Serious question about beta drivers...

[DanK]

I'm a little perplexed that people seem to be having success with the beta drivers for Win2000. I certainly am not. I'm trying to determine what part of my system is causing the problems. Any insight people have time to share would be great.

The problems:

Colors are wrong everywhere. By wrong I mean that all the icons in Outlook, for example, are a bright pink. It gets worse if I change screen resolutions. Scenario: I'm in 1280x1024x32. I start something like Starcraft, which switches to 640x480 full screen. When the game ends, almost _all_ the colors on the screen have been scrambled. Notably, the menu bar at the bottom of the screen is black on black text--not very useful. Note also that the boot screen, showing the Windows 2000 logo is pink.

An additional problem is that most GL programs throw exceptions and die at some point during execusion. The screen savers die upon completion with a null pointer excpetion at 0x0000000. So does the glclock test program from demonews.

The specs:

Pentium Pro 200MHz
Intel PR440FX motherboard
G200 16MB PCI
Onboard Adaptec SCSI (2940?)
Onboard Crystal Audio Sound
128MB EDO RAM
9GB Seagate Medalist HD
2GB Seagate Baracuda HD

While the machine is a bit dated, I made an effort to not get substandard parts (Intel, Adaptec, Seagate, Matrox). Please don't suggest upgrading, as that is not in my plans until this summer/fall. I don't like any of the Pentium chip sets out right now.

If I can provide any additional information, please let me know...

Thanks in advance,

-Dan K

[Compton]

I've seen the G400 drivers work flawlessly, but you're not gonna get much success with the G200 drivers. They're not quite up to par yet. The G200 drivers provided on your Windows 2000 cd are much more stable.

[PaulS]

I am a little skeptical about the whether these drivers are stable on any system. I have tried them in 3 different systems, all bx boards true, but if they won't work on a bx... The drivers seem stable provided no DirectDraw / Direct3D or OpenGL operations are performed. 16 bit colour seems a little more reliable than 32.

Anyway, I wouldn't worry that there is something wrong with your system, just email all your problems to Matrox and hopefully the right developers will get them.

Unless all these problems have a fairly easily identifiable source, I am worried that they are not going to be up to standard by the 17th.

Paul


Paul

[Scytale]

This might be the same problem as with NT4, where Matrox appear to have broken G200 stability. The W2K driver works pretty well driving my BH6+G400MAX box though.

[This message has been edited by Scytale (edited 08 February 2000).]

[noackjr]

Strange, but I haven't had any problems with the G200 5.00.007 beta drivers. I can run Quake 3 (provided I have the menu memorized - they are messed up - but the game itself runs well) and UT in D3D mode. Both run faster than in Win98SE. 2D seems fine, fast, and stable. I don't think I've restarted since my last program install. No stability problems yet. Win2000 is everything I had hoped it would be so far. Check my signature, we'll talk.

Jon

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My baby...

QDI Brilliant IV - Bios 2.0 Beta (Win2000 updates - email me if you want it!)
2 Pentium III 500 MHz
256 MB PC-100 SDRAM
Matrox Millenium G200 8 MB SGRAM - Bios 2.6-20
2 Creative Labs 3D Blaster Voodoo2 12 MB (SLI...)
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live!
Klipsch ProMedia v.2-400
Quantum Viking 4.5 GB UW SCSI (weak...)
Plextor UltraPlex 32X
Creative Labs PC-DVD Encore 2X

All more or less running on Windows 2000...

[noackjr]

By the way, the Voodoo2 cards don't have real drivers yet so they are relegated to only Glide use (awesome in UT). The SB Live! drivers work but don't have 4-speaker support. Other than that everything is fully functional!

Jon

[noackjr]

Quick thought:

What version of Win2000 are you running? I'm running the OEM final build.

Jon

[Compton]

noackjr, that really suprises me, I've had nothing trouble with the G200 drivers. I'm using the final version as well. The microsoft provided drivers are stable but they lack opengl

[DanK]

Yeah, I'm running the RTM build (2195.1). (And before I get any pirating questions--I was a member of the CPP, and got the CD shipped from Micro$oft.)

I agree that the provided G200 drivers from the Win2K disk work great--just no OpenGL.

The Matrox developers newsletter suggests staying with this driver for the G200, but since the web page listed that the beta works with G200, I thought I'd give it a shot. No luck so far, though. I actually went so far as to make my machine dual-boot to NT4 so that I could continue work with OpenGL.

[Gurm]

The pink color thing is a known issue (in Win9x as well). Change your memory leadoff timing up a notch. (i.e. from 2 to 3) in the BIOS, and the problem disappears.

The Win2k drivers are fine. Honestly.

- Gurm

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[This message has been edited by Gurm (edited 09 February 2000).]