Need help with KT133+win2k

[Liquid Snake]

Sorry, I don't remember all the BIOS settings. He has the machine now. Which ones do you need to know? Some I do remember is that AGP apeture is 256MB, and the RAM settings are at 2-2-2. Though the RAM is supposed to be at 3-2-2, its stable, I used to run the same RAM in my machine at 2-2-2 for months.

As for driver install order, it went like this:

1) Installed NIC (to get drivers)
2) Installed G400 drivers 5.31
3) Panicked and realized that I forgot to install VIA 4-in-1.
4) Uninstalled G400 drivers using Matrox uninstaller and then installed VIA drivers.
5) Reinstalled G400 drivers
6) Installed SBLive! drivers
7) Installed DirectX 8
8) Got Win2K SP1 and various updates

Of course, leave out the panicking and uninstalling G400 drivers part when you install your drivers

Everything seemed stable. Ran SETI overnight without any problems. Performance in Half-Life seemed OK. It was about the same performance as my machine. But I just did a quick run and it wasn't fully tweaked yet. The only problem is that he received a cheap, terrible CPU fan. At max, CPU temp is around 64 degrees C! Mine is 48 degrees C at max. Also for some reason, Win2K takes a long, long time to boot (I would guess at least 2 minutes).

The specs of his machine:

- AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1GHz (not unlocked, he does not want to do any overclocking)

- 128MB PC100 Crucial CAS3 RAM

- Asus A7V mobo w/o onboard audio (1004D BIOS I think)

- Matrox G400 MAX (5.31 Win2K)

- SBLive! Value (No Live!Ware, only drivers)

- Network Everywhere NC100 10/100 NIC

- IBM 75GXP 15GB ATA/100 attached to onboard Promise controller (boot drive)

- Some DVD drive (forgot the name and model), attached to Secondary Master of board

- Old Western Digital 6GB ATA/33 drive attached to Primary Master of board (for data and backup)

- Win2K Professional SP1 with ACPI

- Enlight 7237 Mid-Tower ATX case w/ 300W PS (this may be a problem, is a generic PS)

[This message has been edited by Liquid Snake (edited 28 December 2000).]

[Nuno]

Thanks

Bios settings and driver order install would be nice

[rinkol]

Snake, you can probably speed the bootup time by updating the promise drivers. Check the ASUS web site.

Robert Inkol

[Liquid Snake]

I already updated the Promise drivers, but I used the ones from Promise, not Asus. Shouldn't make a difference I assume. But I'll have my friend try the Asus drivers. Also, it seems major instabilites have cropped up. I had my friend clock the AGP down to 1x and to change RAM timings in the BIOS before it finally stablized long enough to run a 3D application for more than five minutes.

[This message has been edited by Liquid Snake (edited 29 December 2000).]

[Greebe]

Shouldn't make a difference I assume.

Don't assume!

[Liquid Snake]

Yep, I learned that the hard way! I knew that AGP card wouldn't fit in the AMR slot!

[paulcs]

In reference to Rik's mention of the AMD/W2K fix, if anyone's a little uncomfortable with editing their registry, here's a hack from AMD's site:

http://www.amd.com/products/cpg/athl...n2k_patch.html

"An issue has been identified that could result in the corruption of video data shared between AGP graphics adapters and AMD Athlon™ or AMD Duron™ processors when running Microsoft Windows®2000. This issue is independent of system chipset and has been observed when running Ziff-Davis 3D Winbench™2000 and Mad Onion 3DMark™ 2000 in benchmarking mode.

"Solution

AMD and Microsoft have worked together to identify a patch that involves adding a key to the registry. To add the key run the registry key installation file below or add the registry key as detailed in Microsoft KnowledgeBase article Q270715. AMD recommends that AMD Athlon and AMD Duron users with AGP graphics adapters running Windows 2000 install this patch."

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[This message has been edited by paulcs (edited 29 December 2000).]

[dZeus]

first upgrade your Motherboard BIOS.. sometimes this helps a lot, and rarely messes things up.

Further, (I don't have a VIA chipset) it would help if people with VIA chipsets (preferrably KT133) would post their BIOS settings that are related to AGP, because it seems that your problem has to do with the VIA AGP implementation (one of the reasons I never will buy VIA). I hope you can fix the problem through the BIOS settings! Good luck!

[Nuno]

I though MGA.AGPflags 00 00 00 00 was forcing AGP 2x, but I was wrong. I tried Matrox tweak over my hack and Forcing AGP 1x (01 00 00 00) or 2x (02 00 00 00) I get a black screen when win2k is logging on - the same thing after a clean install.


So I can only get display in win2k if I force MGA.AGPflags to 00 00 00 00 in safe mode, efectively disabling AGP? I think the problem lies here.

Just to remember, winMe works fine at AGP2x, no hacks needed, AGP available on dxdiag, so I guess it shouldn´t be an hardware problem.

Oh, and I already tried that AMD "LargePageMinimum" patch, with no results.

Any thoughts?

[This message has been edited by Nuno (edited 29 December 2000).]

[Xor'Arch]

I have a KT133 chipset based MB (Chaintech AJA)with a Duron 800@868 and a G400 Dualhead, and it runs perfectly. I've set the AGP apendature to 128 MB (this is the max in my bios) and tried both the enable and disable AGPx4 which does not make a difference sinds I got a G400 which only supports AGPx2.
I must say though that all the benchmarks that I ran are about exactly the same as on my PIII 550 with a BX board, so I guess the G400 is at its limit. I'm using the Via 4.25a 4in1 drivers and used both PD 5.20 and 5.31 with no difference in results.

Xor'Arch

[This message has been edited by Xor'Arch (edited 30 December 2000).]

[Nuno]

Thanks guys.

I´m troubleshooting this with Leo from Matrox TS fori, http://forum.matrox.com/mgaforum/For...ML/002289.html I´ll mess around with my dimms as he sugest and see what I get.

But what really puzzles me is that WinMe is running just fine... So it´s hard to find that an hardware problem would cause this...

[Rags]

Nuno,

I know that a hardware problem is hard to see when everything works under winme, but I have had this experience myself. Everything was just fine and dandy under win9x, but when I goto win2k, I would get my problems. Guess what? It was a hardware problem in the end.

Rags

[Rob M.]

in winme, my cdroms use dma properly. In win2k, dma just won't enable. After updating my bios, it worked in win2k too.

[shrugs]

[Nuno]

Thanks again, guys

I´ve tryed to reinstall both winme and win2k with only one 64 Mb Dimm, set AGP aperture setting to 64 Mb, and nothing.

WinME works just fine...

But I can only get win2k Matrox drivers to work if I effectively disable AGP in safe mode (Mga.AGPFlags 00 00 00 00). Same story about the performance issues.

I´m getting a bit lost over here...

[dZeus]

Nuno:
check this: http://forums.murc.ws/ubb/Forum5/HTML/010064.html

and if that doesn't work: maybe you should change the AGP drive strength (or whatever the exact name is). I've read about that on the web. Maybe other can help you more about this particular feature?