lock ups

[lamprey]

HELP!!!! I love this game, but can't play

Both demos lock-up on me. (dozens and dozesns of times now). I can't even get out...have to reboot. Almost always before turn 9 (although I did complete a CMBO scenario once).

I have an AMD 1.4G, Kyro2 4500, win2000 pro. The sound is on the mother board (VIA I think). I started out w/DirectX 8.1 and some old video drivers. I upgraded to the latest Kyro2 drivers and DirectX 9....no help. any tips?

[Schrullenhaft]

I personally haven't used the latest Kyro drivers. From comments by other posters to this forum it would seem that these drivers have more problems than the older drivers. I have no idea about the DirectX 9.0 compatibility of the newer drivers (though I wouldn't necessarily expect that there would be problems). Basically upgrading the video drivers and DirectX probably created more problems.

Both games produce a lot of sound data, though the demos may be using downsampled audio compared to the full versions (I know that this is the case with CMBO). You may want to download some newer audio drivers from VIA Arena (the audio driver page can be accessed from the listing on the right hand side). If you haven't installed them already, I suggest that you install the VIA 4-in-1 drivers too.

Your audio (VIA AC'97 I assume) may be sharing an IRQ with another PCI device (or possibly your video card). You can check this out in Win2K by going to the System control panel > Hardware tab > Device Manager button > View menu > select 'Resources by Type' and check out the listing in 'Interrupt Request'. Unfortunately there may be little to nothing you can do if you're sharing IRQs (other than to delete the drivers for the device and move it to another PCI slot - which still may not change anything).

Beyond this would be overheating problems. You can try out FutureMark's 3DMark 2001 SE and run some loops of it to see if your computer crashes/locks up. CM often pushes a CPU to 100%, which can cause some systems to overheat where they won't with most other applications.

You can also check out this thread about problems with screens going black with the 'WM Timer' patch for Win2K/XP (though it isn't causing lockups). I don't know if this problem is applicable to the Kyros or not - it seems to affect a number of people with GeForces and Radeons, especially under XP.

[lamprey]

Thanks for your help...but no change. I went back to the Kyro II 7.111 driver, back to DirectX 8.1, and installed the new VIA 4in1 drivers. No change.

In fact, I tried every iteration of the video drivers, audio drivers, and directX possible.

Are other people having troubles with Kyro cards?

[Schrullenhaft]

Have you tried a repeating loop run of the 3D Mark benchmark I mentioned above yet ? The purpose behind this is to find out whether your computer has a problem with overheating when the CPU and videocard are both run at a high level (though I'm not sure how much the benchmark will stress the CPU, especially at higher resolutions). CM tends to do this where other games will not.

When you change video drivers, do you uninstall the previous set and go back to a 'Standard PCI SVGA' first or do you just install over the previous set (which could cause problems or at least have them continue despite changing drivers) ?

How did you change your DirectX version ? Typically you have to install Windows from scratch in order to 'back rev' the DirectX version.

I have no idea how much this may help, but if your motherboard's CMOS/BIOS setup has it available to adjust I suggest chaning the 'AGP Multiplier'. Your default will probably be 'AGP 4X', I suggest trying out 'AGP 2X' or 'AGP 1X' to see if this helps. What motherboard do you have anyway ?

The Paraknowya Forums used to be one of the best sources for info and help regarding the Kyros. However the board was down for quite awhile last year and all of the old posts are gone with their wealth of information.