WindowsXP Problems

[Fieldmarshall]

When I bought my HP back November and CM:BO came in the mail and I couldnt run it, so instead of going on a flipping rampage, I went down to best buys did some negotiating and got the proper cards, etc. I see no fault with BTS, or in any of the programers. I believe this is more your fault in not just going down to your local electronics store, purchasing the proper equipment and installing it, and then enjoying all that CM has to offer.

[rune]

I have been getting emails from people that have Geforce Cards and windows xp and do not have a problem. However, I have NOT detected any kind of pattern between those that work and those that don't. 21.83 drivers on both, default settings on both. I tried here with changing size of agp memory, and other settings. I can get it to work fine in software mode, but with directx calls enabled get the transparency issues. This still points to the drivers.

More to come if I find anything.

Rune

[Juju]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by wwb_99:

PS: is it just me, or does this feel like a return of Gunny Bunny. Down to the 'Thx' and the attitude? Not to mention he did post about a similar problem on a very similar computer on a different forum a week ago. Lazy bastard.<hr></blockquote>

Yup. heheh. Doin' a pbem against Gunny_Bunny at the moment. When the files stopped coming in a week ago I asked him why.

He told me he ran into problems installing XP.

[Doug Williams]

Steve,

What will happen if nVidia does not release new drivers that fix this problem before CMBB is released? Will CMBB, since it uses the same engine as CMBO, suffer from similar problems?

[Sitzkrieg]

If you want to see something really funny, go to alt.games.combat-mission. Looks like GB is talking to himself again. What a sad, pathetic little creature he is. Needs some serious psychological help and to start taking his medicine again.

Anybody have any clue why he has such an axe to grind with BTS? Did they piss in his Cheerios one morning or somefink?

[Les Gray]

And just for interest, I did a quick search at google, just to see. Keywords: Game, Nvidia, Problem, WinXP. Well, only 39 or 40 pages of hits. None about CMBO, but a few on little known games like Quake, Dronez, Star Trek etc. But this MUST be a BTS problem. Of course, yeah, that's it, BTS, must be them. Deys gots to fix it, yeah.

Give me a break!

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=game+nvidia+problem+winxp

PS: BTS, keep up the great work!

[rune]

Add another game having problems with Windows XP, Pools of Radiance. Turn off the fsaa to fix the really bad graphical bug that comes up.

rune

[Doug Williams]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Add another game having problems with Windows XP, Pools of Radiance. Turn off the fsaa

to fix the really bad graphical bug that comes up. <hr></blockquote>

Or better yet, don't buy it in the first place. It's a dog. Doesn't anybody read Gamespot before plunking down their $50?

[Joe Shaw]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by sitzkrieg:

If you want to see something really funny, go to alt.games.combat-mission. Looks like GB is talking to himself again. What a sad, pathetic little creature he is. Needs some serious psychological help and to start taking his medicine again.

Anybody have any clue why he has such an axe to grind with BTS? Did they piss in his Cheerios one morning or somefink?<hr></blockquote>Ummm, nope, no idea beyond sheer stupidity, but that site does have more interesting topics ... like: Subject: Let's have some fun. We'll show you how. Love, Samantha & Julie ... huh, all we get is Slapdragon and Linda WarChest.

Joe

[ 10-31-2001: Message edited by: Joe Shaw ]</p>

[Sgt Popov]

I just bought a Sony Vaio 1.7Ghz Pent 4 with a TNT2 Nvidia 32meg video card, with the XP drivers. I am also experiancing all the afore mentioned problems, too. I can't wait for a fix, as it makes an otherwise awesome game a little frustruating.

[medlinke]

Is this a solution a specific tweak would solve? There is a pretty good tweak program specifically for nvidia cards out over at Guru3d

Guru3d Nvidia Tweak Program

This might help. I'll do the testing on my own computer if someone from BTS can let me know what specifically is the problem with the driver. There may be a combination of settings that can work around this little problem.

I noticed the problems after I'd played a game I guess I don't see it when I went in, but when I went back to the menu after a game I noticed teh text was totally marred...

So I want to get this fixed asap just like everyone else!

[Schrullenhaft]

medlinke - Unfortunately there is nothing in any of the available tweakers that will resolve the problem between Nvidia and CM under Win2K or XP. The drivers are doing something wrong internally that isn't in the realm of registry modifications that most tweaker programs utilize to perform their 'magic'.

If you run either Win2K or XP you will quickly see what the problem is - the 'white transparency' issue with 2D screen elements. Often it may not show itself on the first load up of CM or some other situation, but as you've seen it will appear at some point during a CM session. There are workarounds that have been posted on this site a multitude of times, though they don't apparently work for everyone and they don't always work everytime.

[medlinke]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Schrullenhaft:

[QB]medlinke - Unfortunately there is nothing in any of the available tweakers that will resolve the problem between Nvidia and CM under Win2K or XP. The drivers are doing something wrong internally that isn't in the realm of registry modifications that most tweaker programs utilize to perform their 'magic'.

QB]<hr></blockquote>

That's too bad. Seriously I wish it was something that was just like...hey, turn this off, or have the setting for this be this instead of this...

I messed around with Guru3d's tweak program for about 2 hours trying to get a good combination...nothing...

Basically the best I got was simply 2x FSAA which makes getting into the game and playing it totally fine. However, if you quit and want to go back to the menus or something, the text is totally botched all over the place, in some cases not even there (invisible).

However for just getting on and playing a game (I tested 8 turns in and it was still totally fine) you get no flicker on the white text or anything.

My opinion...BTS isn't really supporting the nvidia crowd. They've had problems with this for a lot longer than XP...Do I care? As Charles pointed out the game is 1.5 years old. Not really at this point. I think, like everyone else it's a driver problem, that will eventually get fixed.

Now...if this is the case with CMBB...I will be pissed beyond belief. I find it hard to believe that they can't figure out some kind of work around for the problem before release of that game....

[Schrullenhaft]

If you want to blame someone, then blame Nvidia. They've been unable to fix this problem with Windows 2000 in every one of their drivers. ATI doesn't have this problem, so you can be sure that it is a driver problem. Code-workarounds for driver issues aren't always possible. BTS is not ignoring the issue, but it is something that is beyond their control. If it annoys you enough, try out an 'interface mod' like Deanco's. I believe that it minimizes a certain amount of the white in 2D info screens (which is at least one of the culprits in the display corruption).

I suspect that CMBB will have similar problems since the element in question that is having problems with the driver is still there (2D info screens bordering/overlayed on a 3D-rendered space with white elements in the 2D portion). I assume that they may take into consideration Nvidia's lack of progress in addressing this particular problem, but there may only be a few things that they can do to address this without completely recoding the entire player interface.

[medlinke]

if the problem is white text...if there is a set of bmps made that elminates the white text wouldn't that fix it?

And for things like scenario selections which does get messed up, couldn't there be a patch that changes the color of the text output?

Seriously I think that if this is the only problem it wouldn't take a team of crack engineers to fix it and in fact, it may only take some modders & or a little effort and knowhow from the BTS folks to release an XP patch that changes the text colors.

I mean if they work on it now or later it really doesn't matter if indeed the graphic glitches will be the same in CMBB right?

I'm not trying to bash BTS, they are super folks who have done nothing but provide constant service to their community, but I do wish that there was some way to find a cool little work around / temp fix for the problem until nvidia or whoever can sort out the problems more completly...

PS...this is my beg....PLEEEEEAAAAAASSSSSEEEEE, with a Panzer on top?

[Wako]

From what I understand of this problem, while it may indeed be a driver issue, fixing it on BTS's side would be almost trivial. I doubt it would take more than a day or two of coding to fix it. Testing it might well take longer, hence their desire to just pooh-pooh it away. Since I've been using Win2000 for more than a year and WinXP

for the last 6 months, I finally just gave up hope that it would ever get fixed. I (like most on here I assume) just live with the NASTY way the screen looks during play. Not great, but what can you do.

Certainly there are hundreds of games that I have run that do NOT have this issue, which probably tells you why Nvidia isn't exactly falling all over themselves to fix it. You can be darn sure that if this was a BIG driver bug, it would be fixed by now because the FPS players would be roasting the Nvidia programmers over a slow fire.

It would be nice to know precisely why this seems to ONLY affect CM, but is somehow an Nvidia driver issue. Is there a post somewhere that has the details of which DirectX calls are not being correctly carried out by the Nvidia drivers?

[Schrullenhaft]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>It would be nice to know precisely why this seems to ONLY affect CM, but is somehow an Nvidia driver issue. Is there a post somewhere that has the details of which DirectX calls are not being correctly carried out by the Nvidia drivers?<hr></blockquote>

I can run CMBO under Win2K or XP on an ATI Radeon and it will not have the same problem.

I don't think many FPS games are using white elements in a fixed 2D screen (with swappable bitmaps). It looks worse when there is a 3D screen next to (or under ?) the 2D screen. As medlinke pointed out, most of these elements are bitmaps that can be changed, hence an interface mod clears some of the problems up. Some other screens would have to be changed to use a different color for either the background and/or the text, but that may not be enough for some situations. FSAA helps with some of the in-game screens, but the setup 2D screens and AARs require that you ESC out and back to refresh them properly.

There is no information of exactly which DirectX calls are being made that are causing the problems. I'd assume that they aren't esoteric calls and that most games don't utilize the screen elements and text the way that CM does.

[LtCol.05]

OK, I give.... Have a PIII 866, 512 Meg RAM, and a NVidia GeForce 3 T-200 running on XP Home. Have tried every Detinator driver from 20.41 up to 21.85 (clean installs each time). Either the game freezes between turn 1-3 or I get a blue screen telling me the nv4_disp.dll has caused a problem.

Also, have tried lowering graphics acceleration and changing the AGP setting in the bios from 64 up to 256. Still no go.....

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!!

Thanks,

[Schrullenhaft]

Are you overclocking either your video card or your CPU ?

What other AGP settings do you have in your CMOS/BIOS setup ? What motherboard are you using and have you updated the BIOS ? Is ACPI enabled and do you have an IRQ enabled for the video (this is usually the default, but it is possible to disable it) ? Is your video card sharing any IRQs with other PCI devices (especially any cards in PCI slot 1 and/or 2) ?

Will XP Home allow you to completely uninstall the Nvidia Detonator drivers and just install the video card as a "SVGA PCI Adapter" ?

You may want to run the 'Detonator Destroyer' to get rid of any drivers and settings from previous installations of the Detonator drivers. However, it may not work with XP and 2000.

Guru3D

(go to 'Videocard Drivers', then 'NVIDIA detonator drivers', then download 'Detonator Destroyer').

You can also download the latest betas from here. Remember to download only the Win2000/XP drivers.

[LtCol.05]

Thanks for the reply!!

Q. Are you overclocking either your video card or your CPU ?

No I do not overclock anything....

Q. What other AGP settings do you have in your CMOS/BIOS setup ?

I have settings from 16-256. I haven't tried 16 or 32....

Q. What motherboard are you using and have you updated the BIOS ?

I have a Biostar M6VCG and I have update the bios...

Q. Is ACPI enabled and do you have an IRQ enabled for the video (this is usually the default, but it is possible to disable it) ?

I do believe ACPI is enabled (if it shouldn't be I don't have a clue on how to disable) and no specific IRQ enabled in the bios for the vedio card.

Q. Is your video card sharing any IRQs with other PCI devices (especially any cards in PCI slot 1 and/or 2) ?

My video card doesn't share an IRQ (in IRQ all by itself). My sound card is in PCI slot 2.....Does it make a difference??

Q. Will XP Home allow you to completely uninstall the Nvidia Detonator drivers and just install the video card as a "SVGA PCI Adapter" ?

Yes it will....

S. You may want to run the 'Detonator Destroyer' to get rid of any drivers and settings from previous installations of the Detonator drivers. However, it may not work with XP and 2000.

Haven't run that....I've not seen anything that makes me believe that it will work in XP. Might give it a try as a last result

Guru3D

(go to 'Videocard Drivers', then 'NVIDIA detonator drivers', then download 'Detonator Destroyer').

S. You can also download the latest betas from here. Remember to download only the Win2000/XP drivers.

The only beta I haven't tried yet is 21.88

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Schrullenhaft]

I wouldn't imagine that a different beta driver will give you different results with your particular problem.

In your CMOS/BIOS setup in the 'Advanced Chipset Features' section there are four possible settings related to AGP: 'AGP Aperture Size', 'AGP 4X Mode', 'AGP Driving Control' and 'AGP Driving Value'.

AGP Aperture Size can be adjusted from 128Mb to 4Mb. Once you go down to 16Mb and below you are starting to curtail some of AGP's benefits (which is necessary on occasion with some video cards and their drivers). I wouldn't suspect that it would be necessary here.

AGP 4X Mode usually should be enabled. I'm not sure how much of a difference it makes being enabled or disabled. You may want to experiment with this setting to see if has an effect on your problem. This mode may affect the availability of 'Side Banding' and 'Fast Writes' and if it does, then disabling it may be a good place to start.

AGP Driving Control is usually a setting you want left to Auto. However, on occasion this may need to be set to Manual. This setting is often found on VIA chipset based boards and involves some of the signaling characteristics between the Northbridge of the chipset and the video card. When you set it to Manual you now have to deal with...

AGP Driving Value is a cryptic setting that is the value for the AGP slot's signaling characteristics. Unfortunately there is little user information available on these settings and experimenting can be a bit problematic since I believe it is possible to make a setting and not be able to change it back (after your display has gone blank at the next boot) without having a PCI video card available. The default value is usually DA. I'm not sure what to recommend in terms of a value.

Here's one website with some info on this:

Via Hardware

I'm not sure how much of a diference the VIA chipset drivers would make under WinXP, but it may be worth it to install them too.

Biostar's download of the VIA 4-in-1 4.34 drivers

Do you have on-board audio (and have it disabled) with your particular version of the motherboard ?

[ 11-09-2001: Message edited by: Schrullenhaft ]</p>

[LtCol.05]

I agree...doesn't seem to matter what driver I have.

Changed AGP Aperture Size to 32.

All the others the same:

enabled

auto

Drive value can't be set when on auto...if you go to manual driving control you can change driving value, but need a hex # thus your likely DA value. Although when in auto mine is 00.

I do not have on board sound etc....

Went to CM and it looked good for about 60 seconds, then got an IRQL address error???

CM is the only program I'm having trouble with....I still believe it's a video driver issue and will keep trying different (old and beta) drivers to see if I can get this to work...

If you can think of anything else, please pass it on!!

Thanks for all you time,

[kverdon]

Didn't I see a message from someone who said that they had fixed this problem by taking the offending fonts into Photoshop and giving them a slight Orange tinge? Perhaps this could be made into a bandaid mod?? I'd be interested if this works as I'm about to convert my laptop with Nvidia GeForce2 Go to XP and I play a fair share of CMBO on it.

thanks

Kevin

[Schrullenhaft]

Did you have this combination of hardware running another OS (such as Win98SE) before WinXP or was this system initially configured with XP and nothing else has been run on it previously ?

If the GeForce 3 Ti-200 hasn't been used with this system before, then I would suggest the 'Manual' configuration of the AGP Driving Values. Refer to the Viahardware info I pointed to you earlier for some additional info on what value to try out. I have heard suggestions of DA and Ex values as good ones to try with Nvidia GeForce cards.

I suggest changing your AGP Aperture value to 128 or 64Mb.

Have you tried out turning off the AGP 4X setting ? This will default your system back to AGP 2X, which may or may not make much of a performance difference, but it may make quite a stability difference.

Again, I doubt that you're going to find an answer to your crashing with a different Detonator driver. Since you're consistently getting the same problem I'd think that it would be a hardware or configuration issue.

[kverdon]

I do see Steve's point in this in that its NOT THEIR FAULT. However, saying that, I do think that it would be in their best interest to consider a work arround if one can be found. It may not be their fault but it IS their problem. There are some problematic facts in the computer world right now. One of them is that Nvidia owns the Lion share of the Video Chipset market. No, as a stalwart 3dfx fan. I don't like it but thats the way it is. The other fact is that anyone buying a new computer will be getting that computer with Windows XP. Thats just life, the computer world is dynamic.

CMBO is BTS's only offering right now, I think it would behove them to make it compatible with the current state of affairs, unless such a fix would be prohibitably costly. I have a friend who is currently going to purchase a new PC. This friend has also expressed interrest in CMBO. This new PC will come with an Nvidia Chipset and Windows XP. He either has to live with the quirks of CMBO and XP or skip the purchase of CMBO. The latter is more likely.

Nvidia is not the most responsive of companies and their "driver of the week" program is famous. Why rely on the graces of such a company to support your bread and butter? I personally think that BTS has more to loose than gain by just pointing the finger at the other team and not looking at a work around themselves. Maybe Nvidia WILL give a damn and fix this problem in V34.45555555 of thier drivers and MAYBE all the video card manufacturers will eventually get this fix into thier drivers. I would not like to bet the farm on it. Please BTS give this a second thought.

Kevin