nVidia GeForce4 440 problems

[Abscondor]

I'm running the dreaded GeForce4 440 8xAGP card in the PCI slot overiding the onboard graphics card on an HP Pavillion 503w with 759 MB RAM running win98 SE and I'm getting the usual problems with STW i.e.startup to black screen, plays startup spounds , you can still see the Windows taskbar, when you try to close STW with the cntl+alt+del it shows that Shogun:Total war is running as is Shogun. Neither will close and the screen freezes and as the HP Pavillion has no reboot button, I have to trip the power button on the surge protector with a T-square to get it to restart. I read the various tweaking hints(Antialiasing off, vertical sync mode etc.) and actually got STW up and running for a few hours, quit, came back played another couple of hours then the frame rate droped to about 4 frames per MINUTE and crashed shortly thereafter. So I wnet back and changed the drivers for the earlier 44.03 drivers, re-tweaked and its still no go. Any ideas? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mecry.gif

[Abscondor]

I forgot to mention that the GeForce is th e64 Mb model and that I instaled the latest STW patch. Also I tried turning off the hardware acceletation on the perfomance tab of the advanced settings for desk top thingy. Also no go

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif

[Lord Of Storms]

I had a similar situation same type of card and on board graphics as well, what drivers are you using,? often it has seemed the older versions of the nvidia dirvers seem to work best such as 30.82 or 41.09 and did you disable the onboard graphics in device manager? I had some problem with that at first where it would read both and on my dispaly settings it showed 2 monitors which caused a problem. anyway try the older dirvers see if that helps any...LOS

[Abscondor]

Started out running the 45.23, switched to the 44.03(which didn't work) just now got through with the 40.09(which also didn't work) re-tweaking each time and trying various settings on the hardware acceleration. Now whenever I click on the settings tab, it crashs to a black screen despite having AntiCrash running from the systray. I'm about ready to through in the towel.
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mad.gif

[Gregoshi]

Hello Abscondor.

Are you able to return to the later drivers? If so, is your settings tab still broken?

(* bump *)

[L`zard]

Quote[/b] (Abscondor @ Nov. 07 2003,15:53)]I'm running the dreaded GeForce4 440 8xAGP card in the PCI slot overiding the onboard graphics card on an HP Pavillion 503w with 759 MB RAM running win98 SE
Two thoughts, Abscondor;

Have you checked your card for 'jumper settings'? Have you checked your bios to see if these match?

Some mobos will not even think about 8x, eh? Not familiar with this card, but some cards have 'hard-set' jumpers that you can set to 4x/2x.

Not familiar w/the 503w either, tho the 759mb ram sounds like your running 133mhz speed ram at best. If your using 3 modules to achieve this quantity of ram, are they 'matched', ie; all the same speed of ram?

You might try downloading SANDRA (a diagnostic proggy) in your case prolly sandra-standard. Its free, and seriously usefull. It can tell you if your ram will play well together. Note that simms will only run at the slowest speed of any multiple, eh?

My guess is settings, tho. If you've got any sort of manual, check up on your bios settings. If you don't have a manual, check online for one, or check against your puter type in a search(google&#33http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

Good luck, eh? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

[L`zard]

This sounds like a job for

ERADO-SAN

Yes, Erado-san, with his compatriot Krealin, fights a never-ending battle against glitches, bugs, and general ignorance in the world of evil OSes,Bad 'puter configs, and inferior hardware

Together they are the TECHI-SAMA

(load triumphant music)

[Abscondor]

The motherboard on this version of the HP 503w is an ASUS P4G533 with an Intel P4(@ aprrox.1.7 Ghz) w/ the 845 GL chipset, if that's any help. I'm convinced that the issue is the GeForce card though. Other people's description of the symptoms sound similar to those I am experiencing. Apparently this particular card is VERY fussy when it comes to STW and the other TW varieties. Haven't seen any controls for jumper settings although the nVidia Desktop Manager has numerous controls for OpenGL and 3dNow as well as the usual antialiasing and vertical synching controls plus a couple tha have to do with texcels and extended cpu instructions and fog tables that I have no idea about. I suppose I could try even EARLIER drivers, but I am a bit concerned about it starting to affect a some of the other games on my system(D2X and Starcraft, for instance) that work OK right now with the full acceleration and everything.

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/dizzy.gif

[Gregoshi]

Okay, I did a little scrounging around the Apothecary. In the pinned nVidia? ATI? (http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin/forum/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=2;t=2074) topic, your card is mentioned. See AndersSchm's post. His problem is with overheating.

Here's another topic with tons o' information: nVidia card settings (http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin/forum/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=2;t=2069).

Good luck.

[Paxx]

Have you thought about overheating? You can touch with your hand your graphics card, and see if it is warm enough. Is your stock fan working well? I say that because as i can see you have tried many software settings. Have you tried another os?

[Abscondor]

Actually I had read those posts before I first posted which was how I knew how to tweak the thing in the first place. Ditto with the increasingly early drivers. I haven't checked the overheating issue so far, as the graphics work fine on things like Diablo2 LOD, which are a lot more gtaphics intensive. Went and got SANDRA. It told me a lot of things and crashed occasionally, again despite running AntiCrash in the backround. So far it hasn't told me anything about what the problem, or at least anything I can understand. I'm not hopelessly comp illiterate but I'm not the mother of all geeks either. I'm starting to think ther may be an issue with win98 that I'm just missing. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif

[Paxx]

Try windows Me on dual boot for start to check it. Then you can format Me

[Abscondor]

And I'm supposed to get Windows Me where?

[Gregoshi]

Er, don't get WinME. Some family members have had it and I'll tell you right now they've had more problems than anyone has a right to have. And from what I've read, WinME is the Windows version that should have never been released.

I've had WinXP for about 8 months now and have had fewer problems in that 8 months than I had in two weeks with Win98.

Back to your problem Abscondor: at the risk of making Krae cringe, a couple of things I'd consider trying:

1) go into the device manager and remove the graphics card and then reboot. Win98 should reinstall the graphics card when in starts up again. You might want to check the documentation on the card first though.

2) whenever Win98 seems to get messed up with me, I had very good success re-installing Win98. Just re-install all the Win98 software. You should be able to do this from you Win98 CD. The catch is that you will have to re-download and install all the Win98 updates again which could be a real pain if you are on dialup.

That is about all I can contribute on this topic.

I would check into the overheating issue though. If your motherboard has a temperature sensor on it, then the SANDRA program will tell you what it is. It should be in the Mainboard or CPU & BIOS sections.

[L`zard]

Quote[/b] (Gregoshi @ Nov. 12 2003,21:52)]1) go into the device manager and remove the graphics card and then reboot. Win98 should reinstall the graphics card when in starts up again.

Something about 'manual install of vid drvrs' comes to mind, tho greg's right-on in concept,iirc

Been a long time since 98 was on my radar, http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/eek.gif

One thing fersher, forget winME, what a waste

[Paxx]

Well Im sorry I just saw the P4 1.7Ghz and the asus mobo, and i'm curious why didnt you install WinXP yet? Its the best thing u can do (proffesional only). I asumed that because you said that there is absolutely no problem with other games http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/rolleyes.gif

[Abscondor]

When I had the chance to get XP for Xmas(no pun intended) it was still early on and reputedly buggier than an Amish parking lot. Its gotten better since then but I foolishly upgraded to Win 98SE. I Have gone back and reinstalled the 45.23 drivers and I'm having considerably less crash issues. I'm also seriously considering manually removing windows and reinstalling. Getting the updates isn't an issue as I'm on a satellite modem ssystem called Starband that when it works at all, is VERY fast on the download. I THINK part of the issue may be with fragments of previous installs hanging around and screwing things up. I'll see how that goes and get back to you when I've gpt anything new to add

[scudknight]

How about directX 9? Have you tried upgrading from the default 8? I had about given up on my MTW woes until I installed it - havent had a problem since - and I have pretty much the same setup (Asus board, GeForce 4 MMX 440, WinXP pro).

[Kraellin]

hi abscondor,

the first thing i'd do is disable that anti-crash program, especially if it's norton crashguard. in fact, i think i'd remove it from my startup and test the game again with a fresh boot after doing so. fraid i never liked that thing and it tended to get in the way of a lot of other stuff at times.

ok, DONT install directx 9. the game shld run just fine without it, and all you're going to do is create a new problem. fix the existing one first, and then, if you want to install dx9, why ok, but this is STW, not MTW and stw has had some problems on some machines with dx9.

now, being that this is an asus board in an HP machine, but using as its native vid card that onboard crap, you may need to install or update your motherboard drivers, particularly if that machine uses any Via chips. Via did a LOT of updates on their drivers and many of them had to do with agp. the infamous 4in1 drivers are what i'm talking about here, but you'd need to find out if you have an asus board using that chipset. go to the HP web site and look up your board. they shld give you the info you need there.

that you got the game working under a different set of drivers and ran it for a few hours and then it wouldnt run, makes me very suspicious about what's going on. frankly, i'd go back to those drivers. they worked. what you may have to do to play the game, however, is reboot if you play and then quit and then play again. reboot between each play session. win98 tends to NOT return resources to itself once used and you may just be running out of resources when you play, then quit, then play again, all in the same computer session. this is another good reason for turning things off in the background, like crashguard and such.

and being that this is the mx 440 pci card, you shld turn your pci texture memory UP in the nvidia help. and go into bios and turn agp aperture DOWN...prolly. you may have to play around with these to find a good combination.

primarily, this whole thing sounds like a driver issue. the black screen and lockup are symtoms of devices not speaking well with each other, particularly the vid card. it's like trying to put the round peg in the square hole type of thing.

ah, ok. you've gone back to the 45.23's and it's crashing less. good. remember, stw and the mx 440 and win98 are older things and it may not hurt at all to install older drivers. up to you. if it's crashing less now, try fiddling with other settings, especially that background stuff and run dxdiag and see what it says in the tests.

btw, what version of directx are you running?

K.

[Abscondor]

I'm already running Directx9.0b(the latest version). It was what I was running when all this started. The AntiCrash program isn't the one from Norton but is called AntiCrash from Dachsund Software that I downloaded from Tucows. It hasn't done much in terms of preventing any crashs so I'm not currently running it. The chipset seems to be by Trigem but I'll check with the HP home page. The funny thing is that acording to HP, Pavillion 503w's w/serial #s that start with MX (like mine) have the Asus board, but when I run SANDRA, it claims that its a Trigem Brookdale board. Weird, huh?

Annother thing is that the BIOS setup utulity on this thing( the one that runs when you hit F1 during the boot sequence) doesn't have hearly as many options as the one on my old (hand assembled) machine. I'm not sure if I have any AGP aperture control.

[Kraellin]

Quote[/b] ]I'm running the dreaded GeForce4 440 8xAGP card in the PCI slot overiding the onboard graphics card

ummm, unless you did some serious modding to that card, you're not running an agp card in a pci slot...and if you are, then that's your problem. i'm going to assume, however, that you're running a pci card in the pci slot, and with the onboard video junk, you may well not have an agp aperture setting in bios.

now, i'm also assuming you put that pci card in there and did the whole driver thing to get it working. when you did this, did you go into windows safe mode and manually turn off the onboard video or did you let your machine do this automatically. if you didnt do it, go into windows safe mode and check device manager for the onboard card and make sure it's truly disabled. dont do this from normal windows mode. do it from safe mode.

and while you're in there, check all of the devices in device manager to make sure none of them have the yellow next to them or a yellow question mark. primarily, you're concerned here with graphics stuff but never hurts to look at device manager in safe mode anyways. also, make sure there are no double listings for your vid cards, the same one twice. it can happen. and if it has, disable or delete one of them, but ONLY if it's a double. dont delete on the onboard one, just make sure it's disabled and does now have the yellow next to it.

go back into normal windows mode and turn your pci texture memory UP. if it's set to 32 mb, turn it up to about 64 mb and try the game again. (desktop, properties, settings, advanced)

go into dxdiag and find the setting for 'hardware sound acceleration' and turn it all the way off.

completely disable that anticrash program from startup. dont let it boot up and then turn it off. keep it from starting up at all in the booting up process.

go into windows, accessories, system tools, system info and click on it. this may take a minute to load up. go thru the various listings and look for the one that shows devices working correctly or not and note any that are in red and therefore not working. there may be none, which is fine.

run dxdiag and run all the tests. note any that fail. and save all information to file.

while in system info, note any irq's that are loaded up with a LOT of items on the same irq, like more than 2 on the same irq and especially 4 or more and especially even two if they are both the vid card and your sound card on the same one.

play around with other drivers and try to do the driver swaps from safe mode by going into standard vga mode first. this usually ensures a 'cleaner' erasure and install.

mostly, this still sounds like primarily a driver issue. stw apparently doesnt like dx9 too much. you could try installing dx9 again and then your vid card drivers again, and then the game again...in that order. you could even try just installing the game again, over itself. dont un-install; just install it over the top of itself. sometimes the order in which you install this stuff makes a difference, particularly on a win98 machine.

K.

[Abscondor]

Its a PCI card WITH 8x AGP. Not an AGP card. And It turns out that this is in fact a Trigem Glendale board with the Intel Brookdale chipset, despite the serial number on the case that sugests otherwise. There is currently NO onboard video drivers installed unless you count the default standard vga driver that you can disable(which I have) but can't get rid of(it reinstalls every time you reboot)and the standard PCI VGA adapter. As to the yellow next to devices there are none of those but there are yellow ? marks next to the PCI system management bus and the PCI Universal serial bus. Drivers for these that are win98 compatible are not available from HP, which is one of many reasons I'm getting XP as soon as I can. I'm sick to the teeth of constant crashs and lock ups and having to reinstall Win98 again and again. Thats going to be a week or two(at least) so I'll try fooling around with some more of these settings per your sugestions