IDF Posted January 10, 2001 Share Posted January 10, 2001 I keep getting this problem, after a few turns the game just stops, it seems as though the sound has gone into a loop and frozen the game/graphics, I have to ctrl-Alt-Delete to get out of it. Any suggestions? I'm using 650MHz Duron, TNT2 Ndvida, 128 RAM, SB Live and Win 98 v1. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted January 10, 2001 Share Posted January 10, 2001 There could be plenty of possibilities. Do you know if your SB Live is sharing an IRQ with the TNT2 video card ? Go to Start Menu > Settings > Control Panel > System control panel > Device Manager tab > double-click on the Computer icon in the listing. This will bring up a listing of IRQs in use. Often the first PCI slot next to the AGP slot will share an IRQ with the video card. The only way around this is to move the PCI card to another slot (sometimes the 2nd PCI slot will also share an IRQ with the AGP). Depending on your chipset, BIOS, number of PCI card and other settings there may or may not be a way to get a unique IRQ for your video. The important thing here is to have your video card and sound card to NOT share an IRQ together. I assume that you have the latest SB Live drivers (v. 3.0 or something). It's been out for quite awhile and you may already have it installed. Do you have any other programs running in the background ? You may want to disable or close them down while you're playing CM. Are you overclocking your Duron or your TNT2 card ? CM can be a little more picky about overclocking the CPU or the video card's memory than other games. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Madmatt Posted January 10, 2001 Share Posted January 10, 2001 Which TNT drivers are you using? I would highly reccomend that you stay away from any of the 7.xx series beta drivers and I only prefer the official Nvidia Detonator 3 drivers (6.31) as they are the most stable. Madmatt 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IDF Posted January 11, 2001 Author Share Posted January 11, 2001 Fellas, Thanks very much for your time. Madmatt its a pleasure to meet you. You've done some great stuff with your web site. Firstly I'm currently running CMv1.3 don't ask me why but I can't for some reason download v1.5???? Secondly Schrullenhaft I'm not 100% sure what you mean. I followed your instructions and then a screen came up displaying various settings starting from 00 .... Did you mean that on that page there shouldn't be the video and sound card,even though they are at different settings? They are listed together. If so what do I do? I tried yesterday to diable all programs except Explorer and Systray but it still failed. I don't think I'm overclocking anything!!! Madmatt, my driver provider is Nvidia, v.365 and the file number is 4.12..... The truth is it didn't specify what type of driver?? Thanks for your replies in advance. It is quite frustrating now playing like this. I played the demo on a computer at work (Mac) and at my brothers house PII 350 and had now problems at all. Now with my new Duron I can't go more than 5 turns!!!! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Madmatt Posted January 11, 2001 Share Posted January 11, 2001 I am not sure this will fix anything but here is a link to the drivers I personally reccomend for that video card. I believe the ones you have know are the generic windows versions (hard to tell without seeing for myself) but I KNOW that these are stable. http://www.nvidia.com/products.nsf/htmlmedia/detonator3.html As to the part with the IRQ's and Device Manager, well since Scrullenhaft started, I will let him tell you what to do for now... Together we will get ya running! Madmatt 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug Beman Posted January 11, 2001 Share Posted January 11, 2001 IDF, what motherboard do you have? The reason I ask is I bought, last August, a Tbird 750/Asus A7V setup/Asus 6600 vidcard, and finally had to have the mfr exchange them for a P3/Asus CUV4X setup. I and they simply could not get either the Asus vidcard, or a replacement Matrox, to work correctly with the mobo/CPU combo. Any 3D stuff caused trouble, even the "3D" effects in Diablo2. The P3/CUV4X setup runs smoothly, although I've lost my support for ATA100. Not trying to scare you, just relating experience. DjB 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted January 13, 2001 Share Posted January 13, 2001 IDF, my first set of instructions regarding the "IRQ Usage" would bring you to a dialog box that would list the devices in your computer that are using an IRQ. The "Setting" column is the IRQ that is in use and the "Hardware using the setting" column is self-explanatory. Scrolling through this list you should see your video card listed and your sound card also listed (with the SB Live being listed more than once since it "emulates" a SB 16). Since CM is very video and sound intensive it is best that the video card and the sound card NOT share an IRQ. While this isn't an absolute necessity, it can sometimes alleviate some problems that people experience in CM. When I mentioned PCI slots in my first post I was speaking of actual, physical placement of your cards inside of your computer. If you did have the sound and video sharing an IRQ you would often (though not always) have to resort to physically moving around your PCI cards (in your case this would be the SB Live card) to change the IRQ. I believe that your driver version is probably 3.65. The "4.12....." version number is another number system that Microsoft prefers. So you may often see drivers with two sets of version numbers. If I'm correct, then the drivers that Madmatt is recommending are A LOT newer. Do you know the specific manufacturer of your TNT2 (i.e. - Diamond, Creative, ASUS, etc.) ? This can be important sometimes. As Doug said about motherboards. There is the possibility that your CPU/motherboard combo may be a bit too finicky with CM. This may be the chipset or other engineering factors in regards to the motherboard. To find out which motherboard (without opening the case) you have you will probably either need your motherboard manual or you will need some info off of your initial POST screen (where you see the memory being "counted"). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IDF Posted January 14, 2001 Author Share Posted January 14, 2001 Madmatt, Thanks for link, I'll now try it out. Doug, I've got a Gigabyte AMD K7 series (GA-7ZM) motherboard with a Duron 650 Chip. Schrullenhaft, Thanks for clearing that up. I'd prefer not to start playing around with insides there must be other solutions. I have a Nividia Video card. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted January 14, 2001 Share Posted January 14, 2001 Moving the PCI cards around is only necessary if your sound card and video card are sharing IRQs. I see that your motherboard is a MicroATX, which only has 3 PCI slots. **edit** I don't pay attention much... the following is an audio codec that is on your motherboard, but it isn't what your using since you have the SB Live PCI card, so you can ignore the Sigmatel info. Your audio chip is some sort of AC97 codec chip (which will be a really small chip near the back of the motherboard). I can't figure out which codec you have, but you may want to search for an updated driver (which may be really hard to find since many of the codec manufacturers don't post updates on their websites). If you're lucky the manufacturer's name will be part of the description of the sound device in the Device Manager. I'm guessing that you may have a Sigmatel driver. From the following link click on "Audio" near the bottom. Sigmatel audio codec driver (v. 4.10.01.0067A): http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/support/support.htm Here's a new set of VIA 4-in-1 drivers that you may want to install. AGP updates can help with some problems (though I don't think VIA updated anything in regards to TNT2 based cards and AGP): Via 4-in-1 (v. 4.25): http://www.via.com.tw/drivers/index.htm There are some new BIOSs that date back to Nov 2000 (with a BETA FB9 being available), though I don't see anything updated in them that would truly be applicable to your problem. [This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 01-14-2001).] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IDF Posted January 15, 2001 Author Share Posted January 15, 2001 Madmatt, I downloaded the driver and installed it. The graphics do appear to be a bit better. THe only problem is that the game now seizes up within the first turn. When I first installed it on the computer the computer reset itself. I the started the game audio came on but the graphics failed to load!!!! After rebooting it the graphics came on but it froze before the end of the turn. Schrullenhaft, What I'm doing now is downloading the latest driver for SB live from creative. I'll see if that works. I'll then try the link you gave me if nothing improves. WE'll get there guys thanks for your support 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IDF Posted January 16, 2001 Author Share Posted January 16, 2001 Guys, The drivers I downloaded from creative appear to be before the current one I'd had (11/99). Schrullenhaft, I'd got that 4 in 1 file but how do I install it? I still can't play the game. Where do we go from here? Firstly I just wanted to say that the more I see this problem I'm convinced that its a video/audio conflict. The irony is that I bought a game last year called Hidden & Dangerous. Everybody was ranting and raving at the bugs and instabillity of that game. Well I can play that game on this system with NO problems. But I can't seem to play more than 5 minutes of CM!!!!!! I am a little disapointed. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted January 16, 2001 Share Posted January 16, 2001 The VIA 4-in-1 drivers are in .zip format, so you'll need to extract them to an empty directory. You'll probably want to create a VIA or DRIVERS\VIA directory and extract them to there. Once that is done there is a setup program that is extracted. Run that and you'll be given options as to which drivers you want to install, etc. Sometimes it's a good idea NOT to install the IDE drivers. On occasion the non-Microsoft supplied IDE drivers may have problems. They may work fine for you however. I have a computer at home that is based on an Intel BX chipset with a TNT2 Ultra and an SB Live card (using a driver based on NVidia's 6.24 & the latest SB Live drivers). So the cards and their drivers aren't completely incompatible. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crenegar Posted January 17, 2001 Share Posted January 17, 2001 Before you guys get too carried away changing drivers and IRQ's, try slowing the graphics acceleration in - Display Properties - Settings - Advanced - Troubleshooting. I had totally screwed up text and the game would crash before 1 or 2 turns were up. Reducing acceleration to about half fixed everything. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IDF Posted January 18, 2001 Author Share Posted January 18, 2001 crenedar, That might me excellent advice. I'll try that now. I did check my IRQ's and they are NOT on the same IRQ No. Sound card 10, video card 11. Schrullenhaft, Where do i get the latest drivers for SB Line from? v6.... The ones I got from Creative are from July 1999!!!!! I hope crenderas advice works!!! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted January 18, 2001 Share Posted January 18, 2001 Crenegar's advice works on occasion, quite often you'll find that the display is going to operate much slower since the slider disables the acceleration functions of your drivers/video card. Primarily this is geared toward 2D drawing, but it can affect 3D also. There are other tweaks that can be done from the DirectX Diagnostic, but they will also affect your rendering speed and features. The latest drivers for Creative Labs Live are here. Since your drivers are dated July '99, I assume that they're Liveware 3.0. If they aren't, then you have a large download ahead of you to get it (there's a link to the Liveware page in the first driver listing): http://www.creative.com/support/files/download.asp?reg=0&OS=Win98∏=sblive&select=Get+Files 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IDF Posted January 19, 2001 Author Share Posted January 19, 2001 Crenedar, Your advice worked!! Now I can play the game for more than2-3 turns!! walla I can play the game!!! The only thing is that now the game looks so choppy, it reminds my of the Atari games of the 80's. I just upgraded my computer and I did it with CM in mind. Why wont the darn thing work properly? I am using recent computer tech. I'm not using a P166 or 8 MG video!! Its a bloody 650 MHZ Duron with 128 RAM and 32 TNT2 card!!! Where to from here? Schrullenhaft, Thanks for that link I'll try it now. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goofy Posted January 19, 2001 Share Posted January 19, 2001 IDF, I just upgraded my RAM to 256 and it took all the chop out of the action. I was at 128 but I don't think I have a single origional texture left. In most cases I'm using the hi-res version if there is an option for it. I'm still using a 16meg Voodoo Banshee card on a P3 450, DirectX 8.0 and I was begining to see some chop. If I turned down the tree coverage etc it helped but with the added RAM I've eliminated the problem. I guess I'll eventually HAVE to upgrade the video card but seems to work well now. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IDF Posted January 21, 2001 Author Share Posted January 21, 2001 Shrullenhaft, I got that driver 9x for SB live but this is the one I had before. When checking driver information in the device manager it says that the driver is from 8/99?????? How do I get the latest driver? PLease anyone I need more advise to get me up and running. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted January 21, 2001 Share Posted January 21, 2001 IDF - Drivers from the Summer of '99 are most likely geared towards the LiveWare 2.0. I'm not sure what you sound is like under Liveware 2.0 (I was missing many sounds in the Beta Demo until I upgrade to Liveware 3.0). The Liveware 3.0 download is quite large (about 25+ Mb) or it can be purchased on CD from Creative. LiveWare 3.0 downloads (on right hand side of page - Select your OS, etc.): http://www.soundblaster.com/liveware/ Since your sound card and video card aren't sharing IRQs I wouldn't suspect that upgrading your Live drivers would fix your lockups. You may want to check your CMOS/BIOS setup (under Advanced menu or something to that effect) for a setting called "Graphics Aperture" (or something with Aperture in the name). Reduce this setting to it's lowest value and see if that helps with your problem or not. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IDF Posted January 24, 2001 Author Share Posted January 24, 2001 To all that helped, Thankyou I am now up and running. I downloaded Direct X 8.0, diabled AGP setting, downloaded latest mouse driver and I'm now current. Thanks for your time and suggestions particularly you Shrullenhaft. IDF 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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