nv4_disp.dll driver stuck in infinite loop.

[Blodrast]

It wasn't with Ubuntu - at that point in time, I don't know if it even existed, and if it was, nobody'd heard of it. I think my experience was with some RH (no Fedora back then, either), and Win2k, and I think it was lilo, not grub (which might make a difference).
Believe me, I'm aware that windows overwrites the bootloader, because I've been through that myself several times, but I'm just not sure how to reconcile that memory I have where it didn't - just that one time. Oh well, maybe it's just a sign that Alzheimer's is kicking in early.

[caravel]

It wasn't with Ubuntu - at that point in time, I don't know if it even existed, and if it was, nobody'd heard of it. I think my experience was with some RH (no Fedora back then, either), and Win2k, and I think it was lilo, not grub (which might make a difference).
Believe me, I'm aware that windows overwrites the bootloader, because I've been through that myself several times, but I'm just not sure how to reconcile that memory I have where it didn't - just that one time. Oh well, maybe it's just a sign that Alzheimer's is kicking in early.

lilo like grub resides in the mbr, and this what windows OSes rewrite on installation, so there should be no difference in this regard. grub is better in that the stage1 of the boot process is located in the mbr but the rest is on your ext2/ext3 or whatever partition usually in /boot/grub, so if it get's nuked by windows you can restore it more easily without having to rewrite the whole thing again, though with lilo you just kept a copy of you lilo.conf file and just did "lilo" and that would rewrite the mbr again.

Hmmm... It's so simple actually now that I think about it that I might find a bit of space for a Win9x partition on my existing drive and just write it into menu.lst, it's not as if a 9x install takes up much space either.

-Edit: I've been looking through the driver archive and can't find anything much older than the ones I had downloaded. Tried messing with hardware acceleration slider. MTW now seems to respond to CTRL+ALT+DEL now and again instead of BSoD. RTW exactly the same problem.

I have a feeling that whatever I do with this in XP it will always be the same due to my motherboard and the fact that all the Nvidia XP/2K drivers cause this issue old and new. Win98SE using the last drivers for the 6 series cards (81.98 w9x)seems to be the only possible solution left.

[caravel]

Well last night I tried the following:

1) Uninstall of VIA Hyperion drivers
2) Uninstall of Nvidia Drivers
3) Driver cleaner pro cleanup of Nvidia drivers
4) Driver cleaner Pro cab cleaner cleanup - reboot
5) Installation of Forceware 93.71 - reboot
6) Forced 2x AA
7) Moved hardware acceleration slider to the left about 2 or 3 notches, the option before Direct3D is totally disabled.
8) Test of MTW, crash to desktop.
9) Test of RTW... and this had me going for a while. Working for about 5 minutes. I was at the campaign map and even ended a turn. Then started moving around and next tried opening and closing the ESC options scroll menu a few times. On about the fifth time the options scroll stayed about 2 thirds open and the same BSoD.

I need to to test this again, as I'm not sure if my actions excacerbated the problem or if it simply waited longer before crashing. I haven't tested battles yet either.

Fastwrites are still on, so I will test with those off as well. AGP Aperture is still at 256MB and write combining is still unchecked. I may also update again to the latest drivers before trying anything else.

-Edit: -

1) Updated driver to latest version - worse than ever.
2) Fast writes on again - worse than ever.
3) Googled for hours to see if there's anything I've missed.
4) Given up - The Win98SE method is the last hope.

[caravel]

Absolutely no luck whatsoever with Win98SE. The second reboot and a file was missing "vnetbios.vxd" trying to do anything else caused more errors of missing files. I was installing on an old HDD purely for testing and so as not to have to mess with my main Ubuntu/XP dual boot setup. I finally managed to install the driver but after that it crashed every time I tried to go to display properties and wouldn't let me use and resolution apart from 640*480 16 colour.

I'm also having major problems with my internet connection which isn't helping matters one bit, this is one of the rare occasions I've been able to get online all weekend. I will probably have to call it a day as far as this approach is concerned. I doubt I'll be able to play MTW/RTW for quite some time to come.

Well who knows maybe it's for the best and will give me a chance to concentrate on other things.

-Edit: I've sort of worked out why some games work, of course it's because they're OpenGL! Doom3 and Quake4 worked and indeed Linux works with Fast Writes turned on (???). Anything Direct3D crashes after a few seconds or doesn't start at all. This proves that it's mainly the Direct3D components of the Nvidia driver that cause this.

[caravel]

Finally fixed, for RTW anyway - now running stable with all of the quality settings maxed out. The setting that fixed it was reducing the AGP rate down to 1x, setting the AGP aperture to 128MB, AGP Read Synchronisation enabled and Fast Writes enabled. I still need to test MTW.



-Edit: MTW still crashes with the same infinite loop error.

-Edit2: RTW has been running for hours all weekend and no crashes. I changed as many video settings as possible within the game to see if I could make it fall over and it held firm. I have a feeling that it was the AGP rate and not the other settings that really made the difference but I'm afraid to change anything again now - just in case. I hope the above info is of use to anyone.

[Caius]

Hmm, the same driver, the same loop error. I had it once, and it seems my NVidia card is starting to die. I have some weird issues, like my monitor went black, and I had to reset, or I had to reload M&B because I entered the town of Zendar and I got all bad textures, like little squares of different colours in every place that there should have been a wall.

Strange. I had the BSoD once, but I'm not sure if it was C&C:R who made it or the card or the OS.

[caravel]

Finally managed to get MTW running on this card and have restored the AGP rate to 4x also. I've added some MTW specific info on this to the CTD thread in the apothecary.

The trick is to go to Device Manager, expand system devices, find "CPU to AGP Bridge", open up properties, click update driver and tell it you want to choose the driver and then install the "PCI Standard PCI-to-PCI Bridge" driver to replace it, then reboot when asked. It may slow performance, in fact I'm pretty sure it does, but at least it actually works now.



p.s. Before I did all of this I removed the graphics card driver first and then reinstalled it afterwards, just to be sure.

[LeftEyeNine]

My question may be a candidate for the dumbest post evar but did you ever try one of the modified drivers from Omega or Dhzer0point or Z-Tweaked (the one I'm currently using) ?