Trouble with my Geforce 4 TI 4400 and Win XP

Spigot · May 11, 2002, 11:28 PM

Hey all. I hope you can help me out here!

I just purchased an Xtacy GeForce4 TI 4400 128MB card to replace my Voodoo 5 5500.

So far, I love the card, but every so often it just locks up Win XP Home and I have to do a restart of the system (sometimes by doing the 3-finger salute, sometimes with the reset button)...

It only seems to lock up when I'm gaming though. If I'm just using 2D apps, it works fine.

I have a P4 1.6 GHz w/ 256 MB DDR RAM.

I downloaded the latest WinXP detonator drivers from Nvidia. the 28.32 I believe.

Thanks in advance for all the help!

Spigot

digitalwanderer · May 12, 2002, 12:26 AM

...did you do a complete system re-install? Or how did you go about un-installing the Voodoo drivers?

Also, what apps do you normally have running in the background when ya game? (Norton, AOL, anything like that?)

Spigot · May 12, 2002, 01:44 AM

nope. I didn't do a complete re-install of XP. I was hoping I wouldn't have to. I had the amiga-merlin drivers for the Voodoo 5 and I did uninstall the 3DFX tools...

I only have ICQ and possibly MSNMessenger running in the background...

Spigot · May 12, 2002, 01:52 AM

I found this:
HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIGSystemCurrentControlSetSERVICES 3DFXVSDEVICE0Mon22446688

I noticed an NV key below the 3DFXVS key... should I delete the 3DFXVS key? I don't want to totally bork my system, but I'd like to avoid a reinstall if I can help it (or is WinXP friendly when you reinstall it?)

Thanks for the help. I just want to get my card up and running properly.

---
(this is new with my edit)
Ok. I went through Regedit and looked for every instance of 3DFX and deleted that key (except where it was attached to a game or search key). I've been running the various tech demos from Nvidia and the card still locks up. Esp. on the Squid one.

I'm calling it a night for now. I hope someone can help!

Mark_Fox · May 12, 2002, 11:34 AM

Could you post your system specs and possibly what drivers you're using with the motherboard... thx!

Spigot · May 12, 2002, 08:40 PM

Ok. Here are my system specs:

Pentium 4 1.6GHz processor
Asus P4S333 MB
256MB DDR RAM
Geforce 4 ti4400 (128MB)
Soundblaster Live Value!
hmm... 60 gig drive
XP Home

I had a Voodoo 5 5500 on the system until 2 days ago and was using the Amigamerlin drivers.

I just upgraded everything and put together the box about 2-3 weeks ago.

Here's what I got from the Belarc System Profile re: my mb.
Board: ASUSTeK Computer INC. P4S333 REV 1.xx
Bus Clock: 100 megahertz
BIOS: Award Software, Inc. ASUS P4S333 ACPI BIOS Revision 1004 02/07/2002

Oh, and nothing is overclocked or anything. I want to make sure this brand new system is nice and stable before I do anything wacky.
Let me know if you need any more info to help me with my troubles.

Spigot · May 12, 2002, 11:28 PM

When I restart XP and get the error message, the error details are as follows.

"szAppName : Drivers.Display szAppVer : 10DE0251A2003C1545
szModName : nv4_disp.dll szModVer : 6.13.10.2832 Offset : FD3406EA "

Is that helpful?

Mark_Fox · May 12, 2002, 11:45 PM

Ok, first let's make sure that you do a clean install of the nVidia drivers. You might want to back up registry before just in case something goes wrong.

First, make sure that everything related to 3dfx is removed from the system - so check in add/remove control pannel to make sure there's nothing related to 3dfx there - if there is, remove it!

Now, from add/remove control panel - remove nvidia drivers but don't re-start yet! Before u restart, go to registry and scroll down to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Video] - remove all keys underneath. You might have 1,2,3,4,5, etc keys - all should be removed. Now u can restart!

when u boot back to windows, the system will display message(s) saying the display adaptor isn't configured, not set to maximum...etc...ignore it for now. Next install 28.32 drivers, either manually by going to device manager and upgrading the current winxp default driver (12.40) or you can use nvidia automatic install program. Both should work.

Reboot when asked, when u boot back to windows, chage resolution to whatever u like, enable nView if u wish, etc, install refresh rate fixer (so u can play games @ more the 60Hz) - I think refreshlock v2.01 does the trick. Now play some games and report back on whether the problem is fixed. If not, at least u have fresh install of drivers so we can look @ something else next.... good luck!

Spigot · May 13, 2002, 01:10 AM

Ok. I sort of feel like an idiot.

I just checked the power supply on this box and it says:

Input: 100-200/200-240V~,7/4A,60/50Hz
Output: 235 W

I bet that's just a tad too low to effectively run the Geforce 4 :P

Do you think that's the problem? What wattage should I pick up?

If I get a new power-supply and I still have problems, I'll try your wipe and re-install of the Nvidia drivers, Mark_Fox. Hopefully a new power supply will fix things!

Mark_Fox · May 13, 2002, 01:26 AM

Yeah. I really think you should get a better power supply - 300+ I suggest - the more the better. 235W is just a bit too low I think

Spigot · May 13, 2002, 04:50 PM

Well, I took my 235W power supply back to the store I picked up the case from and they gave me a 250W with the auxilliary plugs for the MB. They didn't have anything higher than a 250W and they did say they were running a GeForce 4 ti4600 fine with the 250W w/ the extra MB plugs, so I hope this gets everything back on an even keel.

I'll post later tonight and let everyone following this sorry story how things are working out.

Thanks for the help though!

Spigot · May 14, 2002, 01:49 AM

hmm... Well, Morrowind worked just great for the last hour or so. Just locked up now though. Same crash as before... just freezes, then about 10-30 secs later reboots by itself.

Sigh. I guess I'll have to scrape my pennies together and see if I can find somewhere that has 300+ Wattage PS's around here. We'll see if I have many more problems overnight though.

Any recommendations for what type of PS is the best? I've heard Enermax is a good brand.

---
New w/ the edit
---
Gah! I followed Mark_Fox's advice and did a fresh re-install of my Nvidia drivers and wiped the Registry clean.

Everything was up and running and I threw in Medal Of Honor to see how things would go. It worked like a dream for about an hour and a half and then, bam, freeze and reboot again.

Sigh.

FastGame · May 14, 2002, 05:18 AM

I had your problem once and to this day I can recreate it by rolling back to 28.32 drivers. The 28.32's will lock games on my box , yet the 27.42 , 27.50 , 28.80 , 28.90 all work fine.

Also don't think....well actually I know it's not a conflict between any old drivers , cuz that just don't happen in XP. I have 5 sets of Nvidia drivers & 3 sets of ATI drivers on My Game rig plus the same type setup on 3 other comps. I can go back -n- forth between all and switch between the Ti 4600 & ATI 8500 at will , no problems , system restore is rather large though. Anyway not saying everyone should have a bunch of drivers in XP , but doesn't matter if you do just takes up space. The Add & Remove should work just fine on Old drivers.

Could also be a setting in your Bio's that needs adjustment , can't say cuz don't know what you have things set to ?

As far as power supply goes ? well I'm an Electrician so I think the First & Foremost upgrade on a computer should be a top notch power supply , makes me smile when I say that...makes others smile when they do it , lots of problems go away with good power supply. I have a Antec 510 watt supply & works great , Enermax is great also. 350 watts should be fine but what the heck if ya got some extra cash get the Big Boy , you can always take it with ya on your next upgrade.

Anyway do as Mark_fox suggest and also try some other drivers , give more info on Bios settings and no matter what...go get that nice Power Supply

Spigot · May 14, 2002, 01:45 PM

So the 28.32's are bad drivers, eh? I might just upgrade to the newer ones then.

I am going to go out today and get myself a new PS. I don't have lots of cash though, so I can't be too greedy. I'll make sure I get a good one for what I can afford though.

I DID clean out all of the old registry keys and re-installed the Nvidia drivers (28.32).

Oh, and as for the BIOS, I've pretty much left it alone since I got my system. Which settings would cause problems or should I possibly tweak? It's an Award bios... Asus P4S333 board...

Thanks for the help (again)... I can't wait until I can declare the problem fixed and close this thread

Spigot · May 14, 2002, 02:24 PM

Ok. I upgraded to the 28.90 drivers.

Medal of Honor crashed again, after about 20-30 minutes of play.

I'm definately going to go and get that 350W or so PS today.

Question about my BIOS.

I looked in there and saw that the AGP FastWrite was disabled. Should I enable it? It looks like the GeForce 4 supports it, but I don't want to do anything rash and have my card catch fire

Mark_Fox · May 14, 2002, 02:46 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Spigot
Question about my BIOS.

I looked in there and saw that the AGP FastWrite was disabled. Should I enable it? It looks like the GeForce 4 supports it, but I don't want to do anything rash and have my card catch fire

No leave it disabled, it causes system instabilty, something u already have enough of as it is...lol

Question, u said u just put this system together, did it have voodoo5 in it before u upgraded to geforce4 or did u put it together and at the same time put geforce4 card in there?

Spigot · May 14, 2002, 03:33 PM

I put it together and had the Voodoo 5 in for about 2 weeks or so before I got the GeForce.

I was looking at my BIOS. The AGP aperature is 64, I turned the FastWrite on, but I can turn it back off if that's better...

I'm off to get the new PS shortly. Let me know if there are any other BIOS settings I should change.

Mark_Fox · May 14, 2002, 04:25 PM

The AGP Aparature should be set to higher in my opinion. 128 at least, my is on 256.

Spigot · May 14, 2002, 09:16 PM

Ok. Let's see if this works. I went out today and picked up a nice dual-fan 350 W power supply. I think it's called Silver or something (I'll have to look at it again)

I did have an interesting conversation with the guy who sold it to me. He stated that P4's pretty much require 250W to run the basic processes. And with a 4X AGP card it jumps up to 300W minimum.

No wonder I was having problems.

I'll be installing the new power supply when I get home from work and hopefully all will be well. Thanks for all the help everyone. I'll post an aftermath report once I've taken the new PS out for a spin tonight!

PS. I cranked the AGP aperature to 256MB earlier this morning... the performance was much improved for the brief time that everything worked... then it locked up again

Hopefully that won't happen again!

Zardon · May 14, 2002, 09:48 PM

yes lets hear how it goes, ive been watching this thread with interest.......

Spigot · May 15, 2002, 06:52 AM

Well, the saga of Spig's Geforce looks to be drawing to a close, faithful viewers...

I installed the new 350W power supply tonight and man, everything seems to be running smoother, or at least faster... or maybe that's just me.

I played Medal of Honor for about an hour and a half or so, on the Normandy level, and there was nary a problem. I'll try out Morrowind and a couple other games first thing tomorrow just to make sure, but it looks like my problems are solved!

Thanks everyone for your help and for not making too much fun of me as I bumbled my way through this. I'm glad it was a hardware issue that was easily fixed rather than some silly driver issue or ghost in the machine that didn't like me for some reason.

*tips his hat to everyone at Driver Heaven*

Spigot · May 15, 2002, 07:36 AM

I had to go and try out another game (Hostile Waters) before I went to bed...

crash...

try out the Squid G4 tech demo...

crash...

I'm glad I got the new PS, but why is my system crashing NOW?!

I'm hoping now that it's more of a software issue than a hardware one.

It wouldn't have something to do with my Soundblaster Live! would it? I didn't have any problems with it and XP when using the Voodoo 5...

---
new w/ the edit
---
I had Morrowind working again and played for more than an hour... no problems. Maybe the crash earlier with the older game was just a software issue...

Mark_Fox · May 15, 2002, 09:03 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Spigot
I'm hoping now that it's more of a software issue than a hardware one.

yeah, but software issues are the hardest one to find and fix. I sure hope the new power supply did the trick...

Let us know as soon as you know yourself whether the problem is still there, we'll try to think of something else. But remember - its a good thing u have a new PSU - not a waste of money - 235W u had was too low anyway, even if that wasn't the cause of these crashes.

FastGame · May 15, 2002, 01:58 PM

Sorry to hear driver change didn't help , happy to hear you got a nice power supply things will be better in the long run. Here's a list of things I would like you to try and remember to do only one at a time then retest , if things don't work then reset to default before moving on to next setting. If you do it that way you'll know what the fix was plus you won't end up with a system out of whack from bunch of changes .

The first two things here you can set and leave as you set , no need to reset. Go to this Link Here and go through the list and disable or set to manual all the things your not using or don't need. Now while your in changing these services look for Nvidia Driver Helper & set it to disable or manual also. Then go to Start > Run , type in msconfig and in startup if Nvidia Driver Helper is there uncheck box. Now you can retest , if you still crash then move on to next settings but remember you can leave these settings as they are.

As far as the sound card ? yes SoundBlaster has been known to cause problems with all sorts of things , so just to make sure pull the card and test. If that works then try card in another PCI slot.

These things do one at a time....
AGP aperture= 64 or 128
AGP fast-writes= disable
AGP 2X,4X= 2X , mine is set to 2X & benchmarks are very high , all demos and games run smooth as silk on ATI 8500 , Ti 4600. Things also run fine on my sys. at 4X , but give a try.
AGP Compensation= disable , this is the one setting that no matter what if I have it enabled I will get tearing & crash on both the 8500 , Ti 4600 or any card for that matter ! I don't know about your mainboard or it's Bios so you may not have this or it may be called something else ? Thats why we want you to post your Bios & settings so the people with the experience in your hardware can see & help decide your settings.

If you want to learn more about your Bios it's settings and what they mean go here Link Here make sure you check out all sections of this site , there's also a Bios revision update there.

Keep everyone updated...

BTW: no one think's your Dumb , as a matter of Fact everyone know's that after you get your fix...you'll be Smarter

[edit]= spelling

Spigot · May 15, 2002, 02:40 PM

Ok. I had Morrowind crash this morning after maybe 40 minutes. Same old thing. Looks like the PS didn't help, at least not the way I wanted it to.

Ok. I'm now trying out some of Fast Game's tweaks. I dropped the AGP down to 2X and I have unselected the Nvidia Driver Helper from startup. Let's see what that does.

Now you were saying you wanted to see my BIOS... how would I go about posting my settings, or do I just have to write them all down. I have an Asus P4S333 Motherboard if that helps with anything. It's an Award bios.

Thanks again for the help all. You don't think it's the card causing the problems, do you? I can take it back within 14 days and get a new one if that is the case... which means I have about 9-10 days to go.

FastGame · May 15, 2002, 03:11 PM

First did you try pulling sound card and test , if not then do so just to get that out of the way.

I have ASUS A7M266 , so does your Bios have AGP Compensation ? if you have the Book for mainboard look through it. If you have the Manual you can scan & post settings or write your settings to note pad then paste. I know it's a hassle but not as much as Game crash. Your mainboard is newer than mine so you might have more up to date settings than me , but if you have AGP Compensation I would say your closer to a fix...maybe , hope

[edit]= I think you will be fixed in a short time , if not the you can decide if the card needs to be returned. I doubt it's the card , your problem is common in Win XP it's just a matter of settings....

Ryoko · May 16, 2002, 09:28 AM

also, check device manager to see if your irq's are bundled...

Spigot · May 17, 2002, 05:22 PM

Ok. I have been busy the last couple days, but today is my day off and I'm working on getting my computer working.

First off, it's still crashing. Warrior Kings won't even get me past the menu without crashing... HOWEVER, I've finally seen the XP blue screen of death and took a couple pictures of it so everyone can see the error message.

http://www3.sympatico.ca/spigot/puter3.jpg
http://www3.sympatico.ca/spigot/puter4.jpg

I did remove my Soundblaster from the computer. I also did an install of XP over itself (the upgrade over a full version) to see if that would clear out some of the bugs. Alas.

It did reset the driver to 28.32 I believe

Spigot · May 17, 2002, 05:40 PM

Ok. I took a picture of my Nvidia info screen (lists all the drivers, etc) and also of the part on the box of my motherboard so that everyone can see what's on it.

Driver Info
Box

I hope that helps!

I'll take a picture of my BIOS settings in a sec.

Spigot · May 17, 2002, 06:10 PM

Here are pics I took of all of my bios screens.

Bios 1
Bios 2
Bios 3
Bios 4
Bios 5
Bios 6
Bios 7
Bios 8
Bios 9
Bios 10
Bios 11

PS. I did get Warrior Kings to work, but only for a few minutes before it dumped me back out to that blue screen that talked about the Infinite Loop.

May 11, 2002, 11:28 PM	#1
Spigot ph34r the l33t ducky Join Date: May 2002 Location: It's worth the drive to Acton! Posts: 116 Rep Power: 0	Trouble with my Geforce 4 TI 4400 and Win XP Hey all. I hope you can help me out here! I just purchased an Xtacy GeForce4 TI 4400 128MB card to replace my Voodoo 5 5500. So far, I love the card, but every so often it just locks up Win XP Home and I have to do a restart of the system (sometimes by doing the 3-finger salute, sometimes with the reset button)... It only seems to lock up when I'm gaming though. If I'm just using 2D apps, it works fine. I have a P4 1.6 GHz w/ 256 MB DDR RAM. I downloaded the latest WinXP detonator drivers from Nvidia. the 28.32 I believe. Thanks in advance for all the help! Spigot __________________ In Canada, we take "An Army Of One" literally.

May 12, 2002, 12:26 AM	#2
digitalwanderer Colour Commentator Join Date: May 2002 Location: Highland, IN USA Posts: 5,619 Rep Power: 0	When you installed it... ...did you do a complete system re-install? Or how did you go about un-installing the Voodoo drivers? Also, what apps do you normally have running in the background when ya game? (Norton, AOL, anything like that?) __________________ WTF is up with the sigs?

May 12, 2002, 01:44 AM	Thread Starter #3
Spigot ph34r the l33t ducky Join Date: May 2002 Location: It's worth the drive to Acton! Posts: 116 Rep Power: 0	nope. I didn't do a complete re-install of XP. I was hoping I wouldn't have to. I had the amiga-merlin drivers for the Voodoo 5 and I did uninstall the 3DFX tools... I only have ICQ and possibly MSNMessenger running in the background... __________________ In Canada, we take "An Army Of One" literally.

May 12, 2002, 01:52 AM	Thread Starter #4
Spigot ph34r the l33t ducky Join Date: May 2002 Location: It's worth the drive to Acton! Posts: 116 Rep Power: 0	When I look in Regedit I found this: HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIGSystemCurrentControlSetSERVICES 3DFXVSDEVICE0Mon22446688 I noticed an NV key below the 3DFXVS key... should I delete the 3DFXVS key? I don't want to totally bork my system, but I'd like to avoid a reinstall if I can help it (or is WinXP friendly when you reinstall it?) Thanks for the help. I just want to get my card up and running properly. --- (this is new with my edit) Ok. I went through Regedit and looked for every instance of 3DFX and deleted that key (except where it was attached to a game or search key). I've been running the various tech demos from Nvidia and the card still locks up. Esp. on the Squid one. I'm calling it a night for now. I hope someone can help! __________________ In Canada, we take "An Army Of One" literally.

May 12, 2002, 08:40 PM	Thread Starter #6
Spigot ph34r the l33t ducky Join Date: May 2002 Location: It's worth the drive to Acton! Posts: 116 Rep Power: 0	my specs Ok. Here are my system specs: Pentium 4 1.6GHz processor Asus P4S333 MB 256MB DDR RAM Geforce 4 ti4400 (128MB) Soundblaster Live Value! hmm... 60 gig drive XP Home I had a Voodoo 5 5500 on the system until 2 days ago and was using the Amigamerlin drivers. I just upgraded everything and put together the box about 2-3 weeks ago. Here's what I got from the Belarc System Profile re: my mb. Board: ASUSTeK Computer INC. P4S333 REV 1.xx Bus Clock: 100 megahertz BIOS: Award Software, Inc. ASUS P4S333 ACPI BIOS Revision 1004 02/07/2002 Oh, and nothing is overclocked or anything. I want to make sure this brand new system is nice and stable before I do anything wacky. Let me know if you need any more info to help me with my troubles. __________________ In Canada, we take "An Army Of One" literally.

May 12, 2002, 11:34 AM	#5
Mark_Fox RIP Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 308 Rep Power: 0	Could you post your system specs and possibly what drivers you're using with the motherboard... thx!

May 12, 2002, 11:28 PM	Thread Starter #7
Spigot ph34r the l33t ducky Join Date: May 2002 Location: It's worth the drive to Acton! Posts: 116 Rep Power: 0	Here's the error message I get when I restart XP after the system crashes When I restart XP and get the error message, the error details are as follows. "szAppName : Drivers.Display szAppVer : 10DE0251A2003C1545 szModName : nv4_disp.dll szModVer : 6.13.10.2832 Offset : FD3406EA " Is that helpful? __________________ In Canada, we take "An Army Of One" literally.

May 12, 2002, 11:45 PM	#8
Mark_Fox RIP Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 308 Rep Power: 0	Ok, first let's make sure that you do a clean install of the nVidia drivers. You might want to back up registry before just in case something goes wrong. First, make sure that everything related to 3dfx is removed from the system - so check in add/remove control pannel to make sure there's nothing related to 3dfx there - if there is, remove it! Now, from add/remove control panel - remove nvidia drivers but don't re-start yet! Before u restart, go to registry and scroll down to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Video] - remove all keys underneath. You might have 1,2,3,4,5, etc keys - all should be removed. Now u can restart! when u boot back to windows, the system will display message(s) saying the display adaptor isn't configured, not set to maximum...etc...ignore it for now. Next install 28.32 drivers, either manually by going to device manager and upgrading the current winxp default driver (12.40) or you can use nvidia automatic install program. Both should work. Reboot when asked, when u boot back to windows, chage resolution to whatever u like, enable nView if u wish, etc, install refresh rate fixer (so u can play games @ more the 60Hz) - I think refreshlock v2.01 does the trick. Now play some games and report back on whether the problem is fixed. If not, at least u have fresh install of drivers so we can look @ something else next.... good luck!

May 13, 2002, 01:10 AM	Thread Starter #9
Spigot ph34r the l33t ducky Join Date: May 2002 Location: It's worth the drive to Acton! Posts: 116 Rep Power: 0	This might be the cause of the problem after all... Ok. I sort of feel like an idiot. I just checked the power supply on this box and it says: Input: 100-200/200-240V~,7/4A,60/50Hz Output: 235 W I bet that's just a tad too low to effectively run the Geforce 4 :P Do you think that's the problem? What wattage should I pick up? If I get a new power-supply and I still have problems, I'll try your wipe and re-install of the Nvidia drivers, Mark_Fox. Hopefully a new power supply will fix things! __________________ In Canada, we take "An Army Of One" literally.

May 13, 2002, 01:26 AM	#10
Mark_Fox RIP Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 308 Rep Power: 0	Yeah. I really think you should get a better power supply - 300+ I suggest - the more the better. 235W is just a bit too low I think

May 13, 2002, 04:50 PM	Thread Starter #11
Spigot ph34r the l33t ducky Join Date: May 2002 Location: It's worth the drive to Acton! Posts: 116 Rep Power: 0	Got a replacement Well, I took my 235W power supply back to the store I picked up the case from and they gave me a 250W with the auxilliary plugs for the MB. They didn't have anything higher than a 250W and they did say they were running a GeForce 4 ti4600 fine with the 250W w/ the extra MB plugs, so I hope this gets everything back on an even keel. I'll post later tonight and let everyone following this sorry story how things are working out. Thanks for the help though! __________________ In Canada, we take "An Army Of One" literally.

May 14, 2002, 01:49 AM	Thread Starter #12
Spigot ph34r the l33t ducky Join Date: May 2002 Location: It's worth the drive to Acton! Posts: 116 Rep Power: 0	Well, it looked like it was working... hmm... Well, Morrowind worked just great for the last hour or so. Just locked up now though. Same crash as before... just freezes, then about 10-30 secs later reboots by itself. Sigh. I guess I'll have to scrape my pennies together and see if I can find somewhere that has 300+ Wattage PS's around here. We'll see if I have many more problems overnight though. Any recommendations for what type of PS is the best? I've heard Enermax is a good brand. --- New w/ the edit --- Gah! I followed Mark_Fox's advice and did a fresh re-install of my Nvidia drivers and wiped the Registry clean. Everything was up and running and I threw in Medal Of Honor to see how things would go. It worked like a dream for about an hour and a half and then, bam, freeze and reboot again. Sigh. __________________ In Canada, we take "An Army Of One" literally.

May 14, 2002, 05:18 AM	#13
FastGame DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: May 2002 Location: Michigan Posts: 14 Rep Power: 0	I had your problem once and to this day I can recreate it by rolling back to 28.32 drivers. The 28.32's will lock games on my box , yet the 27.42 , 27.50 , 28.80 , 28.90 all work fine. Also don't think....well actually I know it's not a conflict between any old drivers , cuz that just don't happen in XP. I have 5 sets of Nvidia drivers & 3 sets of ATI drivers on My Game rig plus the same type setup on 3 other comps. I can go back -n- forth between all and switch between the Ti 4600 & ATI 8500 at will , no problems , system restore is rather large though. Anyway not saying everyone should have a bunch of drivers in XP , but doesn't matter if you do just takes up space. The Add & Remove should work just fine on Old drivers. Could also be a setting in your Bio's that needs adjustment , can't say cuz don't know what you have things set to ? As far as power supply goes ? well I'm an Electrician so I think the First & Foremost upgrade on a computer should be a top notch power supply , makes me smile when I say that...makes others smile when they do it , lots of problems go away with good power supply. I have a Antec 510 watt supply & works great , Enermax is great also. 350 watts should be fine but what the heck if ya got some extra cash get the Big Boy , you can always take it with ya on your next upgrade. Anyway do as Mark_fox suggest and also try some other drivers , give more info on Bios settings and no matter what...go get that nice Power Supply

May 14, 2002, 01:45 PM	Thread Starter #14
Spigot ph34r the l33t ducky Join Date: May 2002 Location: It's worth the drive to Acton! Posts: 116 Rep Power: 0	Going to get a new PS today So the 28.32's are bad drivers, eh? I might just upgrade to the newer ones then. I am going to go out today and get myself a new PS. I don't have lots of cash though, so I can't be too greedy. I'll make sure I get a good one for what I can afford though. I DID clean out all of the old registry keys and re-installed the Nvidia drivers (28.32). Oh, and as for the BIOS, I've pretty much left it alone since I got my system. Which settings would cause problems or should I possibly tweak? It's an Award bios... Asus P4S333 board... Thanks for the help (again)... I can't wait until I can declare the problem fixed and close this thread __________________ In Canada, we take "An Army Of One" literally.

May 14, 2002, 02:24 PM	Thread Starter #15
Spigot ph34r the l33t ducky Join Date: May 2002 Location: It's worth the drive to Acton! Posts: 116 Rep Power: 0	BIOS setting Ok. I upgraded to the 28.90 drivers. Medal of Honor crashed again, after about 20-30 minutes of play. I'm definately going to go and get that 350W or so PS today. Question about my BIOS. I looked in there and saw that the AGP FastWrite was disabled. Should I enable it? It looks like the GeForce 4 supports it, but I don't want to do anything rash and have my card catch fire __________________ In Canada, we take "An Army Of One" literally.

May 14, 2002, 03:33 PM	Thread Starter #17
Spigot ph34r the l33t ducky Join Date: May 2002 Location: It's worth the drive to Acton! Posts: 116 Rep Power: 0	I put it together and had the Voodoo 5 in for about 2 weeks or so before I got the GeForce. I was looking at my BIOS. The AGP aperature is 64, I turned the FastWrite on, but I can turn it back off if that's better... I'm off to get the new PS shortly. Let me know if there are any other BIOS settings I should change. __________________ In Canada, we take "An Army Of One" literally.

May 14, 2002, 04:25 PM	#18
Mark_Fox RIP Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 308 Rep Power: 0	The AGP Aparature should be set to higher in my opinion. 128 at least, my is on 256.

May 14, 2002, 09:16 PM	Thread Starter #19
Spigot ph34r the l33t ducky Join Date: May 2002 Location: It's worth the drive to Acton! Posts: 116 Rep Power: 0	Got a new power source... again... Ok. Let's see if this works. I went out today and picked up a nice dual-fan 350 W power supply. I think it's called Silver or something (I'll have to look at it again) I did have an interesting conversation with the guy who sold it to me. He stated that P4's pretty much require 250W to run the basic processes. And with a 4X AGP card it jumps up to 300W minimum. No wonder I was having problems. I'll be installing the new power supply when I get home from work and hopefully all will be well. Thanks for all the help everyone. I'll post an aftermath report once I've taken the new PS out for a spin tonight! PS. I cranked the AGP aperature to 256MB earlier this morning... the performance was much improved for the brief time that everything worked... then it locked up again Hopefully that won't happen again! __________________ In Canada, we take "An Army Of One" literally.

May 14, 2002, 09:48 PM	#20
Zardon DriverHeaven Founder Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 32,480 Rep Power: 179	yes lets hear how it goes, ive been watching this thread with interest.......

May 15, 2002, 06:52 AM	Thread Starter #21
Spigot ph34r the l33t ducky Join Date: May 2002 Location: It's worth the drive to Acton! Posts: 116 Rep Power: 0	Woohoo! Well, the saga of Spig's Geforce looks to be drawing to a close, faithful viewers... I installed the new 350W power supply tonight and man, everything seems to be running smoother, or at least faster... or maybe that's just me. I played Medal of Honor for about an hour and a half or so, on the Normandy level, and there was nary a problem. I'll try out Morrowind and a couple other games first thing tomorrow just to make sure, but it looks like my problems are solved! Thanks everyone for your help and for not making too much fun of me as I bumbled my way through this. I'm glad it was a hardware issue that was easily fixed rather than some silly driver issue or ghost in the machine that didn't like me for some reason. tips his hat to everyone at Driver Heaven __________________ In Canada, we take "An Army Of One" literally.

May 15, 2002, 07:36 AM	Thread Starter #22
Spigot ph34r the l33t ducky Join Date: May 2002 Location: It's worth the drive to Acton! Posts: 116 Rep Power: 0	Grr... I had to go and try out another game (Hostile Waters) before I went to bed... crash... try out the Squid G4 tech demo... crash... I'm glad I got the new PS, but why is my system crashing NOW?! I'm hoping now that it's more of a software issue than a hardware one. It wouldn't have something to do with my Soundblaster Live! would it? I didn't have any problems with it and XP when using the Voodoo 5... --- new w/ the edit --- I had Morrowind working again and played for more than an hour... no problems. Maybe the crash earlier with the older game was just a software issue... __________________ In Canada, we take "An Army Of One" literally.

May 15, 2002, 01:58 PM	#24
FastGame DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: May 2002 Location: Michigan Posts: 14 Rep Power: 0	Sorry to hear driver change didn't help , happy to hear you got a nice power supply things will be better in the long run. Here's a list of things I would like you to try and remember to do only one at a time then retest , if things don't work then reset to default before moving on to next setting. If you do it that way you'll know what the fix was plus you won't end up with a system out of whack from bunch of changes . The first two things here you can set and leave as you set , no need to reset. Go to this Link Here and go through the list and disable or set to manual all the things your not using or don't need. Now while your in changing these services look for Nvidia Driver Helper & set it to disable or manual also. Then go to Start > Run , type in msconfig and in startup if Nvidia Driver Helper is there uncheck box. Now you can retest , if you still crash then move on to next settings but remember you can leave these settings as they are. As far as the sound card ? yes SoundBlaster has been known to cause problems with all sorts of things , so just to make sure pull the card and test. If that works then try card in another PCI slot. These things do one at a time.... AGP aperture= 64 or 128 AGP fast-writes= disable AGP 2X,4X= 2X , mine is set to 2X & benchmarks are very high , all demos and games run smooth as silk on ATI 8500 , Ti 4600. Things also run fine on my sys. at 4X , but give a try. AGP Compensation= disable , this is the one setting that no matter what if I have it enabled I will get tearing & crash on both the 8500 , Ti 4600 or any card for that matter ! I don't know about your mainboard or it's Bios so you may not have this or it may be called something else ? Thats why we want you to post your Bios & settings so the people with the experience in your hardware can see & help decide your settings. If you want to learn more about your Bios it's settings and what they mean go here Link Here make sure you check out all sections of this site , there's also a Bios revision update there. Keep everyone updated... BTW: no one think's your Dumb , as a matter of Fact everyone know's that after you get your fix...you'll be Smarter [edit]= spelling

May 15, 2002, 02:40 PM	Thread Starter #25
Spigot ph34r the l33t ducky Join Date: May 2002 Location: It's worth the drive to Acton! Posts: 116 Rep Power: 0	Tweaking away... Ok. I had Morrowind crash this morning after maybe 40 minutes. Same old thing. Looks like the PS didn't help, at least not the way I wanted it to. Ok. I'm now trying out some of Fast Game's tweaks. I dropped the AGP down to 2X and I have unselected the Nvidia Driver Helper from startup. Let's see what that does. Now you were saying you wanted to see my BIOS... how would I go about posting my settings, or do I just have to write them all down. I have an Asus P4S333 Motherboard if that helps with anything. It's an Award bios. Thanks again for the help all. You don't think it's the card causing the problems, do you? I can take it back within 14 days and get a new one if that is the case... which means I have about 9-10 days to go. __________________ In Canada, we take "An Army Of One" literally.

May 15, 2002, 03:11 PM	#26
FastGame DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: May 2002 Location: Michigan Posts: 14 Rep Power: 0	RE: How to post Bios First did you try pulling sound card and test , if not then do so just to get that out of the way. I have ASUS A7M266 , so does your Bios have AGP Compensation ? if you have the Book for mainboard look through it. If you have the Manual you can scan & post settings or write your settings to note pad then paste. I know it's a hassle but not as much as Game crash. Your mainboard is newer than mine so you might have more up to date settings than me , but if you have AGP Compensation I would say your closer to a fix...maybe , hope [edit]= I think you will be fixed in a short time , if not the you can decide if the card needs to be returned. I doubt it's the card , your problem is common in Win XP it's just a matter of settings....

May 16, 2002, 09:28 AM	#27
Ryoko American Soldier Join Date: May 2002 Location: Williamsburg, VA Posts: 1,725 Rep Power: 0	also, check device manager to see if your irq's are bundled...

May 17, 2002, 05:22 PM	Thread Starter #28
Spigot ph34r the l33t ducky Join Date: May 2002 Location: It's worth the drive to Acton! Posts: 116 Rep Power: 0	A clue! Ok. I have been busy the last couple days, but today is my day off and I'm working on getting my computer working. First off, it's still crashing. Warrior Kings won't even get me past the menu without crashing... HOWEVER, I've finally seen the XP blue screen of death and took a couple pictures of it so everyone can see the error message. http://www3.sympatico.ca/spigot/puter3.jpg http://www3.sympatico.ca/spigot/puter4.jpg I did remove my Soundblaster from the computer. I also did an install of XP over itself (the upgrade over a full version) to see if that would clear out some of the bugs. Alas. It did reset the driver to 28.32 I believe __________________ In Canada, we take "An Army Of One" literally.

May 17, 2002, 05:40 PM	Thread Starter #29
Spigot ph34r the l33t ducky Join Date: May 2002 Location: It's worth the drive to Acton! Posts: 116 Rep Power: 0	A few other bits of info Ok. I took a picture of my Nvidia info screen (lists all the drivers, etc) and also of the part on the box of my motherboard so that everyone can see what's on it. Driver Info Box I hope that helps! I'll take a picture of my BIOS settings in a sec. __________________ In Canada, we take "An Army Of One" literally.

May 17, 2002, 06:10 PM	Thread Starter #30
Spigot ph34r the l33t ducky Join Date: May 2002 Location: It's worth the drive to Acton! Posts: 116 Rep Power: 0	BIOS settings Here are pics I took of all of my bios screens. Bios 1 Bios 2 Bios 3 Bios 4 Bios 5 Bios 6 Bios 7 Bios 8 Bios 9 Bios 10 Bios 11 PS. I did get Warrior Kings to work, but only for a few minutes before it dumped me back out to that blue screen that talked about the Infinite Loop. __________________ In Canada, we take "An Army Of One" literally.