WRX_Rocky

No, this is my home computer on Earthlink DSL.

I had it disabled, yet still got them. Nothing like being in an online game and getting blown out cuz of these! I used Spybot Search & Destroy last night. So will see if that helped any . . . . .

That article awhile back said they were going to be released soon. But its been some time now, and still 3.2 is all that is around. Any word on the 3.3 release date????

You talking about the game Gunship! by the old and sorley missed Microprose? Cuz sad to say, since HasCrap and its freaking Pokemon cr*p took it over some years ago (tell me WHY would an anti-war game company buy out the BEST sim company in the world, and destroy it????), there was only ONE patch, and notheing ever again. And what is worse, there will never be another Falcon game, and my wish for the M1 Tank Platoon III game were dashed as well. And what really hurts, was that M1TP3 was going to interphase with Gunship! too!!!!!!! Imagine what that would have been like? But as to your problem, can't really answer it other than if its a bug, and you have the ONLY patch ever made for it, then you are stuck with it forever Damn Hascr*p!!!!!! Makes me want to toss away all my GI Joe's for what they did! All for some stupid cartoon character But I did just think of one thing. Inforgramme did buy MP from Hascr*p not too long ago. Perhaps a letter to them might help????

Microsoft's Rallysport Challenge, which is a port over from the X-Box is not too bad. Graphics are awesome! But I feel that Colin McRae Rally 2 is still the best as far as a rally driving "SIM" goes. And for pavement - I have to say that (the now ancient) Sports Car GT is still one of my favorites, with TOCA2 right up there with it. You can have your nascrap circle jerks, I am, and always will be a ROAD racer (member of SCCA as well). By the way, Clutch (as in Clutch Cargo??? BONUS POINTS if you remember who that was???), where is it that you live? WE had the SCCA PRO Rally, Rim of the World, this past weekend! Sadly, I could not make it as it was pouring buckets and I was home sick with pneumonia. But it is held evey year in Palmdale. Also, if you are into paintball AND rally, LOL, then the Tombstone Paintball Park is THE place for you to be. Because Leon who owns it, is also a rally driver. And on some Satrudays, he closes the paintball field early, and opens the place up for RallyX! Basically, its an SCCA Solo II in the dirt - one car at a time - so its open to any car and driver. But even though I play paintball, and own a WRX (DEATH TO THE EVO hehehehehe), you won't see me there. Don't feel like cleaning out the clods of dirt/mud for months later [/img]

Alec, don't forget the instructions I posted awhile back that I got from ATi to completely uninstall the Cat drivers. Remember, some parts were stuborn and took a reg edit to completely remove. And, don't forget to try and see if ANY NVidia stuff is lurking around in the background. There have been many times for those too, to leave stubs still running hidden in the background.

Quote: I just have a RS 2.5 myself, but I am hoping to add a "-T" at the end of it once I move back to AZ Clutch, if you ever consider doing an SCCA Solo II (autocross) DON'T DO IT! The 2.5RS is a great car for the STS class (kind of a street prepared class allowing many mods but on real street tires), and most of the time so far, are beating us in STX (the class the WRX is in). A guy name Hiro Sumida has near the entire USA STS class shaking in their boots with his 2.5RS! Sure the turbo in the WRX gives us a ton of hp - but at the cost of lowend, low rev grunt. Just go look at www.scca.org and look under Solo II and PRO Solo. Then see the results of the national events. Instead of more hp - work on the suspension!

Quote: And really, there just isn't a game out there that requires the perfomance difference that a 9700 offers over my Ti 4200. I'm not a benchmarker so the extra fps in Quake3 don't mean anything to me. Well, just a few FPS in Quake won't even be seen to an extent. But in DAoC with the new Shrouded Isles pak, there was a huge frame hit that made it unplayable to me, using the same screen settings as I always used in the game. I tried all the Ti cards (even the 8X ones), but they still had hits. The 9700 PRO ran smmothly. I am not bashing NV at all, just saying this time they lost.

Well, I do more than play racing games This is my old car, a BMW Z3 Coupe 2.8 And here is my latest, an 02 Subaru WRX I could have come in 2nd year end, but I missed a few races. As for the Fast & Furious, that movie was not bad - BUT it glorifies illegal street racing. And that is causing all sorts of hell out here in SoCal! And as for drag racing? What good is a 8 second thrill, when road racing you can have up to a half hour or more or pure rush???? And its also more fun when you turn right as well as left! Never did any rally stuff, though it looks like a blast. Just don't want to spend the next month still trying to get the dirt out of the car 8)

Quote: I can't see it happening. Release a game and you've potentially got every single PC owner as a customer. Restrict a release to NVidia only and you've immediately lost 30-40% of your potential market. More importantly people will say "Well I'll never buy from that company again". Not only have they lost 30-40% of potential sales on that game, they have in turn then lost 20-30% of potential customers for life. Well, I seem to remember that one of the Wing Commander games(not sure which - WC, WC2, or was it WC3???) spelled doom for the 486 CPU. In its ad it came straight out and said PENTUIM ONLY. Now granted it is not a video card, but it DID change things big time.

Being an old Matrox user, then NVidia user, and an ATi hater (old story about how ATi cheated with their drivers to make it appear faster than the Matrox coards) . . . . . . I have to admit that I bought the Radeon 9700 PRO and LOVE IT! With my old GF3, when I got the Shrouded Isles addon for Dark Age of Camelot I was getting frame pauses like you would not believe! The game was totally unplayable. I went and dumped my entire PIII 933 and got an AMD XP2600+ and ASUS A7N8X mobo. I tried the Ti 4200, Ti4400, and a Ti4600 8X - and all still had a frame rate hit. Then I tried the 9700 PRO and it was smooth as silk. And the quality was awesome! So, even though I bit my tongue and went against my feelings, I must admit I was impressed and now glad I did. So I'd say go with the ATi.

Looks great! But OUCH! Has Nascrap in it Downloading the demo now. No interest in warez - only buy retail to help support those who make great games!

Hmmm, strange no one brought up the movie Canadian Bacon where we went to war against Canada LOL! I just LOVE the part where John Candy is driving the truck with all sorts of anti-Canadian slogans painted all over it, and the Canadian Mounty on his motorcycle stops him . . . . . . . cause of: 1) some words were spelled wrong 2) they did not have the required FRENCH alongside the English words! Had me rolling on the floor with that one, eh? But what really saddens me, is that I had a GREAT RESPECT for you Canadians, and have never met one I did not like or treated me as a friend! And I ALWAYS thank every one I meet cause I STILL remember how you helped our embassy folks in Iran when the chips were down big time! And most definately thank you for Bob & Doug as well as the entire Second City group! But now I feel like I was just kicked in the balls!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry can't help you with your problem . . . but I would like to know more about this game! Is that the new one? Cause I have both TOCA and TOCA2 and always liked the game a lot. But last I heard, the next racing game Codemasters was going to make was only for the gameboxes - and was not even going to be a TOCA based one either.

Has anyone ever tried Trend Micro's PC-Cillin 2002? Its both an A/V and a Firewall. And Trend is big time with major companies.

Agree! But a slight mod - Alien vs Predator 2! No game has ever made me jump out of my chair, or my heart stop like this one has!

Quote: P.S.=> The VIA drivers part I have not had hassles with here myself, I use the current 445 "hyperion" builds... boy, you really went thru the whole 9 yards of sorrow putting that rig together, hardware TO software... good to hear it works, you must be a patient & perseverent person to have put up with all that & done it yourself: Good deal & Good job is all I have to say! apk Well, I used to get into tweaking my computer as well as breaking it and learning how to fix it as a hobby hehehe. But now a days, I just want to play my games and do the work AT work. But I still do enjoy a challenge every so often. And who knows, perhaps what I went through and posted, might save another hours of hassles? As for the Hyp 445 drivers, when I installed the A7N8X mobo, I had not uninstalled the 445 drivers yet, as there was no uninstall program for them. And when the PC would not boot, when going into SAFE mode, I saw it was stopping at the VIAAGP.SYS driver. So, I knew then that the VIA stuff was not happy with the nForce2 components. So, I had to find a way to get back into XP to remove them (or install the NF drivers). So all is well now (so far LOL)

Here is the directions that I got from ATi. Though they are for older cards, this worked great! Quote: InstallShield Errors or Hangs during installation - Windows 2000/XP 1.Try emptying the Windows Temp folder. - Click Start, Click Run, in the Open line, type temp, and then click OK. - Delete the contents of the TEMP folder and all the subfolders as well. 2. Try Removing the InstallShield Installation Information Folder. - Click Start, click Run, in the Open line, type c:\Program Files, and then click OK. - In the Program Files dialog box, click the InstallShield Installation Information folder, and then click Delete. - Close the Program Files box. 3. Try Removing the InstallShield folder. A. First Set Windows to show all files. - On the Desktop, double-click My Computer. - Click Tools, and then click Folder Options. - Click the View tab, and then click to select the "Show Hidden files and folders" check box. - Click APPLY and then OK. B. Delete the InstallShield Folder. - Click Start, and then click Run. - In the Open box, type the following (including the quotation marks): "c:\program files\common files\" - Right-click the InstallShield folder, click Delete, and then click Yes to confirm the deletion. 4. Try re-installing the ATI Software =================================================================== Uninstall and Reinstall the ATI Display Driver and ATI Multimedia Center - Windows 2000/XP. For more information please refer to http://www.ati.com/support/faq/win2k/win2kdriverinstallation.html for driver installation steps. 1. Uninstall the ATI Multimedia Center followed by the ATI Display Driver. Both are located in the ADD\REMOVE Programs under the control panel 2. Restart into SAFEMODE. Hold Down the SHIFT key or tap the F8 key as your system restarts. 3. Remove all monitors and display adapters listed under Device Manager. To Access Device Manager under Windows 2000/XP A. Right-Click My Computer B. Click on PROPERTIES C. Select the HARDWARE TAB D. Select the DEVICE MANAGER BUTTON 4. Select START and then RUN. In the Open Field type REGEDIT followed by selecting the OK button. NOTE: Prior to making any changes please backup your system registry. To backup the system registry. A. Select and highlight My Computer in the Registry Editor B. Select File and then Export C. Export Registry File dialogue box will then appear D. In the File Name Field type the name of the file (i.e. Backup) E. Ensure that "ALL" is selected in the Export Range section F. Select the SAVE button. 5. Remove the following registry keys: NOTE: Not all keys will be available under every OS. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ATI Technologies HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ATI HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ATI Technologies 6. Close the Registry Editor and restart the system 7. Allow the system to redetect the display adapter. Allow Windows to install a default VGA graphics adapter. NOTE: This will not occur under all operating systems. 8. Once prompted restart the system. 9. Windows will then redetect the monitor. Allow the system to install standard monitor driver for your display 10. Install DirectX and then restart the system (located at http://www.microsoft.com/directx) 11. Install the Video Capture Update - Restart once prompted (located at http://www.microsoft.com/directx) NOTE: If you have DirectX 8.1 installed you do not need to install the Video Capture Update. 12. Install the ATI display drivers and then the ATI MMC - Restart once prompted 13. Test the PC

Alec, here is the hole story I posted on another forum: Well guys, I found the problem, and what a tale too! Seems that first off, the Enermax case I bought had a bad power supply (330W too) that was very erratic in both power and fan speeds (according to ASUS Probe - sometimes would jump from below the 1200rpm threshold on up to 18000rpm). But that was not all though!!!!!!!!! Somehow, during assembly, someone at the factory had placed the speaker, power, LED, etc wires in a place where it got pinched against the metal on the front of the case! And when I went and traded in my A7V8X for a new A7N8X mobo (thank God for FRY's loose return policies!!!!!!) and installed it - the speaker wire crumbled in my hands. When I took the front of the case off, I found a real horror story there! Quite a few wires were burned right through, and the speaker wires were, well, WERE no longer there. Good I had an old bad power supply laying around, as I was able to cut the wires off that and slice them in and solder the splices. Ok, ready to go, systems all green, time to launch this puppy! WHAT???????? Nothing! Turn it on, the fans spin for a sec, then nada! Take out the NEW power supply (they gave me a nice discount on an Enermax Whisper 350W) and go back to the store only to find out it tested fine. HUH???!!!! Well, turns out I *missed* one pin on the old style plug of the floppy drive! Came home, made sure it was on right and systems all GO! YES!!!!!!!!!!! Now, . . . the dreaded VIA 4 in 1 drivers!!!!!!!!! ARGH!!!!!!!!! Had to go into safe mode recovery to rename them and force the system to error out. But what now? Won't boot, so had to use the XP install CD then. The darn XP CD has an error in repairing???? Turns out my SONY DVD Rom drive has probs reading regular data CD's. Took awhile to discover this, but glad I did! Good I have a separate burner, cause that did the trick. So, I did a repair on the system and got it up and running, installed all the nForce2 drivers and away I go . . . . . . untill idiot me tries the NV 2.0 ATAIDE drivers! Now I go into a reboot loop!!!! Got that taken care of and now back to normal. But now the last problem. The Radeon control panel was corrupt and I could not uninstall it for days! And the drivers were not being recognized by it. Thanks to ATi Techs, I deleted some files and folders, reinstalled, and now all is fine! Well, to a point hehehe. The system now runs, runs great in fact! The problem with the screeching was NOT the 9700, but had to do with the old flakey power supply that came with the new Enermax case, as well as the wires buring out and thus shorting out. So all that is solved. My only sad part is that I can not seem to be able to OC the XP2600+, not even a tiny little bit I tried the 1001G that came on the N8X, tried the 1001c, and now the UBER 1002-004 with the latest SATA BIOS in it. System fails to boot unless I have it at 12.5X166. Oh well, but it is running! And so now I have the newer Whisper 350W power supply, and bought the 3 stage Volcano 9 HSF. No more probs except for the no go on the OC'ing of the chip. But thanks for all your help guys!

Thanks Alec. Ooops, yes. It was Chai over at Rojacs that sent me the link. Mighty interesting too to find that out about the C & D versions! How some XP2600+ 333FSB packages in fact had the 266FSB inside them! As for the Radeon drivers - the Catalyst 3.0 (latest 6255) is made for DX9. Not sure how the older will work with DX9, and to remove DX9 is a real PITA. But I might try that later . . . .

Well Alec, I am having near the same problem too! But I have (as you saw my post before on the XP2600+ BIOS settings) a different system. I have ASUS A7V8X motherboard (1010 BIOS, but did try their new 1011-008 Beta too) XP2600+ 512 DDR400 Crucial memory Audigy2 (and latest drivers) DX9 installed Radeon 9700 PRO with the latest Catalyst 3.0 drivers And after BHD Demo crapped on me, suddenly my system all last night was unstable! Suddenly there would be a screech, and then my system would go blank or reboot. Sometimes the desktop would be in 16 color 640X480 or not, but the dreaded SEND ERROR dialog box would be up and saying that the Radeon drivers were at fault. I don't know what to do. Right now the system has been stable overnight while it was on standby and so far now while I type this, but I have not played any 3D game with it yet. I also looked over the links you sent me about the XP2600+, specially that one about the mis-labeled "C" packaged 2600 - but I checked mine and it is a "D" which is correct. Yet I STILL seem to have problems with correct settings. If I try to set it to manual and do the 12.5X166 it hangs at boot. If I set it to 2083 speed from the menu selection, it boots but only get AUTO or 333 as the memory setting. But when I do ASUS Probe is now shows up as a 2600+. When I set it to 16X133 it boots, shows 400 as memory speed (though won't boot with the 1011-008 Beta BIOS), but in ASUS Probe it shows it as an XP2200+ with speed of 2200 and memory bus at 133. Boy, things sure were a lot simpler in the old days

Well Bursar, I guess you were never in the REAL military then. You have to go through training there too. But then a lot of Quake-heads won't like Army anyway, cause its NOT a bunny hopping frag fest. Its a team based STRATEGY "SIMULATOR". NOT a game, but a SIM - big difference. You see, this is what they are going to use in their real training as well. And I'd say that the only other SIM out there close to it is Ghost Recon. MOH is still based on Quake, and so its still more towards frag feasting, though at least a slight move towards a sim. Operation Flashpoint is ok, but it is so choppy and has some quirks to it.

Have you tried Dark Age of Camelot online yet? And if you are really hard core into role play, there are special servers dedicated to that as well. I tried BG1, and NWN, and got bored with them. One of the things that made D&D so great, was TEAMWORK with live human players. Sure NWN has an online part as well - but to me it was just hack & slash and grab a power-up. Now on DAoC, there are places where it would take numerous high level groups to take down a mob, and if it tickles your fancy - the RvR battles (against other Realm players) is a thing to see! But then too, there are quests and journeys to be had as well.