Lockups, Corruption and B&W

[Tarnar]

Alright.. I'm on my last legs here. Black and White locks up, regularly and terribly. I can't play the game for more then 15 minutes before it goes down hard. System specs follow, any help would be appreciated:

PIII 700
CUSL2-C w/latest BIOS
1x256MB Micron PC133
Matrox G400 OEM, 32 Meg
Win98 SE
6.50.008 drivers from Matrox
SB Live! Value
3Com 3c9xx NIC

I'm fairly sure it's not a heat problem.. After a lockup, the system doesn't report the CPU temp as being high, and the G400 has extra cooling.

Also, it hasn't happened recently, but I used to regularly get graphical corruption. The system would keep responding, but the graphics would be screwed.. This problem wasn't limited to B&W.. Tribes 2 did it too. I hope someone can help me resolve either of these.

[bugblatt]

You say your G400 has extra cooling, is that because you've overclocked it? If so that's probably the problem.

[Tarnar]

Newp.. Not overclocking it. Just thought it was a very warm card, so I have a fan blowing at it. In fact, this whole system is running as it should, nothing overclocked.

Now my lockups are extending into Half Life and Tribes 2. This is nothing short of infuriating..

[crossbonesx]

man its almost like go try another video card.

[Admiral]

I'm playing it in 800x600x16, maximum detail.
In 32 bits it would lock.

[Maggi]

I'm playing in 800x600x32bpp on my G450 with details set to max and the only lockups that I experience are caused by OCing a bit too high ...

when I run my system in spec (well my celery is still OCed, but only to 850 and not 952), it's rock stable, but chokes sometimes.

Maybe it is more of a general heat problem.
For a test you could leave your tower case open and see if it lasts longer or maybe even it won't crash anymore.

[Gurm]

Black and White _specifically_ has corruption and lockup issues related to the AGP transfers.

Go to DXDIAG and turn off AGP texturing. If that doesn't help then it's hardware.

- Gurm

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

[snoozer]

I'm not sure about B&W, but ever since I upgraded my drivers to 6.51 nothing seems to work properly. Even UT is locking up and that usually always works. Half life doesn't work, but it never did with any driver release ..

I would recommend going for an older driver. 6.21 seemed to work quite well for me. Can anyone else recommend a specific driver version? I've noticed that a lot of people on the forums are still using 5.51!

Also, should I be using DX 8a with these new drivers or is 7 still ok?

[Raptor^]

I got this when I first installed B&W too, except that on my machine it would lock hard within about 10 secs.

For some reason, my semi-fried G400 MAX always defaults to AGP 1x... I'd just reinstalled Windows and hadn't forced 2x yet, so I tried that and the lock ups went away.

Quite why increasing the AGP speed can fix problems I'm not sure, but it worked for me.

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Unreal Fortress developer

[Wombat]

Forcing 2x probably made your system choose between 2x and no AGP at all, so you're probably running with AGP disabled.

[StiTCHER]

Im having the same problem with B&W.. After playing for about 5 minutes it just freezes. Ive tried turning off AGP Texturing, and changed reselutions, depth and so on. Nothing helps!

Can anyone help me?

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Specs:
Win 98 SE
Matrox Millenium g400 DH
6.50 Drivers
PIII 500
MSI 6199 MainBoard with VIA Chipset
256 Mb RAM
Latest BIOS for MB and Matrox card.