teotwawki1 Posted January 25, 2005 Share Posted January 25, 2005 Well, it figures...finally got the video card after waiting 2 weeks. It's a chaintech honest to god 5700, NOT an LE/SE/ or whatever the hell the other ones are. It installed fine...I tried to use detonator destroyer, but it still doesn't support XP...so I just went ahead an uninstalled the old nVidia drivers, installed the card, and then installed the 66.93 Detonators. Upon booting up CMBB, and admiring the FOG that I can now see, the damn game locked up about 30 seconds into me scrolling around the map. I tried it again, with 3 ready made scenarios, and one I did myself...locked up every time. Is there a better version of detonator drivers for CMBB. (I haven't tried this with CMBO yet, so I don't know if that's got the same problem. I don't know why it wouldn't, though...same graphics engine, right?). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted January 25, 2005 Share Posted January 25, 2005 Do any other 3D games run? Does the fan on the card rotate? What does the temperature sensor on the card (if it has one) report shortly before the crash? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stikkypixie Posted January 25, 2005 Share Posted January 25, 2005 I have a fx5600 and i had to switch back to older drivers because 66.93 made both CMBB and CMAK crash. [ January 25, 2005, 11:35 AM: Message edited by: stikkypixie ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teotwawki1 Posted January 25, 2005 Author Share Posted January 25, 2005 I'll try the older drivers...no other 3d games on this computer (work lol)...so I can't really try anything else. 3Dmark 2001 ran w/o a hitch, though, if that means anything. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted January 25, 2005 Share Posted January 25, 2005 What kind of 'crash' are you getting ? Is it a lockup up or a 'BSOD' with some additional error info ? Have you deleted your Prefs file from whatever you were running previously ? Try a different resolution and/or refresh rate and see if this makes any difference (I don't see why it would, but it may be worth trying). Have you made any changes to the settings in the Display control panel on the 'GeForce FX 5700' (nvidia) tab ? Do you have anything running in the background ? Do you have DirectX 9.0c installed ? Though CM doesn't use any of the additional features supported by DirectX 9.0x, I'm sure the video drivers would prefer to see that DirectX version installed if it isn't already. Make sure that your monitor definition is accurate. "Plug and Play Monitor" should generally suffice unless you can get one that is more specific to your particular model. If you're running 'Default Monitor' I would highly suggest that you look into this. You may want to uninstall the video drivers again, but this time don't reinstall the new drivers before rebooting. Also make sure that no other drivers are installed for hardware that you're no longer using. Once Windows comes up, it should try to detect the videocard, but won't recognize it. Let that remain and don't install drivers as of yet. Once you're fully booted, close down everything that is running (especially anti-virus software). Then browse to the 66.93 installer and install it. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stikkypixie Posted January 25, 2005 Share Posted January 25, 2005 Well the crash I get is system crash, windows calls it a serious crash. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teotwawki1 Posted January 26, 2005 Author Share Posted January 26, 2005 For me, it was a screen lockup/freeze thing...rolling back the drivers seemed to have solved the problem...I got all the way through a scenario with nothing bad happening. part of the problem is the age of this hard drive...when I upgraded the computer here at work, I just kept the old drive. It's down to a gig of free space, and it's slower than molasses in January lol. I just bought a spiffy new 80gb 7200rpm drive for one of my systems at home; I'll replace this one here in the office after I get the new one installed at home...I've got a 40gb coming out of the machine I'm putting the new one in, so I'll just use that here. That should solve some of the performance issues as well. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted January 26, 2005 Share Posted January 26, 2005 Originally posted by stikkypixie: Well the crash I get is system crash, windows calls it a serious crash. No it doesn't. Please be careful to quote exact error messages. And harddrives don't get old and slow. Ever heard of defrag? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TufenHuden Posted January 27, 2005 Share Posted January 27, 2005 Make sure older drivers are uninstalled before putting new ones in or go with the 56.XX drivers. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stikkypixie Posted January 27, 2005 Share Posted January 27, 2005 Originally posted by Redwolf: </font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by stikkypixie: Well the crash I get is system crash, windows calls it a serious crash. No it doesn't. Please be careful to quote exact error messages. And harddrives don't get old and slow. Ever heard of defrag? </font> 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teotwawki1 Posted January 27, 2005 Author Share Posted January 27, 2005 When I mentioned the age of the hard drive, I was thinking in terms of the seek time, spindle speed, buffer size and areal density, ALL of which effect performance, and all of which are pretty slow for this thing...it's a Caviar 8400, and we got it when 8400s were considered BIG. All of the defrags in the world aren't gonna turn a 10 year old hard drive into a modern 10,000rpm wunderdrive. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted January 27, 2005 Share Posted January 27, 2005 Several people have had problems with the 66.93 Forceware drivers. However quite a few haven't had any problems; and this may be related to which particular card you're running and other details that may not be easily replicatable from one person to the next. I'm curious as to which driver you both (teotwawki1 & stikkypixie) downgraded to that has worked fine in place of the 66.93's ? I believe that Redwolf was just trying to dispel what he perceived as a statement linking the age of the hard drive to it's lower performance (as if it had permanently lost performance since you bought it). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stikkypixie Posted January 27, 2005 Share Posted January 27, 2005 I downgraded to 61.77, but like I said, my problems could be caused by the fact that I never uninstalled older drivers before installing new ones. In fact this is the first time I have a proper video card. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teotwawki1 Posted January 28, 2005 Author Share Posted January 28, 2005 I went back to 61.76. I have only dabbled w/ CMBB for the last couple of days, but it's run ok the time or two I've tried it. For whatever reason, just about every program I'm in will access the bejeesus out of the HD...you can hear it churning away, and while panning around the map in CMBx, it'll pause momentarily about every 5 seconds while it does its thing. It's really quite annoying. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted January 28, 2005 Share Posted January 28, 2005 teotwawki1 - this sounds like 'virtual memory' is being used by Windows. This is where the hard drive is used to swap out portions of code sitting in memory to make space for other code to be loaded up into physical RAM. How much memory do you have in your computer ? Do you have anything running in the backgroud while you play CM (including utilities that may be sitting in the System Tray, etc.) ? You can do a Ctrl-Alt-Del and click on Task Manager and then the Performance tab to check out some memory info. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
patboy Posted January 29, 2005 Share Posted January 29, 2005 Hi Schrullenhaft, I thank you for your technical advice, my ATI Radeon videocard was actually overheating, that's why I got a new Nvidia geforce FX 5700 for a good price, and after install, what can I see now, FOG FOG FOG ! that's very nice ! Thanks again. PS : other thing after scanning my Hdisk with Kaspersky AV and deleted some trojan, Windows SP2 can run properly ! Inbelievable. Pat. [ January 29, 2005, 04:29 PM: Message edited by: patboy ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teotwawki1 Posted January 31, 2005 Author Share Posted January 31, 2005 Originally posted by Schrullenhaft: teotwawki1 - this sounds like 'virtual memory' is being used by Windows. This is where the hard drive is used to swap out portions of code sitting in memory to make space for other code to be loaded up into physical RAM. How much memory do you have in your computer ? Do you have anything running in the backgroud while you play CM (including utilities that may be sitting in the System Tray, etc.) ? You can do a Ctrl-Alt-Del and click on Task Manager and then the Performance tab to check out some memory info. You're most probably right...this computer only has 256 megs of RAM, and the free disk space is right at 1mb. My own experience with XP is that when you get down around a meg of HD space left, performance can go south. Now, I have 3 computers at home that have 256mbs of ram, and they CMxx fine...none of the issues that I have here..I hardly ever hear the drive being accessed. The difference is they're all running relatively new drives, and there's lots of free space on the disks. I decided just to pop the 80gb drive in this machine...I'm sure it'll solve the issues I'm having with it. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted January 31, 2005 Share Posted January 31, 2005 You should have more virtual memory, that means a bigger pagefile. If you pagefile is too slow you fill up your RAM with junk and the OS cannot use the RAM for what would be the best overall speedup to have in RAM. The problem is that the virtual memory subsystem wants to cache pages that it wouldn't neccessarily have to keep in RAM. There are lots of pages which are in RAM at some time, could be kicked out, but need to be in the swapfile because they are not disk-backed. If you have too few swapfile then you force the OS to keep all annonymous pages in RAM, even if it would like to kick them into the swapfile and use the RAM for better purposes. So by not having enough swapfile you fill up your RAM with junk. When you fill your RAM with junk all the performance-enhancing caching the OS is trying to do goes right to hell and stuff that is filesystem- backed will be constantly pulled in and just dropped right thereafter, no matter how often it is used. Hope that makes it more clear. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teotwawki1 Posted February 1, 2005 Author Share Posted February 1, 2005 Well, we're back to square 1. I got the new HD installed, with a full install of XP Pro in a record 18 minutes. Office 2000 in under 2 minutes. That's the good news...the bad news is, after a clean install of the nforce drivers, and the .71 , we're back the game locking up (screen freeze). This time, it was only about 5 seconds into the actual 3d part of the game. This is frustrating...I guess I can either choose a Radeon card, where I have no fog, but the game at least plays, or stick w/ Nvidia, and not be able to play the game...hmm..great choice. Or there's always option 3...mag dump!! A betaC into this puppy would relieve a lot of tension right about now lol. I guess I will try some even older drivers, and see if I can't find something that will work. In the meantime, there's alwasy ASL lol. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted February 1, 2005 Share Posted February 1, 2005 So, again, do any other 3D games work? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teotwawki1 Posted February 1, 2005 Author Share Posted February 1, 2005 re the other 3d games, can't tell you right now...ostensibly, this is a "work" computer, but I'll have to through something else on here just to see if it works. Remember, with the old HD, it ran 3Dmark 2001 flawlessly...but I don't have that here in the offie either. It will take me 'til tomorrow to get some other 3d stuff on here to test. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted February 2, 2005 Share Posted February 2, 2005 Uh.. what xx.71 driver is this that you're using ? Do you have problems with the 61.76 drivers that were working earlier ? Are you using the default settings in the Display control panel (the Nvidia extension) or have you made changes there ? What else are you installing in your 'clean install' ? What motherboard do you have and have you installed the chipset/AGP drivers for it ? What sort of settings do you have in the CMOS/BIOS setup for AGP (AGP Aperture, Fast Writes, AGP Driving value, etc.) ? Are you using any sort of overclocking on this videocard ? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teotwawki1 Posted February 2, 2005 Author Share Posted February 2, 2005 Schrullenhaft, I'm using the same nVidia drivers that worked before...they are the 61.76...sorry for that confusion. Everything is default, nForce mb with lastest nForce drivers, haven't checked the BIOS, but I haven't changed anything since I first set this computer up. Video drivers are all default settings, haven't even opened it up except to change the refresh rate. No overclocking of anything, neither the CPU nor the 5700. I've just popped UT on here...will give it a quick stroll and see how it works. EDIT: ok, Black Hawk Down and UT run fine, no issues at all. I put West Front on here, forgetting that it won't run in XP....but that obnoxious Smackplay movie that crashed every other computer I've ever owned, played w/o a hitch. [ February 02, 2005, 06:51 AM: Message edited by: teotwawki1 ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stikkypixie Posted February 2, 2005 Share Posted February 2, 2005 Originally posted by Redwolf: So, again, do any other 3D games work? CM was the only to crash with 66.93 (or incorrectly installing them). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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