the Fog Table Emulation capability. These cards/chipsets support only the "newest" DirectX fog (or some of them do) and not the "compatible" fog that BTS has programmed into CM.

I'm not sure what the disks are for. Though I haven't installed the nVidia reference drivers myself I would have assumed that you could just run the executable and it would install without diskettes. Did you possibly select an option to copy the installation to diskette ? Most of the time you just need blank, formatted diskettes so the installation program can either copy installation files or backup some previous configuration. You may want to attempt to install the drivers again and double-check what options you may be selecting. Otherwise get two blank diskettes as the program requests - it should prompt you to put the diskettes in one at a time to copy files to them.

Do you have this problem only playing CM or does it happen to you when you may be running anything else ? Unfortunately your symptoms could point to any one of dozens of possible problems. With your cursor "jumping" all over the place it sounds as if your CPU has become too busy to update the cursor on the screen (which is a heavily interrupt-driven process). Some of the obvious things to do would be to check and see if there is an update to your mouse driver software (assuming that you're not using the default drivers provided by Microsoft from Win9x). The same goes for your video card - see if there are any driver updates for it. And also check any sound driver updates, especially if you're using a PCI sound card. I'd also suggest closing down any programs that may be running while you're in CM. Close any of the applets that you can from your System Tray (usually by right clicking on the icon and selecting "exit" from the pop-up menu). Disable your antivirus software too (just while you're playing CM). There has been word out that the latest update to Norton Antivirus (late June anti-virus DAT) has caused crashes. And finally shut down all other processes by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del. This will bring up the "Close Program" dialog box. This will list all the running programs and applets (many of which you will not see an icon for anywhere). Close all programs except for "Explorer" and "Systray". You will have to Ctrl-Alt-Del after each attempted closing to get back to the dialog box. You will probably notice that it takes several attempts to close some programs (sometimes up to five attempts). If you recognize any program that is necessary for your sound or video to operate properly you will probably want to leave it running (some software-based sound cards may have an applet running in order to control the audio, etc.). Another possibility is that this is an overheating problem. If that was the case then you would normally get lockups all the time within a certain amount of time of powering on your computer. Or it may be that a card is overheating, especially a video card. I'd guess that this isn't the case, but it is a possibility. After all this try to run CM and see if it works for you. If not then you may have a lot of work ahead of you to get it running. If you need further help post some of the details of your configuration (hardware and software) to this thread.

I don't want to sound cruel here but... If you accurate in your belief that your problems are due to sound, then the full version is probably going to be worse since it uses 44kHz audio instead of the demo's 22kHz. This means that the audio card will have to handle larger audio data which seems to be problematic for some software-based/DSP audio cards. Your ESS Maestro-2 should be an ES1968 chipset. The latest generic driver for this is here (in the PCI Audio Devices table): http://www.esstech.com/Technical/drivers/downloadable/drivers/driver.htm#These I don't know if these drivers are any newer than what Gateway is offering (considering their age, probably not). It also seems strange that your "standby" issues would be solved by installing the Intellipoint software (assuming that the mouse was just a Microsoft/Standard PS/2 or Standard Serial mouse before that). Oh well... software and hardware are almost impossible to figure out at times. You may also want to play with your "Audio Acceleration" slider to see if that has any affect on your problems.

Manowar - email Steve Grammont at sales@battlefront.com Hopefully he'll get you setup if there's been a packing mistake.

Madmatt has one... a Guillemot/Hercules Prophet II GTS 64Mb. He posted some screen shots with it awhile back. I assume all of the current screen shots are with this card now. He upgraded from a Diamond TNT2 Ultra card and said that for the price the performance increase wouldn't justify the purchase, but it helped him overcome a bad day. Tom's Hardware has a couple of reviews on some GeForce 2 video cards (toward the bottom of the page). The Gainward CardExpert benchmarked as the fastest. The Prophet II is also reviewed: http://www.tomshardware.com

Did you look through your manual ? The CD is usually tucked near the front cover of the manual. There's no jewel case for the CD, just a paper sleeve for it.