nv4_disp.dll driver stuck in infinite loop.

[Motep]

I'd appreciate if you (or anyone else) can come up with anything but it looks like I won't be able to play TW again for quite a while. I've tried older drivers but with no difference. As I understand it, newer drivers are the way to go. There are reports of users "upgrading" to Vista and the Vista drivers eradicating the problem entirely. (I will not be going to Vista!)

Hmmm, is that so? i suppose you could try "upgrading" to vista and then "downgrading" back to the one you prefer. It might even work for a while, but Im not sure. My gaming computer did the same thing, so we took it to the shop, and even he didn't know what the hell to do with it. Anyways, i dont feel like hooking the other computer up right now (the problem with having only one monitor) so Ill be forced to leave it as is.

[Blodrast]

So far all the advice/suggestions I've been able to find online is to up/down-grade drivers, which you've already tried...

Damn. I know I'm grasping at straws here, but, since I don't think it's clear what exactly is causing the bug, do you think it might be worth trying to use different DirectX versions ? I don't know about RTW, but MTW is old enough that you should be able to have a bit of leeway varying the DirectX version... As I said, grapsing at straws, I admit it... but I don't have any better ideas.

I've looked at the VIA fix... in what way does it not work for you, is there just no effect ? I guess you tried it in combo with different drivers, as well ?
I realize I might be grating your nerves, if that's what you've been going through the whole night before, but I'm afraid I don't have anything better...

If there are any combinations of drivers with the VIA patch and maybe DirectX, as well as BIOS settings, that you haven't tried yet, maybe it's worth a try...
Also, I saw one guy said you shouldn't allocate too much PCI texture memory ? Did you try to fiddle with that, decreasing it as much as you can ?

[caravel]

So far all the advice/suggestions I've been able to find online is to up/down-grade drivers, which you've already tried...

I have, with no difference at all.

Damn. I know I'm grasping at straws here, but, since I don't think it's clear what exactly is causing the bug, do you think it might be worth trying to use different DirectX versions ? I don't know about RTW, but MTW is old enough that you should be able to have a bit of leeway varying the DirectX version... As I said, grapsing at straws, I admit it... but I don't have any better ideas.

I hadn't tried that, it might be worth a try but DirectX is not really the issue, the Nvidia drivers coupled with the motherboard that I have is. I can try an older DirectX though such as 8.1 I suppose or whatever is on the MTW disc. -Edit: Tried DirectX downgrade to 8.1, RTW crashes sooner than ever with weird loading bar glitches and MTW no difference.

I've looked at the VIA fix... in what way does it not work for you, is there just no effect ? I guess you tried it in combo with different drivers, as well ?
I realize I might be grating your nerves, if that's what you've been going through the whole night before, but I'm afraid I don't have anything better...

The VIA fix just doesn't seem to work. It runs through the install and requests a reboot but that's it. I can't see where it has installed. I've checked the hidden devices in device manager and can't see it in there either - so I can't be sure it's running. I've reinstalled it several times, even in safe mode and no difference either. The whole idea of the fix is that it closes the RX55 register. To stop Nvidia's drivers from writing to it. Newer motherboards already have the register closed off in the BIOS, for older motherboards the fix is available but, as it says in the readme, not guaranteed to work. I already have the latest BIOS for this board so that's not something I can look at either.

If there are any combinations of drivers with the VIA patch and maybe DirectX, as well as BIOS settings, that you haven't tried yet, maybe it's worth a try...
Also, I saw one guy said you shouldn't allocate too much PCI texture memory ? Did you try to fiddle with that, decreasing it as much as you can ?

I suppose I can try reducing the AGP aperture, I haven't tried that yet. Most advice I've found pointed to increasing it. -Edit2: Also tried reduced aperture (as low as 4MB) and disabled texture acceleration altogether with no difference, RTW crashes as ever but the loading screens are black with just the bar visible and still no difference with MTW.

-Edit3: I've also tested a free Linux FPS game called "Tremulous" on the highest settings possible and it was pretty much rock solid stable. This still points to the XP Nvidia drivers causing the problem.

-Edit4: I've just installed Doom3 running natively in Ubuntu and it runs flawlessly on the highest settings for OpenGL. I've been playing for two hours and seen no issues. So now I'm entirely convinced it's not BIOS settings as such, neither is it power, hardware failures or temps (checked those and they're normal).

[Blodrast]

Damn. Suckier and suckier.
No, I'm convinced it's the driver & mb combo, I'm not doubting that at all, I was just hoping that by changing DirectX (or other things), it might not be _triggered_, that is all. Obviously I was wrong.

Guess I'm totally out of ideas for now :(, but I'll keep looking around, and if I come up with something, or an idea, I'll naturally let you know...

[caravel]

Damn. Suckier and suckier.
No, I'm convinced it's the driver & mb combo, I'm not doubting that at all, I was just hoping that by changing DirectX (or other things), it might not be _triggered_, that is all. Obviously I was wrong.

Guess I'm totally out of ideas for now :(, but I'll keep looking around, and if I come up with something, or an idea, I'll naturally let you know...

Thanks for the input, and concern, Blodrast, it is appreciated. I'm totally out of ideas myself. I'll probably have to wait until I can afford a new system before I'll be able to play TW again. I'm not about to go and stick the down-clocked Radeon 9800 back in again, now that I've got Ubuntu running so well.

@Motep: There is not a chance in hell that I'm paying for Vista and I don't want to go to the hassle of acquiring it by "other means" and messing around trying to circumvent M$'s WGA, so that's not even an option. Also spending good money on an OS simply to "upgrade and downgrade" is out of the question.

[Motep]

Thanks for the input, and concern, Blodrast, it is appreciated. I'm totally out of ideas myself. I'll probably have to wait until I can afford a new system before I'll be able to play TW again. I'm not about to go and stick the down-clocked Radeon 9800 back in again, now that I've got Ubuntu running so well.

@Motep: There is not a chance in hell that I'm paying for Vista and I don't want to go to the hassle of acquiring it by "other means" and messing around trying to circumvent M$'s WGA, so that's not even an option. Also spending good money on an OS simply to "upgrade and downgrade" is out of the question.

I did not consider the cost, I am sorry. I got vista and xp disks free with this computer so I did not give it much thought.

[caravel]

I did not consider the cost, I am sorry. I got vista and xp disks free with this computer so I did not give it much thought.

No problem, sorry if my response seemed a bit snappy, I didn't intend it that way.



An update on "the issue". Still no luck. I've been playing a few missions of Quake4 under Linux (natively as with Doom3), the textures are now hi res and the performance is much better than in Windows. I suppose this is pretty much my lot until I can find some kind of solution or workaround...

There is one more thing I can try, that I know of anyway, and that is to try Win98SE and hack the last Win9x driver version to force install for a 7xxx series card. The Win9x installation, updating, configuration, driver installs, tweaking, etc etc etc, will be an enormous task and at the end of it, it still may not work and as such would all have been for nothing. I'll probably have to do it on a separate HDD also to avoid having to format and reinstall XP again and mess up grub (Linux bootloader) in the process. I have seen some mention of this as having worked which is why I'm at least thinking about it. I won't be attempting it though until next weekend, if I even attempt it at all.