BeWary

Hmmm... if it has always been horribly unstable, then this is probably just a case of a bad install getting worse. It may be your best bet to do an OS reinstall. Though to make sure everything's off your machine, a hard drive reformat would be a good idea. Depending at how adept you are, you could manage to save a lot of your files on your hard disk without doing a reformat. Or you could always put them on a CD if you have a burner. If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail me at be.wary@verizon.net. I've installed many OS's from scratch, including WinXP.

That original post I made was for Win98. I don't know if the registry entry would be entered correctly on WinXP if you put that text in a file, right-click on it and select "merge". Did you browse down to that registry key and see if it was put in the right place with the right value? You should be able to check the registry by going to Start -> Run and typing "regedit" (no quotes). If that doesn't work, try "regedt32". You said you thought the original entry got messed up. Do a search in the registry for "ReqAGPRate". If you find any entries for this in a suspicious place or with the wrong value (i.e. 1 or 4), delete the key or change it to 2. Worst case, just search your registry for "ReqAGPRate" and delete any keys you find. That would bring you back to square one but would prevent the need for an OS rebuild (maybe). Let us know what happens. BeWary P.S. You did "uninstall" the drivers for your old TNT card first, select generic VGA drivers, rebooted, and then installed the new card and new drivers, right? If not, try uninstalling the drivers, selecting generic ones, rebooting, and reinstalling the new drivers. P.P.S. You can back up your registry by using regedit. Just select Registry -> Export Registry File. Put it in a file somewhere safe (not in the Windows directory). If your system gets even more hosed for some reason, you could always import your saved registry.

Glad you got it worked out there. So, is your system stable now?

What's your problem? Can't host? Or can't connect as a client? I'm guessing you're having a hosting problem, in which case it's probably because your proxy isn't forwarding packets to your machine. You'd have to see if it's possible to forward certain port numbers to your machine. I believe CMBO uses port 7023. Don't know what CMBB uses. If you're behind a firewall, you'd need to open the port as well. BeWary

Well, sir, you are in luck (I hope). You could very well be right about the AGP 2x thing. See this message I wrote: http://www.battlefront.com/cgi-bin/bbs/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=8;t=002046 In your case though, you'd want to force it down to AGP2x. So instead of what I wrote, you'd use: REGEDIT4 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\NVIDIA Corporation\Global\System] "ReqAGPRate"=dword:00000002 Hopefully that'll work for ya! BeWary

Sometimes data corruption happens. Before you give up, try having him resend the file. If it still doesn't work, have him redo the turn and generate a new file. BeWary

Your processor is pretty good for now, so I'd just upgrade the video card to a GeForce4 Ti 4200. They're a pretty good bang for the buck right now. You should be able to get one for around $120 or less with shipping. I like www.newegg.com. They have good prices and service. Plus I haven't gotten any bad hardware from them yet. Check out www.pricewatch.com for more comparisons. www.bizrate.com for ratings of online stores. BeWary

trfink, To use custom scenarios, you need to copy (or move) them into your "scerarios" folder under the CMBO or CMBB folder. Make sure you unzip them first if necessary since Combat Mission won't read the zipped file. Then start up the game, go to the scenario listing, and look for the name of the scenario. It should be mixed in with the others. As far as your dual-boot problem. Have you installed your games under both OS installs, and in different folders? I believe that would probably be necessary in most cases since a lot of games use the Windows registry to store information. You could probably get away with installing the game into the same directory (folder) under both OS's, but you should at least install it under both so that the registry entries can be made properly. BeWary

This may sound silly, but I have to ask. You did buy an AGP card right? Did you have on-board video before? If so, you may need to set a motherboard jumper to turn it off. You should also go into your BIOS/CMOS settings (usually accessible while the machine is booting by pressing F2, Delete, or F8. It depends on your BIOS mfr. and the key to push usually shows up on the screen during bootup). Check for any sort of setting to choose between PCI and AGP. Did you uninstall the old drivers first and set the driver to a standard VGA driver? That should have been done first. Then removal of the old card, installation of new, and installation of the newest drivers for the card. I believe the 40.72 drivers from www.nvidia.com would be best. Check other posts on this forum just to make sure though. If you didn't uninstall the old drivers first, do so through the Program menu if possible, or through the Add/Remove Programs window in the Control Panel. Then select a standard VGA driver, reboot, and install the NVidia drivers and reboot. Good luck, BeWary

I'm sorry to say that most likely it is your video card. It sounds like you have onboard video, sharing your system memory. Your only probable upgrade choice would be a PCI card, but newer cards don't seem to come in PCI versions I believe (you can check on this). Check your computer manual or contact HP to see if an AGP card would be possible. Also note that if you get a new video card, you'll probably need to disable the onboard video by setting a jumper on the motherboard. If not through a jumper, you'll at least need to disable it through the BIOS/CMOS settings. Your processor speed plays a part too of course. I believe 500MHz is their minimum requirement for CMBB, so if possible you may want to start thinking about upgrading the whole machine. However, if you're willing to buy a graphics card and it has to be a PCI card, you probably won't want to put it in a new machine if you end up going that route. Also, your RAM upgrade may speed up response times a bit if you see a lot of disk access while playing, but unfortunately it won't speed up your actual gameplay. That is, you'll still have jerky movement. BeWary

Even though they seemed to go okay the first time, try an uninstall, reboot, and reinstall anyway. Also, prior to anything above, run a scandisk to make sure your files are ok. And a virus scan would help too. You can get a free virus scan at http://housecall.antivirus.com/ BeWary

If you can figure out what make/model of CD drive you have, try going to their website. You may be able to download a "firmware" update for your drive. This can sometimes solve problems with new CDs. I've also had this problem sometimes. If the above doesn't work, you can try opening the "My Computer" link on the desktop, right-clicking on your CD drive, and selecting "eject". This will make sure Windows recognizes the CD tray is open. Then reinsert the CD, "refresh" the screen through the menu (or hit F5), and voila!, you should be able to see the CMBB icon for the disk (assuming there is one, I don't have CMBB). Then try to start CMBB. It should work. BeWary

You're welcome. And thanks for saying thanks. Most people never respond, whether you've helped them or not. It's nice to know that at least I'm sometimes helpful.

The video card is the most important upgrade. I've read that 128MB doesn't do you any good with the current crop of games out there, so it's your call. I'm sure somewhere down the road it would make a difference. The Geforce4 Ti4200 would be my suggestion for price/performance reasons. The processor upgrade would make a difference, but probably not enough to justify the cost of a new processor. 256MB of RAM is probably ok, especially for Win98. You don't need more unless you get disk thrashing during gameplay (which means Windows doesn't have enough RAM and is using your hard disk as virtual RAM). This issue doesn't affect CM as far as I know because graphics are loaded at the beginning of the scenario. So more RAM won't increase your gameplay speed. As for that lockup issue. If it's only CM and only in that operation you mentioned, it's most likely a bug in CM related to very large operations or a bug in the operation itself. I wouldn't worry about your machine. BeWary [ October 02, 2002, 01:04 PM: Message edited by: BeWary ]

To answer your questions: Your video card is old and cannot handle large scenarios well. A faster card, as suggested above, would do the trick. As for the locking up, that shouldn't happen just because your computer is a little old. Are you talking about a complete system/game freeze or just a few second pause? Do other games freeze on you?

From a Graphical User Interface perspective, it does make sense to change it back to the CMBO style. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Maybe BTS got a little over-ambitious with their tweaking.

Haven't played that scenario myself, but a large number of tank movements and duels cause the file size to increase rapidly. I've seen fairly small to medium-sized scenarios with movie sizes around 1 MB. BeWary

If you recently installed new software and now it's not working, you are correct to suspect the new software. Instead of uninstalling try just disabling it and see if CMBO runs. BeWary

I occasionally get this problem with my SB Live card even though the speakers are fully plugged into the card. Simply removing the speaker connect from the card, wiping the connector off on my shirt, and re-inserting it usually does the trick. Basically something isn't correctly making contact in there. Simply jiggling the connector may do the trick too, but I usually just wipe it off cuz of possible dust. Try playing sounds and moving the connector in and out while you do it. If the sounds comes in and out as you describe, then you have a finicky connection. I should note that sometimes the problem is with the speakers and where they plug into the sub-woofer, if applicable. Basically, try all of your connections. Good luck, BeWary

Why not just defrag the whole drive? Just let it go overnight if you're worried about it taking too long.

I'm sure future software developers will find a way to use 128MB, but from what I've read it doesn't do anything for you in the current crop of games, even the most graphically-sophisticated games. I wouldn't pay $120 more just for it. If it ever becomes an issue in the future, you can always turn down the graphics quality a tad. Most games thankfully now come with the option to talor the game's performance to your system. BeWary

If it ain't broke, don't fix it! By the way, it's pretty rare that anything other than game-specific fixes and so-called "performance increases" (albeit minor) come from new drivers. If you do choose to upgrade though, make sure you uninstall the old drivers first, choose a generic VGA driver, and reboot. Then install the new ones. BeWary

Personally, I like your AMD system choice there. I wouldn't be too concerned about the VIA/Audigy problem. A quick search of www.soundblaster.com and www.viatech.com reveals no known issues regarding VIA chipsets and the Audigy. Plus, it is such a widely-used combination that I can't imagine you'll have many, if any, problems. As far as onboard sound goes. It used to be bad, but I recently built a machine for a friend with an Asus A7N266 motherboard using their Dolby Digital on-board sound (though it did actually come with a plug-in board) and the sound was as good as my SB Live 5.1. I also have on-board sound on my current motherboard (an Asus A7M266 w/a Cmedia chip). I was actually surprised that the sound was pretty good (especially considering we're talking about Cmedia here ), but it was a pain to do a 4-speaker setup with it. I now have it disabled and am using the SB Live card. As for memory, if it costs you more than $50 or so to upgrade to 512MB, just get 256. You can always go to www.crucial.com (the best, most reliable place for memory IMO) and get what you need for cheap. Although consider the number of memory banks on your new motherboard and whether you're likely to upgrade the memory in the future. For monitors, I like my 19" Viewsonic, but 17" is probably sufficient too. 19" monitors are still significantly more expensive (generally $130 - $200 more) than 17 inchers. The machine I built for my friend had a 17" Viewsonic A70F monitor and the color on that thing is beautiful. Much clearer and colorful than my 19" Viewsonic, which is a few years old. If you can afford it just go with a GeForce4 Ti 4200 64MB. They're pretty darn cheap now and it makes more sense to go with that than a GeForce 3 or 2 at this stage of the game, especially when you compare prices. To get a good feel of what things should cost go to www.pricewatch.com. By the way, good choice of motherboard. I love my Asus motherboards. Have built 4 computers with them and never had a problem. Have fun, BeWary [ September 18, 2002, 01:01 PM: Message edited by: BeWary ]

Ok, I'm certainly no grog, but in the CMBB demo scenario with the steppe terrain (and only German tanks attacking), forget the name, I noticed one of my PanzerIIIs being attacked by a Russian Tank Hunter team. I clicked on the team and looked at their weapon and it was a very strange looking thing with a handle. Almost in a V shape from what I remember. Didn't look like an RPG at all. Any ideas what it could be? It looked like it had a pistol grip too.

Another bug, albeit minor... During the setup phase, when you button and unbutton the Ruskie tanks, the "in command" bar doesn't automatically refresh (from black to red or vice versa). It will refresh if you move one of the tanks, but not by simply buttoning/un-buttoning them. Would be nice if it were fixed. BeWary