Barleyman Posted January 22, 2001 Share Posted January 22, 2001 I decided to try out W2k and promtly ran into the same flicker, lockup and savegame corruption problems other people have had here. My setup: Tbird 1G 128MB PC133 Abit KT7 3DBlaster TnT2 Ultra AGP 32MB DMX Xfire 1024 sound USB mouse IBM ATA100 45GB HDD (in ATA66 controller) This setup ran CM _PROBLEM FREE_ with W98. Ok, sometimes it'd bomb back to desktop but maybe only once a day, no big deal. I tried bios upgrade, different Nvidia/Creative drivers, disabling soundcard, updating VIA mobo drivers, disabling performance stuff in BIOS, forcing soundcard/3D card to use different IRQ's .. All for naught. Biggest problem by far is the abrupt lockup of W2k which requires a hard reset. Other stuff I could live with even if sometimes muzzle exhausts turns purple which might just be combat fatique.. Latest driver I tried was Nvidia WHQL 6.62 driver which came with Bill Seal of Quality but it was even faster to lock up than 6.31/6.34 drivers and didn't fix flicker. If anyone has actually found a solution to the lock ups, maybe I wouldn't have to upgrade back to W98 .. But if I cannot play CM, it doesn't matter what else W2k might do for me. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arrow_33 Posted January 22, 2001 Share Posted January 22, 2001 I was going to post a similar note: I have also TNT2 board (Elsa Erazor III) and I tried to run CM under Win2K. I am experiencing serious video corruption: text is unreadable, missing colored outline for soldiers, and so on. It is not possible to play so I didn't have chance to experience any lookups. I set the resolution of the game on 800x600 on 100MHz (desktop is on 1024x768 on 100MHz), but it didn't help. Finally, just as an idea for Barleyman: if you(we) cannot find a solution for the Win2K/TNT2 problem, you don't have to necessarily get rid of Win2K. You can partition your hard-drive (you have enough room there), install Win98 and then on the second partition Win2K. (That is the recommended order: Win98 and than Win2K.) Win2K will install the dual boot that would enable you to choose the OS that you want to run. However, I still agree that it would be really nice to be able to run CM under Win2K. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted January 22, 2001 Share Posted January 22, 2001 You both may want to try an earlier version of the NVidia drivers. Someone on this forum had reported that their Dell OEM driver was based on the 3.xx series (which I can't find for Win2K) and it didn't have problems with the text (I have no idea if it will fix any other problems). The earliest version I can find at the moment is 5.13. Unfortunately pre 6.xx releases will be a bit slower for GeForces, but I don't think there'll be much of a difference for TNT2 based video cards. Reactorcritical (go to TNT/TNT2 section - Win2K drivers are near bottom of that section): http://www.reactorcritical.com/download.shtml Barleyman - I'm not familiar with your sound card; what sound chip is it based on ? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barleyman Posted January 23, 2001 Author Share Posted January 23, 2001 I tried the 5.22 Nvidia driver, but it didn't make any difference, still flickering text and hard lock-up of W2k after few moments. That's the oldest available for W2k, too. Actually for me, not all of the text flickers, just a few borders like in the GO button. Still looks very annoying. DMX Xfire's a new soundcard from Terratec but they don't actually tell you what's it got (!) .. From what I've gathered, it uses the same chipset as Diamond MX400, something from Cirrus. Your basic 3D soundcard, I replaced SBLIVE with it as I got terminally sick of the loud crackling etc problems with EAX. Anyway. I played around some more with my W2k HW manager and found out it assigns ALL of the PCI IRQ's to IRQ7, so soundcard, network card, USB and TNT2 all use it. I did my damnedest to make it stop with no effect whatsoever. That was up to and including physically moving the cards to other slots, telling ESCD that IRQ7 was Verboten .. W2k doesn't let me change any of the resource settings for any of the PnP devices and apparently it resets the IRQ/DMA/etc values after it takes over. And it really seems to like IRQ7. Nice going, I think that's either a bug in the way it reports things or the VIA mobo drivers are fairly funky.. I quess I'll try if CM makes W2k freeze just by sitting there if I don't do anything.. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barleyman Posted January 23, 2001 Author Share Posted January 23, 2001 Okay, it'll lock up just by sitting there after I start a scenario after a few minutes. Most text appears sort-of yellowish for me and it doesn't flicker, maybe I have my gamma/color correction to thank of that.. I've also been unable to save games, they appear as scenarios and lock up CM if I try to load them. Fiddling with HDD write caching didn't help.. Now if I can just find NTFS->FAT32 converter I could downgrade.. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brooktrout Posted January 23, 2001 Share Posted January 23, 2001 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Barleyman: Now if I can just find NTFS->FAT32 converter I could downgrade.. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> The only NTFS->FAT32 converter that I am aware of is PartitionMagic 6.0. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted January 23, 2001 Share Posted January 23, 2001 Barleyman - do you get a listing of IRQs assigned to PCI devices when you boot (usually on the DOS text screen after the initial splash screen for Award BIOS) ? Are your previously listed PCI devices all assigned to IRQ 7 here also ? If not then you would have to do some uninstalling (and possibly registry editing) to get rid of the devices and have Windows redetect them. Microsoft seems to program their PNP setup reassign the IRQ back to it's previous setting. You may have to turn off 'PNP OS' in the CMOS/BIOS setup, which might prevent Win2K from reassigning the IRQs differently from the BIOS. I wouldn't think that an unique IRQ for sound and video would solve your problem, but it may be worth trying. Do you have problems with any other programs running and locking up Win2K ? Have you applied the Service Pack 1 to Win2K (though the latest retail copies of Win2K may have it as part of the install) ? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arrow_33 Posted January 23, 2001 Share Posted January 23, 2001 I have uniquely IRQ (11) for my video card, so making it unique for your system might not help (you still never know). Also I applied SP1 when I installed Win2K. Other games that I run under Win2K don't have problems, but those are Win2K compatible (except F/A-18 Hornet that I didn't even bother to try installing under Win2K). However, let us know if you succeed. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Madmatt Posted January 23, 2001 Share Posted January 23, 2001 hose of you with w2K, what version of Direct X are you running? I have a system with W2K Advanced Server and I had numerous problems (mine has a ATI Rage card) until I upgraded to Direct X 8.0 Even so, there is not much movement with video card manufactorers to release updated W2K drivers as frequently as 98 and ME. That seems to be the major stummbling block right now with W2K. Madmatt 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barleyman Posted January 24, 2001 Author Share Posted January 24, 2001 Win9x stuff not into W2k applies.. I did some fact-finding and the only way to manipulate IRQs in W2k is to disable ACPI. It's a bad idea to do that in BIOS (even if it's possible). If you "update" the ACPI PC driver from "Computer" to standard pc, W2k won't have complete control of resources anymore. I haven't been able to actually CHANGE the resource allocation manually, except by moving cards around, even with both ACPI and PCI IRQ steering (that's in "standard pc") disabled. Anyway. I managed to play without crashes for about 2 hours in the Desobry01 operation, but after reboot w2k locked up almost immediately. Maybe it was just a fluke.. Savegame was corrupted as usual, too. I found out that if I save the game and immediately exit, the game is NOT corrupted. It looks like CM leaves all savegames OPEN until you exit (!!) 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Madmatt Posted January 24, 2001 Share Posted January 24, 2001 DO you mean ANY time you save a game with W2K the resulting save game file is corrupt? I have not ever seen that on my Windows 2000 system nor has anyone else that i know who uses W2K ever reported this to me. Could you send me one of these corrupt files to look at please? Thanks! Madmatt 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barleyman Posted January 24, 2001 Author Share Posted January 24, 2001 If CM makes W2k lock up, any games saved during the scenario/op in progress will be corrupted, no matter how much time passed between "saving" it and W2k locking up. I managed to play an op for two hours before lock up last night and the test savegames I made right in the beginning were hosed. But if I save and exit CM before W2k does die, the savegame will be OK. I just deleted all the corrupted savegames, as they appear as scenarios in the scenario/op list and clutter things up.. but I'm sure CM will make some more for me unless I manage to find a workaround for the lock-ups :-b 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted January 24, 2001 Share Posted January 24, 2001 Barleyman - Are you running any sort of anti-virus program ? Was your Win2K installation an upgrade or was it a completely clean install ? I'm guessing that your system is "hosing" on writing the autosave file. I'd guess that it's at that point while writing the file to disk that your system locks up. I have no idea why it wouldn't be consistent since you can sometimes play for a couple of hours. But something is interfering with the autosave function of CM. Before you run CM do a Ctrl-Alt-Del and look at the processes and programs running (you may want to write them down). One of these processes may be interfering with CM's autosave function. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barleyman Posted January 25, 2001 Author Share Posted January 25, 2001 I don't actually get blue-screen-of-death, W2k just locks up requiring hard reset. I also never had a lock-up after saving the game, but when CM finally killed W2k, all of the several saves I TRIED to do were hosed. I reckon that could be a bug in the IDE driver code somewhere. In any case, I made the lockups go away with all the different things I did .. Now I just have to backtrack and see when it starts to crash again. Bughunting by combat mission? I disabled ACPI (from device manager), which reduced lock up frequency but didn't make it go away.. I made sure all PCI devices had different IRQ's, even if it's not supposed to matter. Then I got very-latest-leaked ALI driver pack with new IDE drivers that replaced M$ generic drivers. I also applied an obscure registry patch which was supposed to be a workaround for an AGP problem in Nvidia drivers with Athlon Mobo that was due to be fixed with next public driver release.. I still have flickering buttons, but I can live with that. How about BTS gets an W2k machine with Athlon + Nvidia and figures out what goes wrong with that? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest wwb_99 Posted January 26, 2001 Share Posted January 26, 2001 One point: W2k is NOT a Plug-n-Play OS. Usually it won't even install if this is turned on in the CMOS, and it is best left off on a W2k box. WWB ------------------ Before battle, my digital soldiers turn to me and say, Ave, Caesar! Morituri te salutamus. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stuart_b Posted January 27, 2001 Share Posted January 27, 2001 "Then I got very-latest-leaked ALI driver pack with new IDE drivers that replaced M$ generic drivers." Your boards the Abit KT7? Thats a VIA based board I'm pretty sure! Getting VIA drivers might solve your problems, and make sure your got SP1 for Win2K and DX8. Probably wouldnt hurt to install VIA 4-in-1's after DX8 and SP1 just incase they overwrite somethin. http://www.viatech.com/drivers/index.htm Hope that might semi-help [This message has been edited by stuart_b (edited 01-26-2001).] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barleyman Posted January 28, 2001 Author Share Posted January 28, 2001 Um. I already fixed the main problem (w2k crashes) There's a registry workaround in ASUS site that works for other (kt133) motherboards too .. Yeah, W2k isn't a PnP OS, it uses ACPI by default. That means it doesn't give a "hoot" what you put into bios as long as ACPI is enabled. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
risc Posted January 29, 2001 Share Posted January 29, 2001 Is this damn flickering ever going to be fixed for Win2k ??? I kind of thought that it is my Video Driver or Directx7 not being implemented well in win2k. Was I wrong, all my other games work great, Falcon 4, WW2F, Talonsoft wargames , Close Combat series all works well. With Directx8 I would say things are even better than with Dx7 but I just don't understand why BTS doesn't look at the code and fix CM for Win2k. It's kind of hard to get into CM since after first battle the flickering gets really bad...at this point I removed CM from my computer since I only have Win2K. Can you with patch 1.1 play TCP/IP game on Win2k ? I didn't try it yet but one of the betas i tried didn't work on Win2K. Peter PS: My system: P3 500Mhz, 256MB ram Diamond V770 TNT2 Ultra, Detonator 5.32 SB Live! Win2K + SP1 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted January 29, 2001 Share Posted January 29, 2001 V. 1.1 works with Win2K and TCP/IP. When you mention flickering you're speaking of the text ? The other programs probably don't have this problem since their text is significantly bigger (thicker) than the text in CM (I believe). It's the 1-pixel thin text in conjunction with the text color that is causing a problem to my knowledge. If changing the text's color/size doesn't help (done within the code), then a complete reworking of the text display code would be necessary (my guess). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
risc Posted January 30, 2001 Share Posted January 30, 2001 Actually my problem seems to be with palette. Certain colors are flashing meaning switching between white and black. And yes I'm having problem with scenario text descriptions as well. After first battle it looks all messed up, like camouflaged or something. From my point of view its either the bitmaps are a bit corrupted (only some of them) or the code is messed up. Did anyone speak to BTS about this ? Peter 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barleyman Posted January 30, 2001 Author Share Posted January 30, 2001 For me the big white "TURN" and "OF" labels flicker, so no, it's not "1 pixel wide text only" FWIW, ESCing back to desktop fixes display corruption temporarily. This way you can read briefings and AARs. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
risc Posted January 30, 2001 Share Posted January 30, 2001 I was thinking about a bit more last night and being a developer my conclusion is this is a code issue. We should talk to BTS about this...it iritates me a lot and you ? Peter 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barleyman Posted January 31, 2001 Author Share Posted January 31, 2001 Well, please do. They could probably crack this nut pretty easily if they had the problem setup running. That is, W2k, Nvidia and maybe athlon/duron. I don't know what kind of HW budget BTS operates with, but they've been selling out lately.. They coulda always GPL CM 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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