Strange lockups in UT - is this a hardware problem??

[Spoon]

JGDRN - can you post your system specs so we can see if its something related

 

[Livin4Real]

Ben_Tech, opening a case to cool it isn't the right answer.Cases are engineered to be run with the doors on due to proper airflow. Alot of times opening a case will do more bad than good because the fans have no way of directing airflow. It would be like setting a fan up outdoors to cool yourself down.

 

[OneEng]

Spoon,
I have only installed the SBLive drivers. No liveware. Incidentally, before I formatted and re-installed, I could not get the lockup issue to improve at all. After re-formatting and a fresh install, I still had the issue to a lesser degree (but at least all my windows drivers installed correctly finally). Moving the sound card to a different slot (one that did not share anything with the video card) fixed nearly all lockups and I was in a state such that a lockup only occured after long periods of play. Last week for reasons unknown, things started to go south again. After installing the new SBLive drivers and updating my 4in1 windows drivers, I am (apparently) 100% stable.

I have noticed my network connection blinks once in a while. This could either be a coincidence, or another conflict, but it is not prominent enough to cause me any annoyance.

Livin4Real,
You are incorrect about the cooling. Removing the case most certianly reduces the CPU temperature; however, it raises the noise level of both sound and EMC outside of the computer. Computer cases are lined with metal to create a Faraday cage that contains all the electromagnetic noise created in the computer. When electronic equipment is tested for UL and CE requirements, the EM noise generated by the appliance is measured. If the case of a computer were removed for these tests, they would all fail misserably.

In general, anything you can do to get more air around your processor or cooler air around your processor, will keep the temp of your processor down. I don't think that heat is the issue here. Updating drivers would have had no effect if that were the case.

Keep the messages comming guys. I would really like to get to the bottom of this issue.

 

[JGDRN]

Micron P3 600mhz(not o/c)
128mb PC100 RAM
V3 2000@ 175mhz
20gig

 

[Drumrboy]

HAVING SAME PROBLEM!!

hi,
Im running a pentium 2 300 with windows 98, a V3 AGP card...

recently i installed Q3 arena and unreal tournament...

In both games, in both the single player multiplayer modes, I will on occasion lose my keyboard and mouse control...the rest of the game will keep running, but i have to do a hard shut down cause I no longer have a keyboard or mouse.

So far I have dloaded and installed ...
direct x 7.0 a
the latest soundblaster live drivers
the latest liveware
the july 4th, 2000 V3 driver
the recent patches for q3 and UT

I have checked my irq's...no conflicts...
I have shut down all programs except explorer and systray and the problem still happens.

sorta at wits end now, I worked on my computer OVER 15 hours straight the last 2 days and cant fix this problem...it seems driver related yes?

last night I went into vga mode and deleted all the voodoo, 3dfx, glide files from hard drive and registry and did fresh install of latest 3dfx drivers..still had same problem...

I also as a test went into UT in direct 3d and it locked up in direct 3d as well...so god knows what it is.

I think I might have to just format c and rebuild whole system from scratch...unless anyone has any ideas..thanks

 

[Spoon]

Drumrboy - just did the reformat thing myself and its still a no go, I'm running out of things to try

Tomorrow I'm going to try a BX mobo just for sh!ts and giggles

 

[err]

I am also having the same problem with UT sometime going to its own mind... most of the time it is keyboard lockup ... I can shoot, escape from the game but my UT charater will just start running wildly

I don't think this is even a hardware problem ... I've had similar situations at least with 4 different PC setup ... don't know why ...

Probably it's UT's bug?

eRr

 

[OneEng]

I forgot, I also have upgraded my windows 98SE with the latest patches from MS using windows update. I have IE5.00.2614.3500 loaded.

I still notice the occasional stutter when some sounds are present. Usually this happens when things get really busy. I suspect that something happens durring these times that gets the program stuck.

It is interesting that both AMD and Intel systems have exhibited the problem. Additionally, it seems the issue is not limited to V3.

I still don't see a common link between our systems to point a finger at. Does anyone else see something?

 

[MrFluffy]

I got one thing to ask, are all of you (people who have the lockups) running win98? it might be a bug in UT that makes it unstable in win98. Im runnining win95b and havent run into any of the problems you have compland about. (just every other program it seems just quits in the middle of the game) or it might just be a prob.w/UT
im probably wrong on this(like im usually wrong)

 

[tom3]

I am running win98SE for one. The weird thing is, I have been playing UT for a long while and this lockup problem just started to occur recently, and consistently too.

The last thing I can remember changing was updating the game to version 420. Not sure if it was the cause of the lockup though.

 

[OneEng]

I can't remember if I had the issue prior to 4.20, but I believe I did. Does anyone else remember for sure?

I think it may be a windows setting thing. If loading a new version, loading new drivers, etc, etc, is either fixing or curing it, maybe there is some bug between UT and windows in certian setups?

 

[OneEng]

Anyone?

 

[Spoon]

I can say now that I;m about 90% on my problem being fixed, as I stated in my first post I "HAD" a MSI-6309. I think that the MSI didn't allow enough voltage to the chipset and PCI cards. The max that the MSI would allow is 3.3 volts, I picked up a Asus P3V4X which have the IO voltage at 3.5 and allows up to 3.6V. I installed it yesterday around 5pm, I've played so much UT over the last 24 hours that I'm thinking of getting rid of the game and so far(knock on wood) no lock-ups.

check you IO voltage for your board and see if your BIOS will allow you to up it a little.

Well back to UT(shudder)

 

[novice]

I have tried something that seems to really help the lock up problems in UT with my MSI-6309 with Diamond 300MX soundcard and V3 3000 PCI video. I disabled the hardware accelerated sound option and successfully played two complete levels without any lockups! This was at default 100 MHz fsb, so my PIII 600E was running at only 600. I will try it again at 744 MHz to see how it works. Wish me luck,
Chuck

 

[novice]

The disabling of the 3d hardware sound option seems to be working, even at 744 MHz. At least for my system, this would seem to be the solution to the UT lock up syndrome. I have no idea why, perhaps something to do with the Aureal drivers? Or possibly the Via chipset? Anyway, at least it is working and I don't notice any big difference without the 3D hardwware sound enabled.
Chuck

 

[Drumrboy]

disabling hardware doenst fix mine...

 

[OneEng]

Novice,
My system is only similiar to yours in that it uses a VIA chipset. I will try the software sound option and see. Although I only get a random lockup now, I still get them. I have a SB Live vs. your Aureal. Maybe it is the VIA chipset???? This is really starting to get annoying.

 

[Iamtheway]

Just a quick thought. I know this is a stretch, but I've seen this before. You don't seem like the type of person to have this problem but..... is your copy of UT retail or burned? This goes for anyone else having these weird problems. A bunch of guys I play with have burned copies and the problems people are describing here happen often to those with burned copies (the lockups, running all over, blue screens, etc..). Even if it's a backup copy that you're installing off of. Just to clarify, I have had none of these problems (got the game nice and early when it was still cheap). It's just everyone I know has some sort of weird problem that burns backups or has a BS copy. If it doesn't help you maybe it'll help others in here, who knows?

 

[Tulkas]

Man This Is Crazy! Friend of mine has UT has been experiencing same lockups as yu guys. He even had it happen to him playing q2 where his player would move on his own.... i believe someone else mentioned this as well. His specs are
P3 500e
intel810
128mgPC100
intel4mgAGP

It could be a prob with the lastest patch 420. But there could also be a prob with those using burnt cds which Iamtheway has mentioned as well as the NOCD patch.

 

[novice]

OneEng, Hope that the 3Dhardware sound disabling works as well for you as it did for me. I have played for at least 30 minutes straight on several occasions with my PIII 600E @ 744 without a single lockup. Before I disabled the hardware sound option, I was lucky to get 3 minutes at 744. UT was the only thing that gave me any problems with my overclocked processor (and my default processor, too, for that matter), everything else from games to web surfing ran just fine at 744. Anyway to all you other locking up UT players I hope you figure it out. If anyone comes up with a way to enable the hardware sound option without the lockups, please post.
Chuck
PS. I am using a retail version of the two CD set of Unreal Tournament that my son purchased at BestBuy, so that is not applicable to my previous lock up problems.

 

[tom3]

Playing on a retailed copy here.. problem persists..

 

[Spoon]

Guys and girls I still haven't had a lockup with the new board, I'm 99.999% certain that its a problem with the chipset not getting enough voltage. Again, try to up the voltage for the chipset

Novice - I had the same MOBO as you and started this little thread, now running a ASUS P3V4X and have had no problems with lockups at all.

 

[timelord Bateman]

No lockups here, but I do get the occasional "stuck running" backwards or forwards in Q3A.
Never has this happened in UT, only Q3A and no idea why or when, it just does happen.
I have the "stuck running" thingie in single player games and it stops at some point when
I just keep on hitting movement keys.

System Specs:
Athlon 650 @ 683MHz
Creative GeForce2 GTS (happens with Voodoo2 & TNT PCI also)
K7M
256MB pc-133 Kingmax
300W Athlon certified p/s
SB Live (ware 3.0)
Adaptec 2940UW
Win98se
etc etc etc....

Programs I have open background in sys tray are:
SBLive! AudioHQ
MS Sidewinder control
NVIDIA quick desk (or whatever..)

So, it's one more VIA chipset here... hmmm.

 

[novice]

Spoon, Do you think that disabling the hardware sound option may result in having enough voltage for the board to allow the game to function properly? Remember I am using a PCI voodoo 3 3000 video card, so it has nothing to do with my AGP slot. And the MSI uses the same VIA 694 chipset that the Asus P3V4x uses, so wouldn't they have the same voltage available to the MB? It is quite a mystery, and I sure would love it if someone could really explain it to me. (not that I would actually understand it, after all, I am a ...Novice!)
Do appreciate you and all the others comments about this problem. I am thinking about upgrading one of our other systems from a P-233 MMX to something along the lines of a Celeron 533 and was considering another MSI-6309 board. Although Multiwave has an older soyo ZX chipset board on sale for just $45, which is mighty tempting, being the cheap person that I am. It would still be a pretty good step up from the Tyan 430 TX chipset board I am running now.
Chuck

 

[MadRat]

I think it has everything to do with the sound drivers. I turned the voices down to 16 (from 32) in my Live! to alleviate the problem. Intermittent video pauses are probably from cache swapping on the hard drive. If you use Win98 or Win95 then do the following:

Go into system.ini

Go under the section [386Enh]

Add an entry ConservativeFileSwapUsage=1

Save changes to the system.ini and reboot the computer.

Even if you had 384mb of RAM it wasn't being used correctly until you added this line in the system.ini - its one of M/S's little consumer O/S cripplers.