Problems With Hercules 3-D Prophet II MX Card

[Col Deadmarsh]

After installing my new Hercules 32mg card, I started having problems. They are:

1) Graphic Flickers when in game

2) Unability to show grahics at all after entering password to game

The last one is of course the worst problem but I'd like to fix them both. Here's my system specs:

ASUS A7V133 motherboard

1.33ghz AMD processor

Win 98 SE

I already tried downloading Hercule's new drivers (12.40) and they did squat.

What do I do to fix these problems?

[ 06-21-2001: Message edited by: Colonel_Deadmarsh ]

[Schrullenhaft]

I'm not sure what is up with people seeing "graphic flickers" in the game. Are certain textures flickering in and out of view or are their edges "shimmering", especially when you're close up in View 1 or something ?

The second problem is obviously a bit more of a situation. When you load your PBEM what exactly do you see on the screen ? Is this true with all of your PBEMs or is there some sort of setting for the scenario (i.e. - fog) that is possibly related to the problem ?

You may want to delete your CM Prefs file and select a new (and perhaps different) resolution to see if this has any effect. You may also want to disable FSAA and see if this helps you or not. It's a bigger problem in Win2K, but there have been some complaints of FSAA problems in Win98 (though that should show up regardless of PBEM or Single player, etc.). There's another thread about a NVMAX utility that someone is using to help with FSAA (under Win2K primarily).

[Col Deadmarsh]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Schrullenhaft:

I'm not sure what is up with people seeing "graphic flickers" in the game. Are certain textures flickering in and out of view or are their edges "shimmering", especially when you're close up in View 1 or something?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

It seems to be only on the houses but I could be wrong. One "side" of the house will flicker until you move the screen, then it goes away.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>The second problem is obviously a bit more of a situation. When you load your PBEM what exactly do you see on the screen ? Is this true with all of your PBEMs or is there some sort of setting for the scenario (i.e. - fog) that is possibly related to the problem ?

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

This has happened on all of them. It happens about 1 out of 5 times I load a game. Instead of seeing the game graphics, I see blackness with a couple of graphic squares here and there. Looks nothing like it should.

[Col Deadmarsh]

BUMP--Does anyone know of a way to fix these problems I'm having? It seems like half the time I load the game I get "blackouts". Other times I'll be in a game, then Esc out, then come back in and it shows the graphics in the game along with my desktop blinking together.

[Schrullenhaft]

What video card did you have installed before you installed the Hercules ? Did you perform an uninstall on the drivers ? You may want to uninstall you current 12.40 drivers and try something else instead. Although I almost always recommend upgrading drivers to the latest version, sometimes this isn't the best thing to do.

To uninstall your current Hercules drivers go to: Start Menu > Settings > Control Panel > System control panel > Device Manager tab > open the Display adapters item and highlight the listed display driver and delete it. When you close up don't reboot as of yet. Now go to: Start Menu > Run > type in regedit. Go to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE key > ENUM key > if there is a DISPLAY key highlight it and check for any settings > open the PCI key > open each of the keys and then highlight the subkey beneath it. In the right-hand pane you will see some text to the right of the item "DeviceDesc" look for the key that lists your display adapter and then delete the entire subkey including the parent (the one starting "VEN_xxxx..). Check the rest of the keys to see if any are related to your current or previous display adapters. Close up the ENUM key and go down to the SYSTEM key > CURRENTCONTROLSET > SERVICES > CLASS > DISPLAY. In here check for any subkeys, you should want nothing here. If there is something here delete it (but not the DISPLAY parent key). Close up the SYSTEM key and go to the SOFTWARE key. In here look for anything related to NVIDIA, HERCULES or GUILLEMOT and delete it. That should be enough for the registry and you can close it now.

Now go to the File Manager Explorer. Go to the C:\WINDOWS\INF\OTHER directory and look for any .INF files that are related to NVIDIA, HERCULES or GUILLEMOT. You may have to open them up with a text editor like Notepad and look through several lines to determine what the .INF is for if the name isn't indicative enough. We want these files delete so Windows doesn't detect your card properly and attempt to reinstall the drivers.

Now go to the C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory and then go to the View > Arrange Icons > by Type. This should order all of the names by the last name extension. We want to find any .EXE, .DRV, .VXD & .DLL files that are possibly associated with your video card. The .DRV and .VXD drivers should be a little more easy to spot. The .DLL and .EXE files may not be (if there are any .EXE's associated with your video card). I don't have the exact info here for you, but if you extracted your video drivers somewhere else on your hard drive you might be able to look through that directory for the appropriate file names. Some .DLL's you don't want to remove since other things in Win98 may depend on them, but definitely get rid of the specific .DRV & .VXD's associated with your video card.

Now once you're finished with this make sure you have a copy of the drivers you want to install handy on either the hard drive or CDROM. You'll probably want to try something other than 12.40 this time around. Hercules lists the 7.52 and 6.35 drivers on their site.

Hercules 3D Prophet II GX:

http://us.hercules.com/support/byprod.php3

There is also a BIOS update on this page that may be worth applying if you don't have the latest. You can usually tell your BIOS version as the very first thing that appears on your screen before the hardware memory count. Sometimes this passes by too fast, so you can also tell (but not always) from the Control Panel > System control panel > Device Manager > Display adapter item > Details tab. This BIOS update most likely will not address the particular problem that you're having with CM however (though you most likely have the latest BIOS anyway).

There are also some tips from Hercules about "flashing textures". Among their recommendations are increasing the I/O Voltage up to 3.5 volts (the standard is 3.3v - your default is actually 3.45v at the VIO jumpers need the DIMM slots, so your probably set here for this recommendation), increasing your AGP aperture (the default is often 64Mb and this is usually sufficient) and making sure your power supply can handle the video card (and your CPU in this case). If your power supply isn't 300W, then it may be insufficient for what you need and an upgrade will be necessary:

http://us.hercules.com/support/readtechnote.php3?id=51

I'd also suggest installing the latest VIA chipset drivers:

VIA 4-in-1 Drivers v. 4.32:

http://www.via.com.tw/jsp/en/dr/driver.jsp

When your computer reboots, instead of installing the Hercules/NVidia drivers right off of the bat install the generic SVGA drivers that Windows may prompt you for. After the reboot for this then install the VIA 4-in-1 drivers. After this then install DirectX 8.0a again, then install the version of the Hercules drivers you want.