Mal Elder

heh, I guess my problem is I have a few old monitors that aren't multisync capable, so I have to match adapter refresh rate to the rate of the monitor itself with those. Then there's the new monitor that changes modes, but after switching rates, won't display anything, unless I turn it off then on again. Very annoying (: I'm curious if thats a result of it sitting on the geforce card, and that not switching properly...changing the adapters rate doesn't seem to alleviate this issue.

I believe thats going to affect the monitor's refresh rate, while the NVidia utility changes the refresh rate of the card...If I'm reading everything about this correctly, the cards stick at a refresh rate of 60 no matter what the monitor is set too, which would result in graphic wackiness, for lack of a better, more technical term (:

heh, of course you need those things...but dude must have something from the old machine left over, unless he's using a friends box to connect to the forum (: in my case i already have all the other stuff sitting around from other machines that have since departed...I, like most of my friends, only need one of each of the other items for a box, and if someone comes over and wants to use a machine, they get to use the generic stuff (; Point was you can get a great computer for a lot less than 1k nowadays...I just saw extreme flat trinitron 17" for $175 out there... Don't know about UK prices (;

heh, i should hope so...I just built a 1.4gig, 512DDR RAM, Geforce3, SB Audigy machine for $650 US. Is the other 550 for shipping? (:

look real close while plugging in the AGP card...every AGP card i've gotten so far has the little arm you screw into the case just a tad too low, not allowing the card to plug in all the way...the workaround i've been using is to bend that arm back, but then you can't screw in the card and have to be careful playing around with it.

That's silly if you've been reading the other messages...this problem existed in Windows 2k...XP is built upon 2k (in fact if you did a "ver" at the command prompt in the early releases of XP, it reported back a higher version of Windows 2k). So XP has inherited this hiccup, the problem isn't because of the existence of XP. And it's only a minor text error...using the workarounds listed on this board makes the game playable. Why the white color in question just can't be changed is beyond me, I guess, but according to BTS, this is a Driver issue...not even a bug really, because all my other games work fine. Funny tho, I guess all the other programmers didn't use this "standard" directx call that is causing CM all the hassle. But BTS has been honest with us about all sorts of other things, and since I'm not a programmer, I'll go with the fact that they say it's an NVidia problem for now. (The Pool of Radiance excuse (doesn't work well with nvidia cards either) doesn't work with me...it seems POR was a POS no matter what your hardware was.). This issue has been cornered pretty well, no need to starting raising new issues with the same symptoms (it's my RAM, it's my OS, it's my mom's fault, etc.). If one little flickering section (for me it's only the #'s in the "# Turn of #" section) makes this game unplayable for you, you got worse issues (:

i searched on support.microsoft.com under Windows 2000, using the keywords "hibernate" and "power" (because hibernate is a feature of power management)...found this article...it refers to 2 laptops, but it might explain the issue... http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q240/9/53.ASP?LN=EN-US&SD=gn&FR=0&qry=power%20hibernate&rnk=7&src=DHCS_MSPSS_gn_SRCH&SPR=WIN2000 thats Q240953 if you are MSKB/Technet-capable. Basically says that your BIOS is going to control how things wake up in the system, and can influence the way 2000 boots back up again. Hibernate has to "awaken" each piece of hardware, and depending on how your hardware responds to the sleep command in the first place will affect how it wakes back up. There's all sorts of different power levels that hardware can set itself too...there can be numerous things to look at here. Assuming an "elephant" is roughly equal to a second, a minute boot isn't a bad thing...

i'd run dxdiag before using any of those dx uninstallers out there (from the run line on the start menu). As long as it says all your dx files are ok, then you don't need to worry about backing down your dx. All newer versions of dx are completely backwards compatible, so uninstalling it is not necessary...thats why it works that way; only new features are added, old features aren't taken away or changed.

just FYI, its not the default because when 95 came out, USB was not (: OEM's started putting USB on their machines, but didn't have a Windows OS that supported them, so at their request, MS made the B/C versions of 95 for OEM's Only...you cannot buy a B or C version of Win95 by itself, it only came with new machines, and technically MS doesn't have to support it (or didn't have too, now they don't support 95 unless you pay cash). As far as MS is concerned, if you need USB or AGP support, you should just get Win98 (the only Official Supportable option). Its a confusing topic, and it generated many support calls...thats the answer (;

Texture Acceleration is for AGP cards only, and as far as I know the Voodoo3 is a PCI card...if it is an AGP version, then it doesn't support Texture Acceleration as far as DX is concerned. Having it greyed out shouldn't matter, just means its not available...as long as the other sections work, you should be ok.

Thats wierd, they work great on my 2k box (: 2k Server is a poor platform for DX...it's not made to run games, so DX support is iffy in that area. Are these the 21.81 or 21.83 version of the drivers?

What kind of video card is it? First thing after you get the DX update is to make sure you have the newest video drivers...thats probably where the issue will be, DX8a will probably give you the same error. DX is making a call to the drivers and getting the wrong information back.

I've been running XP Pro at home for a while now (I got connections, used to work for the Evil Empire) and it rocks so far (: great networking, all my software runs fine, even some stuff that wouldn't work for me in 2k (West Front finally works again!). Just to give some confidence to those of you buying new machines (: It even loaded on with drivers for all my hardware, even my goofy Monster 3D soundcard, which nothing ever seemed to have drivers for. I give it two thumbs up.

I'm a firm believer that AV causes more problems then it solves. When I worked for MS support, at least half of our issues came about because of AV running in the background. It's intensive in the way it works (it has to be), thereby killing performance of your computer. http://housecall.antivirus.com and http://security.symantec.com both offer free online scanners. If you're nervous about virii, I'd keep the constantly running software off the machine and just hit these sites once a week. And they're free (: If you're on a slow connection, just start it before you bed down for the beginning. In my experience, the Symantec site is a little more thorough, but slower.

just out of curiousity, do you run Netmeeting Remote Desktop Sharing? when netmeeting is running in any form, direct3d will not work, so I'm wondering if when you logon (which loads the network services) are you also loading up netmeeting? I sometimes forget i have desktop sharing on, and can't start the game (: