Win2000, working 3D finally

[Jarmo]

So I bought a PC. Win 2000 with Geforce2MX200.

DVD drive and Athlon.

Of course, the people at the shop installed everything

the wrong way. No working 3d acceleration.

I started by upgrading to DirectX 8.1.

Then I uninstalled the drivers that were in, through control

panel those seemed to be Geforce for NT4 or something.

Got VGA graphics, so the drivers seemed to be gone.

Then went to Creative's (cards manufacturer) web page and

downloaded the newest drivers and installed them. Seemed easy enough.

The problem is, whatever 3d stuff I try to do, the system

freezes totally. Even those OpenGL 3d screensavers do it.

After that I've uninstalled those drives and installed older

ones. No go. Then tried with nvidias own win2000 drivers. No go.

Tried looking at the Win32 folder if there's something

nv stuff left after uninstalling, but there's not.

Everything else seems to work fine, just no 3d or the system

freezes. ctrl-alt-del does nothing, have to click the reset

button or power down the whole machine.

[ April 13, 2002, 09:06 AM: Message edited by: Jarmo ]

[Schrullenhaft]

If an OpenGL screen saver is locking up your machine you're definitely having issues with the video hardware. Do you know what PCI cards (sound, network, modem, etc.) you have installed in your computer and what slots they're in ? Do you know what motherboard you have and what BIOS revision is installed (you'll see this the very first thing when it's counting the memory) ?

Depending on what chipset you have on your motherboard you will probably want to install the chipset and/or AGP drivers that are unique for it (and Windows 2000/XP). These drivers can make a large difference when it comes to video cards. Once those are installed I'd suggest removing the NVidia drivers (if they aren't already) and then reinstalling DirectX 8.1. With this done now try to reinstall the 28.32 drivers and see if they work. If this doesn't then you may want to wipe out your hard drive and reinstall Windows 2000 from scratch (installing the video-related drivers in the above mentioned sequence).

If none of this works (depending on how far you want to go) you'll probably want to take this back to the shop that built it and detail to them exactly how you can get the computer to lockup. It's possible that the video card is overheating and/or defective (among other things).

[ April 06, 2002, 06:31 AM: Message edited by: Schrullenhaft ]

[Jarmo]

Ouch. It's an MSI K7T266 Pro2 motherboard, I downloaded the newest drivers, read the instructions and decided it's too scary to try to update them. Bioses and ramdisk stuff. Well over my head.

I also have a 10/100 micro network ethernet card.

Sound is on the motherboard.

After the 20 freezes and 5 changes of the video drivers, the DVD playback is out too. Same freeze as with 3D.

I think I'll go directly to plan C and let the dealer solve the problems...

[Schrullenhaft]

You may want to try one last thing, a download and install of the latest VIA 4-IN-1 drivers. These update the AGP drivers which could affect your problem. You can get them here.

[Jarmo]

Bummer. It was easy enough, but didn't help.

... well... actually it did give back the DVD playback..

But still freezes on screensaver.

---

nah. it just took longer to crash with DVD.. no cure there either.

[ April 07, 2002, 06:02 AM: Message edited by: Jarmo ]

[Jarmo]

Took the PC to the shop today.

Switching the Graphics card solved the 3D problem immediately. Seems the card was bad. Somewhat surprisingly the DVD playback freeze problem didn't go away. Changing the DVD drive or reinstalling software didn't help either. Maybe the few dozen freezes have damaged my Windows copy. They'll do a full reinstall tomorrow.

Looks like I'm getting a 64MB card in replacement, they had run out of 32MB models.

[Jarmo]

Sheesh, took a whole lot longer than I hoped, and 3 trips to the shop, but now the thing seems to be working right. Knock on wood. :eek

Now having MSI Geforce2MX400, guess it really helps to have the card+mobo from the same manufacturer. Had I known in the beginning that MSI also makes cards, I'd have taken one to begin with. Stupid salespeople/experts.

CM runs smooth. Some graphics anomalies at the title screen, like hard to read texts, but those should go away with a driver update. But I think I'll enjoy a working system for a while before starting to repair it.

The first noticeable difference in CM experience between PC and Mac is the sound. PC has a LOT better audio. Even with mac using the older soundsprockiets. Hope BTS manages to do something about it for CMBB.

Well, actually the first difference was the graphics. Maybe I should download a few mods for the PC...