lock-up on demo

[gahris]

Hi all, I've been ""trying"" to play the demo of combat missions, but it locks up part way though the battle ""5-10mins"", i would like to play a whole missions before i plunge 60$ into a game to buy it. the lock up is a total lock up, and only way to fix is power button. my system specs are

winME,

amd k6/2 500mhz cpu

savage4 32mb vid, pci

sb live mp3,

pine 52x cd-rom,

10gig, and 2gig fugistu HD

microsoft optical mouse,

net card,

17" digital monitor, please help :confused:

[Schrullenhaft]

Unfortunately there can be all sorts of reasons why your system is locking up, most of them have to deal with your hardware. Do you have lockups doing anything else on your computer, especially 3D gaming ?

Does your video card have a fan on it or only a passive heatsink ? If it has a fan does it spin fast or can you notice some inconsistent rotation speeds ? Do you have a lot of dust in the video card, CPU or power supply fan ?

What motherboard do you have and what chipset is it based on ? Have you installed chipset drivers for your motherboard ?

I know WinME has DirectX 7.1, but have you upgraded to another version of DirectX ? What video driver version are you running ? Unfortunately you can't find relatively new drivers for the S3 video chips. Most of the S3 stuff is dated and it is getting increasingly harder to find the 'tweaked' drivers from 3rd parties.

[gahris]

my motherboard is p5a/b socket-7

my sytem locks up "ocasionally" in 3d games, after 3-4 hours of motocross madness, rarely in 1nsane racing

only gam ei have trouble playing is il2, and klingon academy

I play 3d game like ST:bridge commander, ra2, warbirds2,3, aces high, panzer general3, fighter sqaudron all those no problems

im running dx 8.1 i think, i have all updates from microsoft,

it really pisses me off that it crashes, because a friend of mine ((-illo-)) said it a wonderfull game, but the lock ups piss me off

my fan sytem is cool master bearing fans, on on cpu with 2" heat sink, same type of fan on vid card, vid card has heat sink, and power supply has plenty off air flow

[Schrullenhaft]

What's your AGP jumper setting on the video card (I assume that it may have one) ? You may want to try 'AGP2X' to see if that helps.

Are the other games that you're having problems with using DirectX ? Are any of the games that work fine using DirectX or are they using OpenGL ?

What driver version are you running (though I really don't have any recommendations for a different driver that could solve your problems) ?

[gahris]

pci vid, and latest drivers from dimond

[Schrullenhaft]

..pci...

Uh.. I missed that, so you can obviously ignore the AGP suggestions.

Which exact motherboard do you have the P5A (ATX)or the P5A-B (an AT motherboard) and are you running an AT power supply if it is a P5A-B ? Have you installed the ALI chipset drivers (v. 1.09) ? Though with a PCI card they'll probably make little difference since most video issues end up being AGP-related.

Is your S3 Savage4 32Mb PCI a particular brand (Diamond, PowerColor, etc.) and model, such as a Diamond Stealth III S540 ? Do you know exactly which 'Savage4' chip is on your card ?

The passive heatsink that Diamond uses caused problems for this one reviewer almost 3 years ago ( Stealth III S540 Review). His solution was to either mount a fan on the heatsink or running the computer in a well air-conditioned room.

[ August 12, 2002, 08:29 PM: Message edited by: Schrullenhaft ]