The UNSOLVABLE problem Via vs. Nvidia...

[iamwiz82]

I cant take it anymore. I cannot play any games on my system other than MOHAA. Any other game will freeze in between 5 minutes and 15 minutes. It has nothing to do with heat, it just locks up. It is driving me nuts!!!

I have tried a thousand different driver combos, with no success. Is there any other solutions??

System:

A7V
tbird 900
384MB RAM
40GB HDD
geforce 2 GTS

 

[microAmp]

What OS are you using.

I use XP and what works for me w/o problems is (off top of my head) VIA AGP 4.10 and Nvidia 23.11 drivers. Will check it out for sure at home, plus free bump.

 

[DaiShan]

d@mn you via! are you using any usb devices (such as mice wireless nic etc.)? if so check out www.usbman.com, then click on the link on the left that says drivers, then click on via, grab the files that are pertinent to your config, including the filter driver, that helped me.

 

[iamwiz82]

I'm using win2k. I'm not currently using USB. I attempted to get rid of ACPI by configuring my PC to a Standrard PC driver, with disasterous results. Halfway through finding new hardware, it crashed. Now i get a BSOD at bootup, VIAboot.sys, i believe. Ah well, i needed to reinstall windows anyways

 

[xylem]

Not sure if it's related, but have you tried installing the latest 4in1 (4.38a) in the VIA Taiwan site, and installing the latest detonator (28.32) in the NVidia site? I have had unending problems (regular crashes for months) with the NVidia drivers (with two different cards), but FINALLY upon installing version 28.32 my computer no longer crashes. Give it a shot if you haven't yet.

 

[Mem]

I`m using VIA board (infact 2 with no problems with gaming),anyway on my WinXP one what I did was install latest drivers,I would suggest you go into bios disable all video shadowing,disable system bios cacheable,set AGP aperture size to 64mb or 128mb,disable fastwrites,my ram is set to turbo which works fine you can try slower speed settings like fast,normal etc which might improve game stability..


The VIA 4 in 1 drivers(4.38a) and VIA USB filter driver 1.10 are optional if you want to install them,I did on mine and WinXP eats anything I throw at it for breakfast(rock stable even with USB devices),I`m using the Nvidia 28.32 drivers which are excellent IMHO.

Lockups could be IRQ conflict even with 2K/XP,I always leave PCI slot 1 empty(nearest to AGP slot) even with 2K/XP systems.You don`t say what soundcard you`re using.

Hope this helps,yes I`m a hardcore gamer .

 

[iamwiz82]

<< I`m using VIA board (infact 2 with no problems with gaming),anyway on my WinXP one what I did was install latest drivers,I would suggest you go into bios disable all video shadowing,disable system bios cacheable,set AGP aperture size to 64mb or 128mb,disable fastwrites,my ram is set to turbo which works fine you can try slower speed settings like fast,normal etc which might improve game stability..
>>



I never tried the video shadowing idea, i'll do it though.



<<
The VIA 4 in 1 drivers(4.38a) and VIA USB filter driver 1.10 are optional if you want to install them,I did on mine and WinXP eats anything I throw at it for breakfast(rock stable even with USB devices),I`m using the Nvidia 28.32 drivers which are excellent IMHO.
>>



I'll try to 4.38a dirvers, also. What if i went back to 4.1? I did upgrade to 28.32 before but the stability issue was not fixed.



<<
Lockups could be IRQ conflict even with 2K/XP,I always leave PCI slot 1 empty(nearest to AGP slot) even with 2K/XP systems.You don`t say what soundcard you`re using.

Hope this helps,yes I`m a hardcore gamer . >>



Slot one is empty, i actually have a slot cooling fan in there, pulling heat off the geforce.

BTW, i'm using SB Live plat. 5.1. Yes, i have installed the unholy trinity of hardware conflicts

 

[iamwiz82]

I think i have fixed the problem. I tested my PC by playing Carmageddon for an hour, which previously would not last longer than 5 minutes or so.

To fix it, in the BIOS i set AGP speed to 2x, IRQ to VGA, Fast write disabled, AGP aperture set to 256. In windows, i installed NVmax 4.01 and turned on the options for the "athlon stability" and "Windows 2000 and Via chipset fix"

 

[edfcmc]

I ran a very similiar setup for awhile. Anyway, with windows 2k, I seriously doubt it is the ACPI setting unless you have some really old hardware in your setup. And, you cannot disable ACPI and reboot Windows 2k (without doing some elite tricks to your setup), but you will just get the Blue Screen of Death. I ran an A7V with ACPI with no problems. Perhaps if you post all the hardware in your machine someone here might be able to help.

I wonder if you have a 300W power supply. A7V and Tbirds require a decent 300 w supply. What Bios revision are you running with the A7V (Some of the A7v Bios revisions were really buggy)? Do you have a SoundBlaster Live? Are you using the Promise IDE controller channels? What Nivida Detonator Version are you running? Many people have reported crashes with the the latest detonator drivers. Did you remember to install the VIA AGP driver?

Have you tested your memory with documem86?

 

[iamwiz82]

<< I ran a very similiar setup for awhile. Anyway, with windows 2k, I seriously doubt it is the ACPI setting unless you have some really old hardware in your setup. And, you cannot disable ACPI and reboot Windows 2k (without doing some elite tricks to your setup), but you will just get the Blue Screen of Death. I ran an A7V with ACPI with no problems. Perhaps if you post all the hardware in your machine someone here might be able to help.

I wonder if you have a 300W power supply. A7V and Tbirds require a decent 300 w supply. What Bios revision are you running with the A7V (Some of the A7v Bios revisions were really buggy)? Do you have a SoundBlaster Live? Are you using the Promise IDE controller channels? What Nivida Detonator Version are you running? Many people have reported crashes with the the latest detonator drivers. Did you remember to install the VIA AGP driver?

Have you tested your memory with documem86? >>



ACPI can be uninstalled, to do this, go to device manager, then cexpand the Computer option, it should say ACPI if you are using. To change it, go to reinstall the drivers and select standard computer.

Rebooting will cause win2k to find all of the hardware again. Unfortunately for me, it froze when attempting to find the promise ata100.

My PC has a 350watt PSU.
BIOS 1008
I do have SB Live plat 5.1
i use the promise ata100
nvidia 23.82, i believe

The RAM is fine, it is definately the card. When i do BSOD, i get nv4_disp.dll errors, which is nvidia.

And my PC still crashes, it was just being good last night.

 

[Agro]

I had the same problem as you did.
I had a A7V with 1008 BIOS, Thunderbird 800, SBLive!, GeForce2 GTS 64MB, etc.

I was unable to play counter-strike for more then 10-15 minutes (sometimes it would freeze on start, heh othertimes 20 seconds in, etc.)

I made sure I had all the latest drivers, my OS was clean, etc. It didnt help.
I changed the AGP Speed to 2x (and even 1x at one point) and played with slot order, etc. etc.
This seemed to improve my stability but still once in a while I would freeze after 30 minutes or an hour or more playing CS.

I then decided to change from ACPI to Standard PC. I didn't run into any problems during this. After reboot it simply re-found all my hardware and I added them all back in.
After this my PC was 99.9% stable. I went days without rebooting it and played games all the time.
I even went and overclocked my 800 to 1000MHz and had no problems.

If you are still having problems you may want to try this again. Maybe since u have a clean OS, this time it will not F-Up as it did last time.

I now have a P4 1.7Ghz though, heh. I fried my a7v and my Tbird when I was moving the case and switching hardware. The intel route sure is easy though. Not one problem, no funky 4-in-1 crap, nothing. Piece-of-cake. Also the mounting of the chip is so rock-solid with the heat-spreader and heatsink that screws into the board not the the socket.

Anyhow, good luck.

 

[wakka15]

I'm having the exact same problem as described above, but am running XP instead. My problem (i suspect) revolves around the Diamond mx300 sound card (going on 3 years old, heh). How do I change ACPI to Standard PC in XP? Ideally, I'd rather not have to reinstall windows. Would updating the BIOS help at all? The method described does not work for XP (i.e. it won't find a Standard PC driver, i'm assuming).

Thanks in advance...

 

[wakka15]

Ah yes.. specs...

1.2 ghz processor
Elitegroup k7vta3 motherboard (BIOS version 1.x (1.08, I believe))
512 mb DDR ram
leadtek geforce 2 pro (64 mb) video card
Diamond mx300 sound card

No device in PCI slot 1

Using the via4in1 4.38 drivers, as well as detenator 28.32 drivers from nvidia.

Not very knowledgable about these things, but looking at the mobo-producer's homepage (www.ecs.com.tw) and their descriptions of the BIOS updates, it doesn't seem to have anything to do with ACPI issues, which is what seems to be the problem here.

I'm outta ideas... heh...

 

[GeSuN]

I had the exact same problem when I was on Windows 2k... I tryed everything, read a lot of info on that at the time but none of the solutions really helped me... When I did install Windows XP, all my problem disapeared! There's something about the VIA chipset, nVidia, AMD and Windows 2k that's causing all this problem...

ACPI can be uninstalled, to do this, go to device manager, then cexpand the Computer option, it should say ACPI if you are using. To change it, go to reinstall the drivers and select standard computer.

Really bad idea, when you want to disable ACPI, you have to reinstall completly Windows... There's a F? key that you have to press to avoid the installation of ACPI during the setup, but can't remember wich one...