G400 and Windows 2000

[Cave_Zone]

Hello there

I have recently installed Windows 2000 Professional on my AMD 450, 256 Mb, Patrol AT MB. At the beginning it even did not boot when I installed the drivers for the G400 (5.03.025). Then I went to the BIOS and enabled the IRQ assignation for the VGA and it did the trick. I was so happy! ;-P. I had it disabled before because it worked with W98.

Now the problem:
Once I was playing with the screensavers and chose those that "work" using Open GL my computer froze and I said "no problem, these screensavers did not work fine anyway under W98".
I installed Alien Versus Predator and tried to run it but my computer frozed again so I thought there was a deeper problem.
I run the Directx 7 debugger that comes with W2000 and tested Directdraw. It frozed my machine when the test was in the bouncing square at full screen.
I have disabled the Directdraw feature in Directx 7 but I cannot play any game now (I mean 3D games).

Note: I also have a Realmagic Hollywood Plus (DVD decoder board) installed and it seems to share the same IRQ my Matrox uses but I cannot change it in the device manager because the option to do so is disabled (autoconfiguration checkbox is not un-checkable) but anyway there does not seem to be any conflict between both cards as DVD works fine.

Any suggestions? Thanks

[rjcarr]

Cave_zone-

I am not real familiar with your setup (amd or patrol), but I do know that microsoft has said from day one that win2k is not a gaming os. Taking their advice, I just have a dual boot set up and it works quite nicely, games and dvd (dvd until cinemaster update) on win98, apps on win2k. I know we would all like to have the stability of win2k + 3d games, but i don't think it is possible right now. A c|net article also said that game performance on win2k, on average, was below the win98 numbers.

But ... it should at least work. I would have to guess that your first fix would be to get the dvd decoder off of the g400 irq. I had the same problem with irqs, either the g400 was on like 5 (which often resulted in crashes and piss poor performance) and also conflicts (with my sb_live! I think, I don't remember now) which would give me even more crashes.

In summary, stick to win98 for games for now until winMe comes out, and get rid of that irq conflict (you must do it in the bios, it isn't a software thing).

my $0.02 -----------> joe

[string]

you should check with sysinfo if win2k didnt put with acpi control all PCI cards and agp card on the same irq. if it does that may lead to problems.

you can alter that retroactively by changing your computer in hardware setup from
ACPI blah to -> update driver -> list all models -> Standard PC.

at least i fixed my crashed with that.

the ACPI works fine under win98se and 100 cards sharing the same irq is also not that problematic as long as the drivers dont have a problem with it.
(although its not needed. as long as irq's are free.. why the heck putting all cards on same irq.

[Cave_Zone]

Thank you folks, when I get home I'll try all that.

Cheers.

[terence]

Try using the 5.01 drivers. That worked for me. And Win2000 not gaming OS? For me it is. I got rid of Win98 completely. MS won't say its a gaming OS because a lot of hardware isn't supported yet, but give Win2000 a couple of months a we'll see that it beats Win98 in every regard so long as you have the right hardware.

[Hunsow]

Next time try looking on the MURC first:

http://www.murc.ws/Driver/Win2K.html

[Cave_Zone]

Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you I'll try 5.00 and 5.01

Cheers!

[Cave_Zone]

:*******

No way!
I have installed the 5.01 drivers and I have exactly the same problem.
I also took out the DVD decoder board so the G400 is the only one using the IRQ (11) but that didn't work.

I'll try now with the 5.00. If it does not work probably there is a problem with w2k and/or its directx 7, right?

C ya

[Cave_Zone]

Sorry terence but I don't find the 5.01 drivers for w2k anywhere. The only previous version I have found in the Matrox site is the 4.90 and it just a beta without D3D support. Could you please tell me where to find these 5.01 drivers?

Thanks a lot.

[Cave_Zone]

Well, finally I installed the 5.00 version and it seems to work, well, at least it does not freeze my computer!
But its performance is horribly worse than under w98, that's true. For example, playing AvP, everything is so dark and also the Image Intensifier starts randomly without notice, apart from other weird behaviours not necessarily related with a graphics problem. If I increase the brightness directly in my monitor it will not help: what is black or very dark goes grey so I still see very little of the game.

Anyway, I'll wait for the official w2k drivers (if they ever come out) and cross fingers!

Thank you all for your help!

[Gurm]

Hate to be the one to say this, but it's most likely that your system is not 100% ACPI compliant.

Step 1: Get the latest BIOS update, it may fix things.

Step 2: Get the Athlon K7 updates for Win2k. These are available as a link at www.win2kworld.com, as well as other places.

Step 3: Turn off ACPI if necessary.

Now, my public service description of ACPI... AGAIN:

Under the IRQ model, every device has an opportunity to halt the whole system and hog the CPU's attention. This happens several times a second. The problem with this, of course, is that it's possible for a badly written device driver (or a selfish device) to hose the rest of the system. It also causes conflicts when multiple devices contend for the same IRQ time.

ACPI uses a method called "polling". Under this model, Windows decides when to talk to each device. When Windows is busy ignoring the device, it puts all of its data into a queue. This, of course, requires extra overhead for queue synchronization and whatnot, but makes for a mucho stable system.

- Gurm

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

[Greebe]

Gurm, AMD din't make an Athlon 450. So he must be using a K6-2 or 3. So after stating that, it mostly the SS7 MB he's using that's the problem.

Then again Win2K does have some 63,000 bugs in it. I know I've found a few.

[Cave_Zone]

OK I finally decided to have both OS's in my computer. I'll leave W98 for games and W2k for apps.

Thaks again folks. I think this is over... or is it not? ;-)

[Gurm]

Oops, my drop. Yes, Cave_Zone - the SS7 is the problem. There will "soon" be new drivers for the SS7 chipset for Win2k, but in the meantime there are certain motherboards that JUST DON'T WORK properly under Win2k. Most of them are non-intel, sad to say.

- Gurm

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