Please help me with my system stability problems, they make no sense and are driving me nuts!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

beer

Lifer
Jun 27, 2000
11,169
1
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OK -

First of all, in all my problems, everything is clocked STOCK. As in, Tbird is at 700, geforce is at 120/300.

OK - Basically, my system config is as follows:

OS: Windows 2000
AMD Slot A Thunderbird 700 MHZ (VOS32, with artic silver)
Enermax 330 watt
Microstar K7 Pro, BIOS 1.6 (latest).
AGP miniport driver for Win2K installed
No other AMD-related drivers installed

Peripherals:
Leadtek Winfast Geforce DDR, using nvidia reference drivers, both 6.18 and 6.27; AGP is at 1x despite the fact that I have a stepping 5 motherboard which supposidly corrected the AGP Strobe conflict.

Turtle Beach Monteo - Aureal Vortex 1, 8820.

Linksys Phoneline 10M

Linksys LNE100TX (disabled)

Avermedia TV98 - not being read correctly in BIOS (being read as a SCSI device; no IRQ assigned to it, stupid f0cking BIOS).

USB Intellimouse, a General port hub, a D-LINK C-300 Webcam (not installed, windows blue-screens when the driver is installed).

Drives:
Maxtor 27 GB DiamondMax Plus hard drive
Iomega ZipCD 24x4x4
Toshiba XM-6702-B
Iomega Zip drive
Floppy drive

IRQ Assignments:
0: System timer
1: PC keyboard
2: Unassigned
3: COM1
4: COM2
5: Unassigned
6: Standard Floppy Controller
7: Unassigned
8: System CMOS/Real-time clock
9: Unassigned
10: AMD 756 PCI-to-USB Open Host Controller
Aureal Vortex 8820 Audio (WDM)
Vortex Multifunction PCI Client
11: Geforce DDR
Linksys Phoneline 10M
12: Unassigned
13: Numeric data processor
14: Primary IDE Channel
15: Secondary IDE channel

3D Progs that work:
Unreal tournament

Progs that don't work:
3D Mark 2000 (locks up halfway through at random places)
Half-Life (locks up at beginning or gets through but sound cuts out in a matter of minuts, requiring a reboot)
Homeworld: Catacysm (There are seperate known issues with Geforce-on-AMD, Vortex-on-AMD; and AMD-on-Win2K, so a combination thereof is probably bad)

What I am doing to try to fix it:
Replacing the Montego with SB live!

What I don't understand is why UT works but nothing else does. I am going to try Q3 later. Can anyone advise? Please...

 

beer

Lifer
Jun 27, 2000
11,169
1
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Some more info:

Yes, I am running Win2K SP1.
Yes, I have tried my computer in the Device Manager as both an ACPI PC and a Standard PC; no difference in IRQ assignments.

That's all I can think of that you would need...please oh please help me
 

cparker

Senior member
Jun 14, 2000
526
0
71
I know nothing about your hardware or software, but the fact that you are having random lock ups in computationally intensive activities sounds like a hardware problem, possibly a ram problem. You might try checking the bios settings for your ram. If it's cas2 you might want to reset it to cas3. I'm not sure about your mb but if you can slow down the ram fsb you might want to try that just to see if it's a ram problem. Or if you have another stick of ram, do a substitution. You can also do the peripheral removal routine of getting rid of all boards that are non-essiential and see if you still have the problem. If you still do, then at least you've eliminated that board as a problem. One more thing. Did you have the same problem BEFORE you installed SP1 on win2k? some people have reported problems with sp1, and if w2k works fine without it then I'd just not use sp1 as it doesn't seem to be necessary for most people.
 

jinsonxu

Golden Member
Aug 19, 2000
1,370
0
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'computationally intensive activities '?
I thought there was a thread that said that UT was one of the most computationally intensive games out there?
 

DaddyG

Banned
Mar 24, 2000
2,335
0
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I think your problem is that the SBLIVE card requires 2 IRQ's. One for SBLIVE and 1 for SB Emulation. On older SB cards, SB emulation could be disabled but not on the SBLIVE. Try assigning a LEGACY ISA IRQ to the slot that the SBLIVE is occupying. I know that the card is PCI but this should work.

BTW ABIT has a FAQ regarding this subject, (your MSI mobo uses same chipset so it should apply)
 

Mem

Lifer
Apr 23, 2000
21,476
13
81
There is a Win 2k/Geforce Stability Fix info over at riva3D, click here see if that helps.
Btw this is also for the Matrox G400 video card.

:)
 

beer

Lifer
Jun 27, 2000
11,169
1
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DaddyG, I don't have the SB Live! yet, but thanks for the heads up when I do get it.

Mem, you are a lifesaver. I mean, you are starting to become a god of sorts to me(kinda like Russ hehe).

I'll try this patch - I didn't have these lockups in Win98 at all....
 

beer

Lifer
Jun 27, 2000
11,169
1
0
Some more responses (I am in a rush, sorry):

Cparker, I reformatted last week and the first two things I put on were Win2K and Win2K SP1. So I didn;t have a chance to know if SP1 was the problem or not, but it worked in 98. Because all this worked in 98 I can elimate hardware as an issue - its either a driver (most likely) or Win2K itself (which Mem has a solution for).
 

The Wildcard

Platinum Member
Oct 31, 1999
2,743
0
0
Hmm interesting. Well this sounds like a crazy idea but try taking out the card that is in the pci slot right next to your agp geforce. I do believe that is your network card isn't it since they are sharing the same irq. It';s a long shot but i had similar problems. Actually, at first, it was my cpu and i found out that my celeron 300a @ 450mhz died so i replaced it with a celeron 566. well everything worked fine until i changed around my cards and put my network card right next to my agp tnt2 ultra. Then i started getting weird TEMPORARY lockups. So try it.
 

NicColt

Diamond Member
Jul 23, 2000
4,362
0
71
Elemental, I have battled this problem for a while, o/c your bird to whatever but reduced the FSB to 95, I had the same problem but only in half-life but I switched to OpenGl, actually that's all I play. anyway, everything else was/is rock solid I even have my D650 at 10X95BUS for 950 my only problem is heat on very HOT days then I goto 9X95BUS for 855 but on cool days like today 950 is rock solid for hours under heavy load but only with a 95 bus. Even at 95Bus I still really can't complain since I o/c it. Some cards just may not work at full FSB speed but that's my opinion. Let me know.
 

Mem

Lifer
Apr 23, 2000
21,476
13
81
I don`t know much about Win2000(I`m a Win98 man) but have you tried different Nvidia drivers,I`m not sure which ones work great with Win2000.One last thing Elemental007 have you gone here for tweaks click here .

:)
 

beer

Lifer
Jun 27, 2000
11,169
1
0
Actually - that Microsoft fix works very well. I have been able to loop 3D Mark for hours and it not lock up; prior to that, it would lock up less than halfway through one test.

So that's good. Now, I need to get my Vortex card replaced with an SB Live so I can play CS again.
 

Mem

Lifer
Apr 23, 2000
21,476
13
81
Elemental007 so you owe me a beer(LOL...) I`m happy it helped you.

:)