Registered: Jul 2001
Location: ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha
Posts: 185

Irritating hard-lock problems...

Ok, I recently got a Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 sound card, and it works great, except that in Unreal Tournament and Homeworld Cataclysm, it never fails to hard lock after only a few minutes. I experimented in UT to see if enabling/disabling 3D Sound Hardware would change anything. It did, it didn't lock up, but then I couldn't look up or down unless I was in midair! I originally thought that it may be that I'm running UT and HW:C in 32-bit color, but changing it to 16-bit didn't make much difference. Funny thing is that FS2 hasn't locked even once with the new sound card... A blessing, but I do like a little variety in my gaming experience.

And before someone suggests it, I went straight to Creative's web site to see if there were any driver updates to the card, but they only had patches for the software bundle.

Specs:

Gigabyte GA-VXE7+ motherboard (VIA Apollo Pro chipset)
Geforce2 MX 200 video card (usually only run in Direct3D)
Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 (run as EAX in FS2)

and really it should only be these three that would affect anything. Of course, I've had a myraid of quirks after getting the GeForce, but nothing as serious as this.

__________________
"Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark, or the man afraid of the light?"
- Maurice Freehill

"There is a certain art, or rather, a knack to flying.
The knack lies in learning to throw yourself at the ground and miss."
-The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

"Next time you wonder why I am always tediously close to falling off into the pit of insanity, now you know what assaults me each time I turn the computer on."
-IceFire

[url=http://dynamic4.gamespy.com/~freespace/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=9]Node War's Federated Vasudan Commonwealth[/url]

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha
Posts: 185

Irritating hard-lock problems...

Ok, I recently got a Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 sound card, and it works great, except that in Unreal Tournament and Homeworld Cataclysm, it never fails to hard lock after only a few minutes. I experimented in UT to see if enabling/disabling 3D Sound Hardware would change anything. It did, it didn't lock up, but then I couldn't look up or down unless I was in midair! I originally thought that it may be that I'm running UT and HW:C in 32-bit color, but changing it to 16-bit didn't make much difference. Funny thing is that FS2 hasn't locked even once with the new sound card... A blessing, but I do like a little variety in my gaming experience.

And before someone suggests it, I went straight to Creative's web site to see if there were any driver updates to the card, but they only had patches for the software bundle.

Specs:

Gigabyte GA-VXE7+ motherboard (VIA Apollo Pro chipset)
Geforce2 MX 200 video card (usually only run in Direct3D)
Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 (run as EAX in FS2)

and really it should only be these three that would affect anything. Of course, I've had a myraid of quirks after getting the GeForce, but nothing as serious as this.

__________________
"Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark, or the man afraid of the light?"
- Maurice Freehill

"There is a certain art, or rather, a knack to flying.
The knack lies in learning to throw yourself at the ground and miss."
-The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

"Next time you wonder why I am always tediously close to falling off into the pit of insanity, now you know what assaults me each time I turn the computer on."
-IceFire

[url=http://dynamic4.gamespy.com/~freespace/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=9]Node War's Federated Vasudan Commonwealth[/url]

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: The Cold Northland!
Posts: 8392

Which OS?

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- IceFire
Volition Watch Project Manager
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Registered: Apr 2001
Location:
Posts: 1901

Which OS?

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- The Babylon Project Team

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha
Posts: 185

Win98 first edition

__________________
"Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark, or the man afraid of the light?"
- Maurice Freehill

"There is a certain art, or rather, a knack to flying.
The knack lies in learning to throw yourself at the ground and miss."
-The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

"Next time you wonder why I am always tediously close to falling off into the pit of insanity, now you know what assaults me each time I turn the computer on."
-IceFire

[url=http://dynamic4.gamespy.com/~freespace/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=9]Node War's Federated Vasudan Commonwealth[/url]

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: Somewhere
Posts: 2894

You did install the 4.37 Via 4-in-1 drivers, right?
viahardware.com might have some help.

Also, play PCI card shuffle: Put it in a different slot, see if your life gets better.

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: Somewhere
Posts: 2894

You did install the 4.37 Via 4-in-1 drivers, right?
viahardware.com might have some help.

Also, play PCI card shuffle: Put it in a different slot, see if your life gets better.

__________________
[url="http://www.dopefish.com"]swim...swim...hungry...[/url]

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha
Posts: 185

an interim solution...

Well, I think I got it fixed for now. I just ran a successful, freeze-free 3-game match and it never hiccuped once. And that was under OpenGL, and I even used Hardware 3D Sound. No big problems other than the characteristic smeared textures and tearing of world geometry that is a slight eyesore typical of my OpenGL experiences.

Just to make sure I wasn't imagining anything, I disabled 3D sound and reset to D3D. Not even 6 seconds after loading a map in UT the thing hard-locked.

Funny thing is, FS2 doesn't support OpenGL, and so I run Direct3D 1024x768 (16-bit, since FS2 doesn't like 32-bit for some reason). I even go one further and kick in the EAX option in sounds, and it's never given me any trouble.

BTW, Alpha, when I reinstalled Windows, those drivers were the first things to go back on. But just to be sure, I'll grab them and reinstall in case I missed something. And I never played card-shuffle even once tonight. I usually try every software-based fix I can think of before I start swapping stuff around.

Also, I gave my Voodoo3 to my parents to put in their computer, and for some reason the thing is overheating horribly (I tested with a digital thermometer, and the temp was well over 120 degrees ). The chip already has a heat sink (no fan) with that thermal adhesive gluing them together. Now, how do you get the sink off without damaging the chip? I'm getting them a VGA cooling fan, and it unfortunately won't fit over the current heatsink.

__________________
"Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark, or the man afraid of the light?"
- Maurice Freehill

"There is a certain art, or rather, a knack to flying.
The knack lies in learning to throw yourself at the ground and miss."
-The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

"Next time you wonder why I am always tediously close to falling off into the pit of insanity, now you know what assaults me each time I turn the computer on."
-IceFire

[url=http://dynamic4.gamespy.com/~freespace/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=9]Node War's Federated Vasudan Commonwealth[/url]

Last edited by JC Denton on 02-06-2002 at 04:18 AM

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha
Posts: 185

an interim solution...

Well, I think I got it fixed for now. I just ran a successful, freeze-free 3-game match and it never hiccuped once. And that was under OpenGL, and I even used Hardware 3D Sound. No big problems other than the characteristic smeared textures and tearing of world geometry that is a slight eyesore typical of my OpenGL experiences.

Just to make sure I wasn't imagining anything, I disabled 3D sound and reset to D3D. Not even 6 seconds after loading a map in UT the thing hard-locked.

Funny thing is, FS2 doesn't support OpenGL, and so I run Direct3D 1024x768 (16-bit, since FS2 doesn't like 32-bit for some reason). I even go one further and kick in the EAX option in sounds, and it's never given me any trouble.

BTW, Alpha, when I reinstalled Windows, those drivers were the first things to go back on. But just to be sure, I'll grab them and reinstall in case I missed something. And I never played card-shuffle even once tonight. I usually try every software-based fix I can think of before I start swapping stuff around.

Also, I gave my Voodoo3 to my parents to put in their computer, and for some reason the thing is overheating horribly (I tested with a digital thermometer, and the temp was well over 120 degrees ). The chip already has a heat sink (no fan) with that thermal adhesive gluing them together. Now, how do you get the sink off without damaging the chip? I'm getting them a VGA cooling fan, and it unfortunately won't fit over the current heatsink.

__________________
"Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark, or the man afraid of the light?"
- Maurice Freehill

"There is a certain art, or rather, a knack to flying.
The knack lies in learning to throw yourself at the ground and miss."
-The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

"Next time you wonder why I am always tediously close to falling off into the pit of insanity, now you know what assaults me each time I turn the computer on."
-IceFire

[url=http://dynamic4.gamespy.com/~freespace/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=9]Node War's Federated Vasudan Commonwealth[/url]

Last edited by JC Denton on 02-06-2002 at 04:18 AM

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha
Posts: 185

Well, Alpha, turns out that I was using old 4-in-1 drivers (ver. 4.20), and after installing the 4.37 drivers, Direct3D works like a charm, even with the SB Live!'s acceleration. Thanx, d00d.

__________________
"Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark, or the man afraid of the light?"
- Maurice Freehill

"There is a certain art, or rather, a knack to flying.
The knack lies in learning to throw yourself at the ground and miss."
-The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

"Next time you wonder why I am always tediously close to falling off into the pit of insanity, now you know what assaults me each time I turn the computer on."
-IceFire

[url=http://dynamic4.gamespy.com/~freespace/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=9]Node War's Federated Vasudan Commonwealth[/url]

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha
Posts: 185

Well, Alpha, turns out that I was using old 4-in-1 drivers (ver. 4.20), and after installing the 4.37 drivers, Direct3D works like a charm, even with the SB Live!'s acceleration. Thanx, d00d.

__________________
"Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark, or the man afraid of the light?"
- Maurice Freehill

"There is a certain art, or rather, a knack to flying.
The knack lies in learning to throw yourself at the ground and miss."
-The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

"Next time you wonder why I am always tediously close to falling off into the pit of insanity, now you know what assaults me each time I turn the computer on."
-IceFire

[url=http://dynamic4.gamespy.com/~freespace/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=9]Node War's Federated Vasudan Commonwealth[/url]

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: Somewhere
Posts: 2894

Getting a heatsink off (I assume you want to replace it) is mildly difficult ... I don't know the exact procedure, but it's well doable. I think it goes like "seal your card in a bag, put it in the freezer overnight, pull it out, crack the heatsink off, replace heatsink" ... but I'm not positive so don't go doing something dumb on my account

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: Somewhere
Posts: 2894

Getting a heatsink off (I assume you want to replace it) is mildly difficult ... I don't know the exact procedure, but it's well doable. I think it goes like "seal your card in a bag, put it in the freezer overnight, pull it out, crack the heatsink off, replace heatsink" ... but I'm not positive so don't go doing something dumb on my account

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Registered: Feb 2001
Location: Finland
Posts: 3194

This topic should be in General Discussion... no offence intended.

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