Preacher

The card is running great under Win2k, but causes problems during the installation of the OS: the first DOS part which is done in the normal DOS resolution where Setup is loading various drivers works flawlessly. Then, the 2nd DOS part, as soon as Setup raises the resolution to 720x400 the screen goes black with some horizontal red stripes. I tried switching my screen from normal D-SUB to DVI and DVI -> D-SUB converter, but as soon as Setup raises the resolution, the screen goes completely black, nothing at all, not even red stripes. Is this a typical boomerang case or is there something I can do myself?

I just tested the card on my CD burning rig which consists of the following: Intel Celeron 300a @ 450 MHZ Asus P2B Mainboard 200 W PSU 256 MB RAM 1x IBM 4GB 1x IBM 10GB Adaptec 2940 SCSI Controller Yamaha 4416 SCSI Burner TEAC CD-540E CD-ROM 3c905c-TX NIC Soundblaster 16 ASP No problems found, the MSI Ti4600 worked flawlessly. I´m more and more convinced that the troublemaker is the mainboard... @ Dirty Harry Quote: If a 300W PSU cannot handle this, I would think (...) twice before forking up the cash for a new PSU just because of this problem. I understand your point, but plugging in my old Matrox Millennium everytime I have to reinstall WinXP or 2k (which happens alot because of all the software testing I´m doing) soon will not be an option anymore, since I´m going to use it in my Linux proxy/firewall system. Quote: You could try this in BIOS setup: - disable AGP 4x, video mem & bios cahing - lower your memory timings (normal settuing instead of turbo/ultra) - increase all your voltages one notch I already tried the first two suggestions, but not yet the third one. Will do so tomorrow; don´t have the time for my machine today.

I took the card back to my dealer and let him check it on another PC, where it worked just fine. I wouldn´t have believed it if I hadn´t seen it with my own eyes. I´ve also taken everything out of the system except the graphics card, reset the BIOS and still this error will occur. Maybe it´s an issue with the mainboard. I hope not, since I don´t want to lay another €1000 on the counter for new a mainboard and RAM. I never came across an error that was so "strange", hard to find and fix... I´m beginning to doubt myself

I always thought a 300W power supply is more than enough... I´ll give it a try anyways, just to make sure. Thx!

Please let me know your experiences, good or bad ones, about the Asus A7V266-E Mainboard, especially if it has similar / same problems with data corruption as boards with KT133A / 686b Chipsets. I want to kick out my Abit KT7A-Raid (with the bugged 686b Southbridge) and replace it with the Asus A7V266-E. The Abit board for some reason defects files just by reading them, no writing involved! I´ve tested this several times and it reproducably corrupts files.

Two years later... Download the Ascendancy patch from www.logicfactory.com If I remember right, there was an option included to turn off VESA support.

"Start" -> "Run", enter "regedit". Go to "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer", create a DWORD Value named "NoLowDiskSpaceChecks" and set it´s value to "1". That oughta fix it. At least it worked for me.

Hey folks, I´m having a problem with my paging file. I´ve set it´s size to 2GB, if I check the file itself, it actually IS 2GB. Now, if I run DXDIAG it says I have a paging file of 2.5GB in size. Diablo 2 ("fps" command) shows the same amount: 2.5GB. I´ve searched the forum and found other threads with the same problem, but all solutions were to not look further into this . However, I´m not satisfied with that. I have set up the swapfile on another harddisk of my machine. If W2k decides to keep a pagefile of 0.5GB in size on my boot partition, the performance increase setting up the pagefile on another drive will be cancelled. I need to find this 0.5GB swapfile and disable it. Please help me.

Maybe the engine of RTCW is the best, but the colors the makers have chosen are terrible. I keep running through dark brown, dark grey and dark red level-constructions. I thank to god they didn´t invent dark black ( ). The only bit of color (mostly blue and green) I was allowed to see was during the outdoor missions. However, the NPCs graphics are quite good. The AI opponents aren´t the brightest. I managed to play through the hardest setting (death incarnate if I remember correctly) in a single day. Aim for the head, shoot and circle strafe. Alomst non existing plot. SPOILER ALERT!!! Heinrich I is banished into some sort of spiritual prison by some mage, Nazis resurrect him, you put him into the grave. That´s it. They shouldn´t have called it RTCW, but KH1: Kill Heinrich I. Of a title named RTCW, I expect to hunt down Nazis, their leaders and Hitler himself. Unfortunately, hunting Nazis only make 33% of the whole game. BTW, did you know the Fuehrer (Hitler) didn´t have a Fuehrerschein (=driving license) and that he wasn´t even german? RTCW looks like a very expensive multiplayer game with added single player part as some sort of bonus. The last game ID put more than 16 colors in was Doom 2. Quake1: dark and ugly but fun to play. Quake2: dark and ugly but fun to play. Quake3Arena: dark and ugly and n o t fun to play. Return To Castle Wolfenstein: dark and ugly and n o t fun to play, too. Doom3: dark and ugly and n o t fun to play, too? I hope not!

I´m looking for Adaptec ASPI drivers for W2k. The ones I found on the Adaptec site (ASPI32.EXE, version 4.60) say they cause problems if installed with W2k. Any ideas where to get a W2k compatible Adaptec ASPI layer?

Deinstall Intellipoint 4.0 if you experience network slowdown and already went through all the solutions you can think of. With Intellipoint 4 installed, it would have taken me 183 - 358 minutes to transfer a 700 megs file on a 100 mbit network. After deinstalling, I have the usual 2 - 3 minutes for the same file size again.

Althou we´re running OSes like Win2k, XP, ME, their installation still has limitations from the old DOS era. You can create only 3 primary partitions. All these partitions MUST start in the first 6 gigs (3 times 2 GByte (Fat16)) of a harddrive, otherwise your machine cannot boot from the OS that might be installed. From what you´ve written I assume that your WinXP installation is your first primary partition. Limit it´s size down to 5 gigs (using Partition Magic Pro 7.0 which imho is the best anyway) and create a new primary partition with a size of 2 gigs. Set this newly created partition to "active", place your Win98 CD in the drive and reboot. Install Win98. Once done, install Partition Magic on Win98. You´ll use this later to swap back to WinXP again (mark the WinXP partition and set it to "active, then reboot). DO NOT under any circumstances use "fdisk" to activate partitions, because it has a nasty bug in it and thus cannot fully activate a partition. You´d have to reinstall your OSes again. Moving WinXP so you can create a primary partition in front of the WinXP partition is also a bad idea, because WinXP remembers the partition it was installed to. If it was installed on partition 1 and now is on partition 2, it cannot locate it´s files. You could correct this manually, but that would be too long to post here.

General information: ==================== The solutions written about in this tutorial might not be complete. There may still be security holes that have yet to be discovered and written about them here. If you are instructed to "run" something, click on the start button and choose "run". Windows Messenger, removing: ---------------------------- Right-click on the Messenger-Symbol in the taskbar, then "Open". In the "Tools" -> "Options" menu, choose "Preferences" and deselect everything. As additional solution, go to "Connection", choose "I use a proxy ser- ver" and reroute this to an unused local adress (like 192.168.0.2) Another option to get rid of the Messenger is to edit the file "sysoc.inf" in the "\Windows\Inf\" directory. Look for a line beginning with "msmsgs" and remove the "hide," entry in that line. Now, it is possible to remove the Messenger and also the MSN Explorer via "Add or Remove Programs" -> "Add/Remove Windows Components" Manual registration (DO NOT MISTAKE THIS FOR PRODUCT ACTIVATION!): ------------------------------------------------------------------ Run "regedit" and look for the key "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\ Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion. Doubleclick on "RegDone" and set it to "1" Register DLL, disabling: ------------------------ Run "regsvr32.exe -u %windir%\system32\regwizc.dll" Microsoft support accounts, removing: ------------------------------------- In the Control Panel, select "Administrative Tools" -> "Computer Management", choose "Local Users and Groups" -> "Users" and remove both the "Support..." user and the "Help Assistant" user. Backgrund: Íf your system malfunctions and you call tech support, it is possible for them to log into your machine remotely and fix things for you. Mediaplayer: ------------ Choose "Tools" -> "Options", then "Player" and deselect "Allow Internet Sites to uniquely identify your Player" and "Aquire licenses automati- cally" If you don´t like the new design of the mediaplayer, run "mplayer2" go to "view" -> "Options" -> "Formats", choose "Select All" and hit "Apply". Don´t forget to go to "Player" and make sure that "Allow Internet Sites to uniquely identify your Player" is deselected. Error Reporting, disabling: --------------------------- Rightclick on "My Computer", choose "Properties" -> "Advanced" and click on "Error Reporting". Mark "Disable error reporting". If you want to, you can en- or disable "But notify me when critical errors occur". Automatische actualization of system time, disabling: ----------------------------------------------------- Doubleklick on the clock in the taskbar, choose "Internet Time" and de- select "Automatically synchronize with an Internet time server" Checking if WinXP has already been activated. --------------------------------------------- Run "%systemroot%\system32\oobe\msoobe.exe /a" and read the message screen. For security reasons, one might block port 2869 in the Firewall of your choice. Background: If Windows is not already activated, it immediately con- nects to Microsoft. If you don´t want this, pull the plug of your modem Automatic Windows Update, disabling, part 1: -------------------------------------------- Righclick on "my Computer", select "Properties" -> "Automatic Updates". Select "Turn off automatic up[censored]". Automatic Windows Update, disabling, part 2: -------------------------------------------- "Control Panel" -> "Administrative Tools" -> "Services". Set "Automatic Updates" to "Disabled". Alexa Spyware, disabling: ------------------------- Run "regedit" and look for the key "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ MICROSOFT\Internet Explorer\EXTENSIONS". Locate entry "{c95fe080-8f5d- 11d2-a20b-00aa003c157a}. Delete it including all sub-entries. Background: This is Microsofts -SmartTags- Internet line optimization -------------------------- Run "gpedit.msc", select "Computer Configuration" -> "Administrative Templates" -> "Network" -> "QoS Packet Scheduler". Klick on "Limit reservable bandwidth", choose "Enabled" and set it to "0%" Background: WinXP activates this limit as needed. However, if you enable it manually and set the reserve to 0%, Windows can´t limit the bandwidth anymore. The Firewall of Windows XP: --------------------------- Do not use this firewall, since it configures itself to allow Windows unblocked access to the web, may it be for Media Streams, may it be for a connection to Redmond...

regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll I haven´t tried this yet, but it should work

Actually, my current system is more than three times faster than my old one. The advantage of DDR Ram can always be gained if not surpassed by OC´ing your CPU and/or graphics board (if you feel to do so). You won´t even need better cooling... Sure it is better to have all three: the fastest processor available, the fastest graphics card and the fastest RAM. But if you can´t afford all this expensive stuff, DDR Ram is the last one I´d invest in. If you don´t do rendering, compiling, cutting movies or ripping DVD´s for your own archive, then DDR would be a waste of cash. The name "DDR" suggests RAM that is twice as fast as SD-Ram. As long as this isn´t the case (read my first post about the current speed improvements), I can happily live without DDR. Plus, a computer magazine I´ve subscribed to says that if performance increase stays below 30%, the user won´t notice it at all.

from my point of view, DDR Ram is completely useless. You get 30% performance increase a t b e s t! Here´s an example: your favorite shooter only does 10 fps with normal Ram. Go buy this DDR stuff and if you´re lucky you´ll see the fps go up to 13,3 fps. Right, still a slideshow. Now you pay some bucks for some high end quality hardware, but still use normal Ram. Your shooter now runs flawlessly at 100fps. Go plug in some DDR Ram and look at your game again. Whoa, great, it´s running at 130fps. The only thing is, you can´t tell the difference... Save the cash you wanted to put into DDR Ram for a faster CPU / Graphics board. Your system performance will benefit more from these than RAM.

While trying to play StarCraft over network, my computers aren´t able to find each other. I´ve read somewhere, that the solution to this is disabling RAS and Routing. Where are the options to disable these settings? I´m not able to find them. Must be some sort of temporary dumbness Please help. Yep, IPX/SPX is installed on both machines, they´re both on the same frame type and so on... Everything is set as it should be, it just won´t work. (This was for the quick guys who never pay attention to what the problem is and post solutions to a completely different problem. Sorry if this offends you, if it does, ignore this section. Excuse me, but I just had one too much of these answers).

Thx Xiven, that´s all I wanted to know, works like a charm now

Nope, no firewall running here. Like I said in my first post, I´d like to know how to disable RAS and routing.

@M4Carbine Been there, done that, won´t work. I´m considering installing this B.Net server software...

This is starting like the other threads: User has problem with own eyes Yes, I am sure it´s telling me the size of the paging file is 2.5GB. DXDIAG lists both memory and the paging file as two separate items. I did double check the settings and they are still at 2GB.

My suggestion is to upgrade your RAM to 512 Megs. You won´t believe how much less swapping you have. I didn´t either ´til I upgraded AFAIK, Direct3D needs more RAM than any other API. It was back in early 2000 when I first tried Unreal Tournament on my freshly installed W2k (don´t know what version it was, sorry). I was fortunate to find all the drivers I needed so I gave it a try. I first tested on my Voodoo 2 board. The game ran very smooth, just like expected from the GLIDE API. Later, I bought my GeForce DDR and set up UT to run on my new Graphics Board using Direct3D. Let me tell you I was happy once I was on GLIDE again GLIDE is the most memory efficient API, then comes OpenGL followed by Direct3D. Check if some of your buddies can borrow you some RAM for testing. Should take them less than an hour.

What game were you playing? While the skipping occures, do you have HDD or CD-ROM activity? I had the same problem as you. Then I upgraded the memory of my machine to 512 MB RAM and told ( ) W2k to stop the paging of running applications. No skipping anymore. But the memory load is enormous. I think I´m going for the 1GByte RAM soon...

Before the patch, when using a CL soundcard we had file corruption. After the patch, we have static while playing sound files (well, at least I have). My question is if CLs Audigy line is going to have that static too in combination with the VIA patch or not. Please post your opinions here.

It sure does!