From: "Chris Fera" :Sent: Thursday, August 03, 2000 9:49 PM
Subject: [PCSOFT] Games Freeze During Play
>I own a PIII 667Mhz with 256MBs of RAM (the RAM is running at 133Mhz and so
is the >processer however the RAMs 133 bus speed isn't supported on my
motherboard). I have a >Elsa ERAZOR X GeForce video card and a Sound
Blaster PCI 128 sound card. All of that is >plugged into an Asus P3C2000.
I'm running Windows 98 on it. I use a MS Sidewinder >Joystick. Lastly I
have an Iomega ZIP 100MB external drive.
>The computer has been acting up during games. I'll start up a game (ie.
Rogue Spear or >Midtown Maddness) and go through the menus. The acual game
(level) will load up and the >computer will eventually freeze. The freeze
usually occurs at the begining, but other times I will >play for a while and
then it will freeze. Due to the intermittent nature of the freezing it is
hard to >tell exacty what the problem is. The only time it does NOT happen
is when I'm just using non->gaming apps (ie. Word or Internet Explorer).
This leads me to believe that it has something to >do with hardware/software
that is only used during the game (ie. directx or sound card). >However I
am not sure that it has to do with that either so any suggestions would
help.
>So far I've tried to play with as many window settings as I can find. I've
installed Windows >over top of itself (which seemed to fix the problem but
it showed up again shortly). I have the >newest drivers for my video card,
my sound card and my joystick. Although I've tried these >things I'd gladly
try these ideas again so tell me whatever you can.
>The only things that I think I havent done is to get a new driver for my
CD-ROM drive (because I can't find one, it is an Aston but it shows up as
an ATAPI in device manager) and I >havn't got a new driver for my ZIP (I
didn't think it would mean anything). Also I've been >reluctant about
typing format c:\ and starting from scratch.
>Any help you can offer would be great.
>Thanks,
>Chris Falcone
Chris,
The GeForce video card does not like to share an IRQ with any other device.
You need to go into Device Manager and check to see which IRQ it is using
and whether it is sharing an IRQ. If your BIOS supports it you may be able
to set the IRQ for each PCI slot. Also check to see which PCI slot shares
IRQ's with the AGP slot (usually PCI slot 1) as this PCI slot should not be
populated.
There are also settings in the BIOS which should be set at the following:
Assign IRQ to VGA (or video) - Find this somewhere in your BIOS set it ON or
AUTO.
Video BIOS cacheable - disabled.
Video BIOS shadow - disabled.
VGA Palette Snoop- disabled.
PCI Palette Snoop- disabled.
C8xxxx-CBxxxx Shadow- disabled
Also check the following:
1) Change the RAM into another RAM slot (usually the slots furthest from the
CPU).
(2) Change the ram settings to CAS3 from CAS 2.
(3) Disable ACPI in Windows 98/95.
(4) Disable any virus checking programs running in the background
Power can be another problem depending on how many slots are populated and
fans connected to the motherboard. I had to upgrade my power supply on the
BE6 from a 250w to a 300w power supply to stabilize the system. I also
connected the fan on the card to the power supply instead of the video card.
The GeForce needs to have the I/O voltage at 3.26 and above.
Heat is another issue with the GeForce cards. I have added an additional
case fan that blows across the top and the bottom of the video card to keep
it cool. Lock ups occuring during heavy usage, playing games may be
attributed to heat build up. The fans that came with the GeForce cards are
not known to be the best but you should make sure that it is still running.
Hope one of these suggestions helps.
Mary Wolden
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