Ningauble

Creative have acknowledged that their liveware drivers are broken on SMP based machines in windows 2000. Are those expensive dual boards cheap junk? No... Creatives drivers are junk, that has been the problem time and again. So don't automatically assume that because someone is having a problem its because they bought bargain basement components. Win2k support is spotty for *many* manufacturers who make very high quality hardware. Ning

Hrrm, replace the 500 dollar mother board or the 150 dollar sound card... There is *nothing* wrong with my board... the system runs flawlessly in win 98, and flawlessly in win2k with the drivers included on the win2k cd. I haven't seen another person with my same motherboard with these problems, but there are alot of people with the same exact issues on other boards. Creative writes piss poor drivers, thats all there is to it, and if I'm going to replace anything its not gonna be my MB its going to be the SBLive. Saying I should replace my MB is asinine... judging from the poll on creative's newsgroup I could pick 50 percent of the SMP-capable motherboards and still have the exact same problems. Ning

Ok, still some problems even in Uniprocessor kernel. Volume control with EAX enabled in Everquest, Diablo 2, and Baldurs Gate is still messed up, in fact both the sfx slider and the music slider in EQ adjust the music volume for some reason, and the footstep sounds are so loud it sounds like I'm crushing the earth beneath me as I walk. Also I still had some skipping in mp3 playback in windows media player... although it is a bit better than in Multiprocessor kernel. The snaps crackles and pops are gone though. Ning

Switched to MPS Uniprocessor... EAX seems to work better, but MP3's still skip. I don't blame the OS, I blame Creative for the drivers. The basic win2k included drivers work fine, although they lack the eax support. I can't help but wonder what WHQL certification really means though. Guess they don't test on SMP machines too thoroughly. Ning

I am in MPS multiprocessor mode, not ACPI and I am having the same problem. Best I can tell IRQ's are not being shared but it is difficult to say with the high interrupts the APIC uses. And disabling scsi isn't much of an option considering the OS is installed on a UW scsi disk. Ning

MP3's still skip, EAX games have no volume control again(they blare full blast), and snap crackle and pop just like the liveware 2 drivers did. Tyan 1836dluan dual celerons at 550 onboard AIC7895 scsi sb live! voodoo5 agp 5500 onboard intel 100Mb ethernet 128mb pc100 ram Creative dvd-ram seagate 8gig barracuda 2gig scsi jaz Seems for many the problems are gone, but not here... same old same old, tried just the driver then the full install same results. The following games I have tested: Diablo 2 Baldurs Gate Everquest Windows Media Player Setting the hardware acceleration to basic seems to fix the mp3 problem haven't tested the games Ning

Voodoo3 3000 PCI and Viper 770 AGP works better than in 98... need to deactivate one or the other to play d3d games though, same problem in 98. Ning

Just tried the demo version of Unreal Tournament and it causes the same lockups. Ning

I made a long post further down the board about the wierd hangups I've been having... does this sound familiar to anyone? It's not my video drivers, unless every Microsoft and Nvidia released video drivers since Beta 2 or so are buggy, since I've had this problem since then. Ning

I have been experiencing a very strange problem running a few games under Win2k that everyone else seems to be doing ok with. Ever since beta 1, when I would use the hacked NT 3dfx drivers and run unreal, after anywhere from 30 seconds to 15 minutes in the flyby, the entire system freezes and the sound loops for about 2 to 15 seconds, then resumes running. This problem has persisted to the final release 2195, which I did a clean install of, and the official 3dfx hacked drivers released a week ago. The *really* strange thing, is now I have d3d running on my viper 770, and the same lockup happens when running unreal in d3d mode on the viper. Also, everquest has the same problem under glide on the voodoo2's and d3d on the viper, although it can take hours of EQ to make it hangup. Often the hangups only happen once then go away, but othertimes keep happening sequentially. I hooked the voodoo2's to a second monitor so I could see what was going on when the hangs occur, and the entire system grinds to a halt, the system monitor froze, then resumed when the hangup finished. Network protocols, keyboard input, everything is totally unresponsive for the duration of the hang. Unreal using the same drivers under NT4 runs with no problem, and both EQ and Unreal run flawlessly under windows 98. My system is otherwise 100 percent stable and I experience no other unusual behavior running ordinary desktop apps, only the games I listed cause trouble. My system is as follows: Tyan 1836DLUAN mainboard 2xCeleron 366's running at 550 on MSI6905 slockets (I have run the system at 366 and single cpu, and still have the hangups, in fact the hangups date back to when I had dual p2-266's) 2xVoodoo2's (stb blackmagic 12mb's in SLI) Viper 770 SBLive SB Vibra 16 (onboard) onboard UW dual channel adaptec scsi, seagate barracuda 9gig, 2gig jaz, and creative dvd-ram drive 2 3.2 gig EIDE drives in a striped config on the built in EIDE controller Yamaha SW60XG on the lone ISA slot built in Intel 100BaseT Ethernet I have disabled both sound cards, moved all my cards around, stopped any and all extraneous services, tried all the drivers for all the devices in this machine [censored] back to Beta 1 of NT5.0 and nothing seems to fix this problem. Nothing is reporting errors in the event log, and the machine runs these games flawlessly in win 98. If its and interrupt problem I can't tell, since my MB is using the APIC high interrupts. I tried underclocking the voodoo2's to as low as 60mhz and the lockup still occurs the following games cause the hangups: Everquest running on both the viper in d3d and the voodoo2's in glide Unreal (original not tournament) running in both d3d (viper) and glide (voodoo2) mode the following games seem to run fine (both on the viper 770 using 3.78 nvidia ref. drivers) Asheron's Call NBA Live 2000 Baldurs Gate If anyone has been having similar problems or can shed any light on this problem I would greatly appreciate it. This problem has been driving me nuts for about 6 months and is the only reason I still have Win98 on my computer at all. Ning