General problems..... Please help. (usually UT related)

[Muad'Dib]

Ok, this just happened, so I'm a little annoyed.... (Sys specs in sig.) I will be playing a game, UT in particular (but it happened with Thief too) and my comp will make a noise, similar to the beep when your comp makes a gpf and then will freeze up totally. A mouse icon will appear (just teh pointer) and I can move it around, but I can't do anything else. The sound goes off totally and then when I try and CAD out, the screen turns all pixely and wierd colors pop out and that's the best I can describe it. I wouldn't imagine it's heat related ( I really hope not, cause this son of a bit*h has 7 fans throughout). Also, maybe it's a general system problem (?) cause no matter the res., I only get 30 - 32 fps in UT. Maybe it's just UT though. I can go from 640x480x16 all the way to 1280x1024x32 and it will stay the same.... hmmm. Also while I'm at it, I might as well mention that every once in a while, my dvd's get "stuck" and they will "stutter" for a little while. After that, the sound is off for the rest of the movie (unless of course, I restart it). DMA is disabled on my DVD drive (actually on my burner too) and I don't think I can enable it (clikcing the box will restart with an empty box). Super Bypass is Enabled. I think taking my 64 meg out re-enabled it (?).

IRQ's if necessary (they should be ok though I think):

0 System timer
1 PC/AT Enhanced Keyboard (101/102-Key)
2 Programmable interrupt controller
3 Communications Port (COM2)
4 Communications Port (COM1)
5 SCI IRQ used by ACPI bus
6 Standard Floppy Disk Controller
7 ECP Printer Port (LPT1)
8 System CMOS/real time clock
9 Creative SB Live!
9 Linksys LNE100TX Fast Ethernet Adapter
9 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering
9 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering
10 Creative SB16 Emulation
11 REALmagic Hollywood Plus
11 Matrox Millennium G400 DualHead - English
11 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering
12 Cordless7 (PS/2)
13 Numeric data processor
14 Primary Bus Master IDE controller
14 AMD-756 Bus Master IDE Controller V1.24
15 Secondary Bus Master IDE controller
15 AMD-756 Bus Master IDE Controller V1.24

I'm using bios ver. 1.0 (I will upgrade to 1.4 tomorrow).

Thanks in advance for any help.

Dimitri

------------------
Athon 700 @ 700 for now
MSI K7-PRO (110 version)
G400 MAX
128 Megs PC100 RAM
20 gig Maxtor
6 gig WD
DVD-ROM (2nd gen)
RealMagic Hollywood + DVD decoder
Toshiba CDRW (will check on model number when I get home)
SB Live! X-Gamer (ALMOST went for the platinum, but....)

Ok people, keep those UT excuses to suck rolling in. I need all the "help" I can get...

New Excuse: My computer runs it too smoothly. I can't figure out what I'm doing without the choppyness....

***UPDATE***
It only seems to happen after a while of playing, like it might be overheating or something. Also, usually right before UT crashes my system, there get's to be really bad texture corruption. I also thought I would mention, I'm using the 1st bios for my G400 MAX. I'll get around to updating that tomorrow too.

BTW, this problem was not occuring before I put my last fan on my case (that I can recall at least). Although these two issues don't seem related to me, they may be relate to you. Thanks again for any ideas/solutions. Hopefully the later....

In case it helps, the K7-PRO's built in thermometer from Sandra 2000 (non paid for version, shareware, I guess) shows the following for temps:
Board Temperature: 24 C/75.2 F
CPU Temperature: 26.5 C/79.7 F
Power/Aux Temperature: 20.5 C/68.9 F

Ok, hopefully this will be my last edit. This will be the third, but I keep forgetting stuffs. AFAIK, I'm running at AGP 2x. Ok, hopefully that's it. Sorry for my "longwindedness....."

DOH!!! 4th edit. I have 128 megs Ram (The rest is in my grandma's system) with a 256 meg AGPaperture size. Could this be causing problems?

Ok, last one for tonight. I promise. I downloaded Anubis (UT level) and it looked pretty damn sweet. The only problem is that it was pretty choppy. Is this just the level or is something wrong that I should know about.....

[This message has been edited by Muad'Dib (edited 03 April 2000).]

[Muad'Dib]

I know it's long people, but could you please (with a long drawn out "e") just read it?

Dimitri

[Frankfurt]

i aint good enough with hardware to help you with this one dimitri, but about the Anubis map level, normally it isnt choppy but this is coming from someone whos used to getting roughly 20fps in UT on 800x600 with all detail levels on high (32 bit textures too)

Frankfurt

[Wombat]

Come back after you've updated the BIOS's.
I know that the MSI 1.3 BIOS fixed problems with the G400, but I don't know what those problems were.

Disable those COM ports if you can to free the interrupts, and tell the SBLive! Emulation to share IRQ with the printer (System Properties).

[Barbarian1[DOA]]

Do have much to say that may help.

I play UT a ton w/a PIII 450 and vanilla G400 w/o any of the problem you describe. Have played all versions of UT exect the latest (due to some D3D known problems I haven't wanted to deal w/yet .

Sounds hardware related (unless you are correct about the bios upgrades)

GOOD LUCK!! UT is tons of fun and looks great on a G400.

[Muad'Dib]

So far, everything seems to be working fine with the new K7 PRO bios (after it was fixed ), but I still haven't put my case back together, so I'm without my 7th (and problem causeing fan). Unfortunately (maybe ???) my cpu is running at 17 C. I'm assuming it will probably run a little wamer when I put the fan/ case back on it.... Can that be problematic? Oh wait, I have an idea! Why don't I just run it at 800 (or whatever I can get with generic ram/fsb adjustments)... Yeah, I like that idea

I'm going to do it right now. Good night everyone.

Dimitri

Well, everything seems ok at 7 by 108 running Seti@home for a few min. now, except I just checked my hardware monitoring using Sandra 2000 and it says my board temp is ... now it's dissappeared... hmmm. Strange. Is that just Sandra during her time of the month or is something fugly with my computer..... My CPU feels COLD!!! I guess it want's higher... lol Will leave it overnight and if it's running in the morning, I'll try higher. Thanks for your fun all.

Ok, on second thought, I'll just bring her right back down to 700. I got some funky looking lines start appearing both horizontal/vertical and everything froze. RAM problem or am I wrong? It was running for a little bit though Voltage was 1.65 RAM at Cas 2. Maybe if I put it back to Cas 3 it will work? Hmmmm, I think I smell a little burning (or is that just what happens to newbie overclockers???)....

[This message has been edited by Muad'Dib (edited 05 April 2000).]

[This message has been edited by Muad'Dib (edited 05 April 2000).]