Dark screen with Win 2000??

[foamy]

I just did a clean install of Win 2K (Which took two calls to MS help desk)and re-loaded CMBB. The load seemed OK but when I start the game my screen (Sony Monitor) goes blank - no options to accept settings etc.

I deleted to the prefs file - same thing ?

I should also point out that even re-booting my machine results in 4 out 5 attempts going to a dark screen ?? Only way I can get the screen to come on is to power down and very quickly power up and start the computer - sounds ridiculous, but it works.

I removed the NVidia driver and even with just VGA same thing happens. Anyone got any ideas ??

If any of my game opponents read this, it might be some time before I get back into action - sorry.

[Schrullenhaft]

What version of DirectX do you have installed ? Win2K comes with DirectX 7.0 (I believe) ? Which particular Service Pack is installed (some CDs will have a default Service Pack installed with a clean install) ? Which NVidia driver version did you install ? CMBB isn't going to work with the default VGA driver (doesn't go to 800x600 or support 16-bit color or higher). That driver also doesn't have any 'hardware' 3D support that would be necessary with CM.

You may need to boot up in Safe Mode and make sure there are no listings for the NVidia drivers. You may also want to delete files in C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32 that start with NV*.*.

Have you applied any patches to Win2K. Apparently there is one patch (328310) that causes some problems with CM as mentioned in this thread. You can tell if you have it installed by going to the Control Panel > Add/Remove Software control panel > look through the list towards the bottom and the Windows patches will be numbered.

I suggest also installing any relevant chipset drivers for your motherboard since these often come with AGP patches. You may also want to better define your monitor if it is setup as 'Default Monitor'. Either 'Plug and Play' or a specific model that is either your exact monitor or something very close. Make sure you're running at 800x600 or higher and at 16-bit color or higher.

[foamy]

Many thanks for the quick response.

1) I did have Dx 7.0 now have 9.0

2) NVidia verson is 4.1.0.9

3) No patches

4) Define monitor - I think this might be a problem, thing is I can't seem to find the place to add a new monitor - can you help ?

One more odd thing - at re-boot I get the dark screen about 4 out of 5 re-boots. The fix is to get into BIOS and re-set the detect Plug and play option from NO to YES and back to NO again.

Then F10 to continue - works about 50% of the time - very strange ??

[Schrullenhaft]

To check/change your monitor definition go to Control Panel > System control panel > Hardware tab > Device Manager button > double-click on the Monitors listing > check what monitor is defined here > double-click on this listing > Drivers tab > Update Driver button > Next button > select "Display a list..." > browse to the Sony manufacturer group and look for you model.

Generally the only big thing is that sometimes the 'Default Monitor' profile causes some problems. If your monitor is defined as 'Plug and Play' already, then there should be few issues that would be resolved be picking a more specific monitor profile.

Since you're using the 41.09 drivers you may want to turn off FSAA ('manually off' or 'application specific', which is usually the default). There are some other threads here about NVidia drivers that specifically mention player's issues with these drivers. BFC/BTS recommend the 30.82/30.87 drivers or some of the versions around there. Some people also report good results with the latest beta drivers, but this may vary depending on the specific GeForce card and its FSAA capabilities. This thread mentions some users experiences with the 41.09 drivers.

[foamy]

Thanks Mr.Schrullenhaft. will do these things.

Micro-soft help people told me that the problem was NOT with Win2000 or any drivers because the dark screen occurs before Windows has loaded (In fact it does not load when this problem occurs). As I did update my BIOS to handle Win 2000 could that be the problem. I have a K7S5A MB

[Schrullenhaft]

If the screen is blanking on power up (in other words you can't see the memory count, etc.) then Windows typically wouldn't be the source of the problem.

I used to have a K7S5A myself (until I accidentally damaged it removing a CPU fan). To my knowledge there are several PCB revisions of this board that end up having different BIOSes, so you'll want to make absolutely sure you have the correct BIOS for your board. The latest BIOS for the v. 1.0 PCB is 020920. Are you using DDR or SDR RAM with this motherboard ? How many DIMMs do you have installed (generally the less the better) ?

In the PCI/Plug and Play section of the BIOS is your 'Allocate IRQ to PCI VGA' set to enabled ? It should be if it isn't (though your AGP card may likely grab an IRQ anyway if this isn't enabled). I can only guess that the system is being forced to rescan the buses when the PNP setting is changed.

You may want to consider clearing all of your CMOS settings (via Jumper JP4 on the motherboard) and then reset everything afterwards. Your problem may also be related to your CMOS memory settings or the compatibility of your memory with the motherboard itself (or the BIOS - though most updates usually provide more compatibility with different memory modules). The power supply may also be an issue here.

Are you using the on-board sound and LAN ? Is anything in the PCI slot next to the AGP slot ? If there is something it may be sharing the same IRQ as the videocard.

Though this won't address your initial boot problem, I suggest installing the SiS AGP drivers, the latest rev is 1.13 (select Chipset, AGP, SiS 735, and Windows 2000).

[foamy]

Got a new LCD for Xmas (Samsung 152T) it's great, but I still have the same W2K boot problem.

However CMBO and CMBB now work after I got Direct X 9.0 Yipee !!

As to the other suggestions:

a) Not blank at initial boot, I can see the memory count etc. Screen goes blank just before the "Starting Windows" progress strip along the lower section of the screen starts.

I have version 3.1 K7S5A MB

c) One DIMM chip card (256Mb)

d) CMOS and MB should be compatable as they are original and never gave any trouble since I got them until this W2k upgrade.

e) Power supply - should be OK only 6 months old and is a good quality one.

f) On board sound and LAN. yes - it works fine.

g) No cards in any PCI slot.

A dumb question - but when I update BIOS I simply download from the ECS web site and unzip then run. Is that all there is to it - I don't get any indication that the BIOS has actually been updates - Am I doing this right, how can I tell ??

[Schrullenhaft]

I don't think that ECS has a 'live BIOS' update feature that allows you to flash the BIOS under Windows. So I'm not sure what you're 'running' after unzipping. I'd guess that you would have to create a boot disk and boot up with that and then run the flash program from the command prompt. You can usually tell that you've upgraded a BIOS by looking at the version number usually close to where the memory is being counted on the boot screen.

I didn't think another display would change what you were seeing.

You say that your screen goes blank after the memory count, but before the 'Starting Windows' progress bar comes up. Is this the command prompt (black & white) progress bar or is this the graphical screen with the progress bar ? If you press F8 and step through the boot process is there something that hangs ?

Your motherboard is one of the newer revisions. I don't think that there would have been too many changes to the BIOS that would have affected the compatibility with Windows 2000.

What brand of NVidia card do you have and which model is it ?

[foamy]

The Win200 progress bar I mention is Black& White at the bottom of the screen 0 - 100% scale - IF I get to that everything is OK.

The computer hangs just before this, so if I press F8 it will take me to a boot menu choice NOT the safe mode etc.. I can't get that far when the problem occurs.

Vid card is a PNY g-Force4 Ti 4200.

I have just been told by someone that I might have a hard drive problem and that I should try to boot up fom the CD with Win2K disk (Not install of course) ?? what do you think ?

[Schrullenhaft]

Pressing F8 should produce a menu where you can select Safe Mode and other boot options. Do you have some other sort of boot manager installed ? If so, then maybe it isn't fully cooperating with Win2K.

You might be having a hard drive problem. Several of the major manufacturers have disk diagnostics that are necessary to run for warranty repair reasons. Some of these utilities can sometimes fix a problem (by 'hot swapping' a sector, etc.). If you have a problem with the MBR or close to it, then you may need to replace/repair the drive.

There's also the possibility that the SiS IDE controller doesn't like your hard drive too well, but if you've been using them together for quite awhile then I wouldn't assume that's the case. IDE drivers and other drivers should be an issue with this particular problem that you're having.

[foamy]

Just a quick sanity check here:

1) Everything was working just fine with Win 98 SE.

2) No new hardware or programs other than Win2K

3) To get Win 2K installed was not straightforward

- My C drive was 38 Gb, Win2k can't use a disk bigger than 20 Gb AND format to FAT32 file system.

So under instruction from Microsoft Help desk I partitioned the C drive to 20gb for the Win2k. During this format the drive actually came up as 20.3 Gb, could the extra 0.3 Gb it accumulated somehow be a problem ??

[Schrullenhaft]

I wouldn't suspect the extra 0.3Gb is causing your problem since Win2K created that partition. I think the 20Gb FAT32 limitation is one of 'enforced preference' rather true incompatibility, but it might be safe to partition at 19Gb and see how that works out. How come you don't try NTFS, which would allow you to make a single partition of your hard drive ? Unless you're running some 'evil' DOS app or game that accesses the hard drive directly (rather than querying the OS) you should have few problems with that file system.

Despite your problems, Win2K is the better choice in the long run. It's more stable than Win9x (though its memory requirements are higher). With most driver development now centering on Win2K/XP, you'll see better performance gains under this OS (though it usually takes a benchmark to differentiate the speeds).

[foamy]

Hey Schrullenhaft - thanks for sticking with this problem especially over the holiday period, I feel that I am taking advantage of your precious time. It's comforting to hear you say that I should stick with this Win2K OS. I have plenty of people telling me to throw it away and get XP ??

Anyway - here is the latest:

1) In my ignorance I understood that the NFT?? file system would lead to problems when sharing files with others, so for now I will stick with the FAT32.

2) I had a low battery warning during one of the dozens of boot-ups, I replaced it with a new one, reset all the parameters and completely re-installed Win2000 onto a freshly partitioned C drive.

The system will run but it takes anything from 0 - 5 "Soft" re-starts to get past this black screen hang-up. I found out that it makes no difference going into the BIOS and changing the settings as I once thought.

I still saw the low battery warning once.

When W2k does manage to run all my programs including CMBO and CMBB run just fine.

I am now resigned to the fact that on boot-up my machine will hang up a random number of times. Mother board problem ??

[Schrullenhaft]

I'm not particularly familiar with the 'file sharing problem' of NTFS. It may exist, but I haven't generally had a problem with it.

The battery you mention replacing is the CMOS battery ?

Some BIOSes had a setting for "IDE Delay" which would give the hard drive time to initialize before the motherboard BIOS attempted to boot. In your case you get the configuration screen (listing ports, allocated IRQs, devices, drives, etc.) and underneath this it tells you that your booting from the hard drive, etc. In other words there's no mention of a 'drive failure' or anything like that ?

Though it's a bit annoying you may want to turn off the 'Quick Boot' feature in the CMOS/BIOS setup and see if this helps or not (under 'Advanced Setup'). With a longer BIOS initialization period your drive may have all the time it needs to warm up/initialize. Do you have S.M.A.R.T. enabled for your hard drives (also under Advanced...) ? I'm not sure what may be the best setting for this (if your hard drive supports S.M.A.R.T.). Sometimes S.M.A.R.T. gives false warnings about drive problems.

As for upgrading to XP. Well, it is the future and there will probably be technologies and features that it will support that Win2K won't (this is Microsoft's way of ensuring users upgrade) - USB 2.0 and Hyperthreading (available on the very latest and fastest Pentium 4's at the moment). XP is somewhat similar to Win2K (except the interface and some extra 'bloat' in my opinion). Driver-wise they should be similar and there really shouldn't be too much difference from my perspective (though XP usually costs less if you buy an OEM version compared to Win2K). It generally comes down to a matter of preference.

[foamy]

I think I found the problem - After an unbelievable number of re-installs with numerous combinations of parameters, I decided to move my one memory set from slot to the other and "Bingo".

So far I have 10 out of 10 sucessfull re-boots.

Question now is, is the memory stick bad or is there a problem with the MB ??

Once again thanks for your advise and support.