After putting CMBO back on HD having probs

[NDBBM]

Freezing to be exact, then to top it off I couldn't remember my password, had to re-register... (Also, doing a search didn't help)

9 times out of 10 it is a total freeze up requiring a manual reset, the other time the mouse still moves. This happens after about 5 mins or so, I only recall it freezing during the orders phase.

System is:

Win98 SE (4.10.2222A)

AMD Athlon 650

192MB RAM

NVIDIA RIVA TNT2 Model 64/Model 64 Pro (PCI card)

Driver files 4.13.01.2942 -the latest detonators

Logitech USB Optical wheel mouse

Driver version 9.61

Soyo SY-K7VIA Motherboard which has the VIA onboard sound- VIA AC97 Audio Controller (WDM)

Drivers 4.05.1109, the latest 4 in 1's

Running DirectX 8.1 (4.08.01.0881)

No sound acceleration turned on in DxDiag

Desktop in True Color 32 bit 1280X960

CMBO 1.12 No Mods

Game ran great before I took it off a year or so ago, had a Voodoo then along with older DirectX etc.

I've tried; turning down/off hardware accelration, Standard PS/2 Mouse (disabled the Logitech one)... all I can think of right now.

Running only Explorer and Systray.

Also I have to "Shift" past the opening movie, if I don't I get a black screen CTRL-ALT-DEL CMBO not responding.

Nothing is overclocked (unless it came that way out of the box)

Any ideas/help would be appreciated

[Green Hornet]

Interesting...I had nearly the same type of problems with my NVidia Riva TNT2 chipset as well using the 2942 detonator drivers. My symptoms were slightly different.

The combination of DirectX 8.0 and the 2942 drivers on my system caused the sound to completely go away after about 5 minutes of playing CMBO. Only restarting CMBO would get the sound back. I never had this problem until I upgraded my machine to DirectX8.0.

I downloaded even more recent drivers (TNT2/GeForce Reference Windows drivers 4.13.01.2980) from the battlefront.com, support, troubleshooting guide, I think they're up to 30.00 now. This took care of my problem and now CMBO works perfectly.

I'm not sure if this will fix your problem bu there seems to be some similarities so I suppose it might be worth a try. Good luck.

[NDBBM]

Nope, didn't work, but it helped. Installed 29.80 played one 500pt QB no freeze. Then Froze every game thereafter almost immediately. As a side note I'm curious on why I couldn't find those drivers on the actual nvidia web site. Which gives the 29.42's as the last.

[Schrullenhaft]

Because those 29.80 drivers are beta and haven't been officially released. I don't suspect that your problem is solely due to your video driver version. Do you play any other DirectX 3D games on your computer ? Do they lock up ?

Do you know if you have adequate ventilation in you case ? The TNT2 M64's are sometimes passively cooled, in which case there may be too much dust on the heatsink. If the card is actively cooled (fan) then you may want to run the computer with the cover off to check the video card's fan.

Not that it will make any sort of difference here, but the latest BIOS for your motherboard is '2AA4' (2000-9-18). Though this is usually a default, make sure that the setting 'Assign IRQ for VGA' in the 'PNP/PCI Configuration Setup' in teh CMOS/BIOS setup is set to 'enabled'.

[NDBBM]

Took the sides off the case, for the cooling issue. (Plus moved it next to duct for the heat/AC..so it has cool air blowing in it) Also as long as the vid card was easily accesible I moved it to another PCI slot. It is passivly cooled BTW, zero dust on the heat sink, as the card is less then a month old. Also moved my second fan so it's closer to the card. Long story short, still freezes. Only other game on my system right now is Neverwinter Nights, which does have an occasional freeze. If it does it's after about an hour of play, same deal though total lockup. Are you thinking possible DirectX prob? Oh yea, the assign IRQ in the BIOS was enabled.

BTW thanks for the replies so far, ideas and courses of action are always appreciated.

[Schrullenhaft]

It looks like NWN uses DirectX 8.1. So I assume that most of your AGP settings in the CMOS/BIOS are OK. Do you know what IRQ your onboard AC97 audio is using, is it the same IRQ as the video card (you can check in the Device Manager by double-clicking on the 'Computer' listing) ? It's possible that ACPI may route ALL PCI devices into one IRQ (but that doesn't happen consistently in Win98).

Have you tried CM with sound or ambient sound turned off ? You may want to enable sound acceleration in the DirectX Diagnostic applet to see if it helps.

Do you have the 'Legacy Sound' enabled in your CMOS/BIOS setup (Intergrated Peripherals) ? What are the SB & MPU settings ? You may want to disable these to see if it helps any.

I don't know what version of the VIA AC97 audio driver you have, but Soyo has posted v. 2.31 on their site.

In regards to your video driver, I'd suggest the following. Uninstalling anything associated with your previous 3dfx Voodoo card (an uninstaller in the Add/Remove Programs control panel and possibly rooting around in the registry and WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory for listings and files). I also suggest uninstalling your current video driver (again, using Add/Remove Programs) and installing it as a 'SVGA' card. At that point you may want to uninstall and then reinstall the VIA chipset drivers. This will probably require a reboot. After this then install DirectX 8.1 and (after rebooting) install your updated sound driver (from above). Then install your choice of NVidia drivers. Basically the 6.50's could work for you too since the latest versions are updated primarily to address the features of the GeForce family (though they obviously work for the TNTs). However NWN may prefer something newer anyway.

During the entire DirectX/driver uninstall/install process I recommend killing/unloading all other programs/utilities in memory just to make sure nothing interferes.

The final culprit for you may be your power supply. It's possible that it just doesn't handle the video card and Athlon electrical current requirements very well (though the PCI bus isn't tied directly to the CPU in the manner that the AGP bus is). I know that CM keeps the CPU very busy while it's in the foreground (probably more than NWN) and that coupled with your video card processing a lot of 3D and textures may be overloading your power supply.

[BeWary]

Just for giggles and gaffs, why don't you try setting your monitor resolution to 1024x768 and deleting your CM prefs file. Perhaps CM doesn't support the resolution you're trying to run in?

Could be some sort of hardware problem though. If you know anything about CMOS settings (and/or have your motherboard manual), try poking around and make sure everything's set up correctly. May be that someone set your machine up incorrectly. Try updating your BIOS first.

Also try updating your machine through WindowsUpdate to make sure you're not missing some "critical" patch that may solve your problem.

If you can get your hands on some spare RAM, or if you have two DIMMS in your machine, try switching them out or just using one at a time. If it's bad RAM that should help you find the bad DIMM.

Good luck,

BeWary

[NDBBM]

Think I isolated the problem.

The video card on the onboard sound share an IRQ, happens to be 11. So, I disable my sound controller and so far no freezing. I tried changing the IRQ for the sound in the Device Manager, check 'set manually', highlight the IRQ, click change or what not and the computer tells me no can do. So I go into the BIOS and set up 'assign IRQ manually' but get the same deal. So the new question is how can I change the IRQ for my sound, or vid card, I have 2 IRQ numbers that are currently free. Granted the best solution is most likely buy a sound card and ditch the nasty onboard stuff...but. I also feel really stupid that I overlooked this, especially since the onboard sound has had teething problems in the past.

[Schrullenhaft]

PCI IRQs are assigned to each physical PCI slot. The onboard sound is considered a PCI device and will share an IRQ with a particular PCI slot. I'd guess that you have the video card in the particular slot that shares an IRQ with the onboard AC97 sound. Moving the video card to a different PCI slot is probably the only way to change the IRQ sharing between the video and sound. Changes in the CMOS/BIOS setup only allow you to change the IRQs that get assigned

Be aware that moving the video card to another PCI slot will probably result in the video card sharing an IRQ with another device, but when it comes to CM separating the IRQs for sound and video is probably the best idea. Also it is possible that if you have 'PNP OS Installed' set to Yes in the CMOS/BIOS, then the IRQs may not change even if you move the cards around. In this situation Windows can control the IRQ settings and it may assign them to the way they were before you moved cards around. The only way around this is to unistall the drivers for the device you're moving (in this case the video drivers), move the PCI card (the video card in this case) and possibly change the PNP OS setting in the CMOS/BIOS setup. On the next boot you'll be able to install the drivers and hopefully the IRQ will change. You can also observe the current IRQ assignments (according to the BIOS, which can be overridden by Windows if the PNP OS setting is set to Yes) in some of the first screens after the memory count that may show the allocation of resources (usually IRQs and DMAs).