Windows 2000 and Matrox hardware

[gibverse]

I was planning on preparing a nice page that could have been linked in as a tutorial on how to get Win2K and the Marvel going together, but unfortunately one of my Seagate's gave out (knew it was coming, my fault for not replacing when it started acting up in the first place). So I won't be able to include screenshots etc.

So, for those who just can't wait, I'm going to post my experiences thus far, and hopefully get a full tutorial (and maybe a review of Matrox's official drivers *HINT* *HINT*, should they be released by some rare chance in the next few weeks).

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Test system configuration:

ASUS P2B with PII-400 and 128 meg PC100.
Dual Seagate Medallist Pro 9.1 gig drives (on onboard controller)
32x IDE CD-ROM
2x2x6 IDE CD-RW
Standard 3.5” 1.44 floppy
Matrox Marvel G200 AGP 8mb
3com 3C905B-TX PCI NIC
Creative Labs PCI64 soundcard

Load Windows 2000. After setup is complete, download and extract the 4.07 NT drivers along with Video Tools 1.23b2 for NT 4. Open Control Panel, and select Add/Remove hardware. Choose Add/Troubleshoot Device, and then select “Add a new device” from the list. Click next; specify, “I will select the hardware from a list.” Highlight “Display Adapters” and click next. Then click the “Have disk” button, and browse to the location of the 4.07 NT drivers. Click on the INF file, select Open, and then click OK. Select your appropriate display card (In my case, the AGP Marvel G200), and when asked to install driver without a signature, choose yes. Click finish and restart the system. At this point, Matrox’s 4.07 display driver is installed on your system. If you should experience any problems with this, upon restart press F8, choose safe mode, and change the driver back using similar procedure as above to the Microsoft driver that ships with 2000.

After the system is done booting, install Video Tools 1.23 beta 2 just like you would on 9x or NT. After the restart, you should be good to go. Hard disk benchmark runs fine, as does the Quick Connect applet. However, when closing PC/VCR (and AVI_IO as I’m told) you will get the following blue screen:

*** STOP: 0x000000076 (0x000000000, 0x81212020, 0x000000002, 0x000000000)
PROCESS_HAS_LOCKED_PAGES

Beginning dump of physical memory
Physical memory dump complete. Contact your system administrator or technical support group.

The curious thing is Quick Connect accesses the capture hardware no problem, and can be opened and closed all day with out causing a system crash. I tried capturing under Premiere 5.1c, and it hangs after capture (just the application, not the system; but this has always happened under NT 4 SP5, so I’m not going to say it is the fault of 2000). Possibly a little tweaking may fix the problem, but at this point, I don’t have the resources to work on it. Anyone who wishes to work on this, please feel free to contact me, and I will provide as much assistance as I can.

Other than that, I don’t know what to say. Aside from the blue screens, the system acts just like it did under NT 4.

John Gibson

[gibverse]

I had a similar problem when using the VideoTools with the display driver that shipped with 2000. Make sure you install Matrox's 4.07 display driver before attempting to run the video tools.

John

[elister]

So does using NT4 drivers on Win2k actually work? Id LOVE to start using NTFS for video capture.

[gibverse]

Define work.

The NT4 drivers install, and allow you to use any of the features you could under Windows NT 4. The only problem is that when you close certain video apps (like PC/VCR or AVI_IO), Win2K blue-screens with a stop error, stating that "PROCESS_HAS_LOCKED_PAGES". This appears to be a result of how Matrox had to hack the drivers to work with the crummy multimedia capabilities of NT4. It is interesting to note that QuickConnect won’t blue screen, nor does Premiere. However Premiere still crashes after capture (just the app), as it does in NT 4. I haven’t had a chance to see how Ulead (or Avid for that matter) works under Win2K, since I am not familiar with them, and don’t have the time to fiddle right now.

At this point, I’d suggest sticking with 98 (or NT4) until Matrox releases official 2000 drivers.

John

[JayZ]

Right now when i try to install the NT 4.07 drivers on win2k build 2195, after i reboot, right after it hits the splash screen I get a black screen and it just freezes there. I've tried this with both of the NT drivers and the same exact thing happens. I remember seeing somewhere that this was related to a busmastering problem with my mainboard and that i had to disable it. Would this be a problem effecting the performance of my machine a lot.
Currently running
Asus K7M w/an Athlon 700@806
128mb PC100
8.4GB Maxtor
2 27GB WD Expert
Matrox Marvel G200-TV PCI
Realtek PCI NIC
Hollywood+
SB Live Value
Adaptec 2940U
5x32 DVD
32X SCSI CD-ROM
8x20 Plextor CD-R

I tried to find busmastering drivers online at via's site and they dont work for windows 2000 so I don't know how to disable it. If that is even the problem. Anybody have any ideas?

[gibverse]

As I recall, Matrox does not officially support Athlon processors (but then again, they're not suppporting Win2K yet either, so we can work on both ;-) ).

Not exactly sure how disabling busmastering relates to system performance. As I understand it, busmastering card's don't need the CPU to transfer information on the bus. So it may slow you down a bit. I don't have a K7M, so I really can't try anything.

You may want to try putting the latest BIOS on your motherboad. Be sure to "load setup defaults" afterwards. This may help.

John

[RBryant]

Is this with a Marvel G200 or G400? Do you think this would work with a RRG?

[merlin]

I loaded the video tools a week ago as you have done, when clicking on the video tools icon the whole system locks up, ctrl,alt del does nothing, and the only option is to reboot the PC by powering off.
I am running windows 2000 Build 2195 final. if you have any other ideas of getting video tools running let me know

[Pablo Lema]

Any of you guys know when Matrox is planning on releasing Vid Tools and drivers that works with a Marvel 400 in win2k?
It's the only thing that's keeping me from going to it.

By the way, does the above workaround allow for vidcapture through something like Netmeeting?

[gibverse]

To answer RBryant, I don't know. I don't own a RR-G, so I can't test. I'd assume that if you're using a G200 display card, then the RR-G shouldn't be too different then the Marvel, and thus it should work. The only way is to try (or find someone who will). Sorry I can't be of more help, but I'm just a hobbyist like most others here. Wish I could be more helping, sorry.

Pablo Lema, I wish I knew the answer, but I don't. Matrox has not been great lately with drivers, and I don't see the situation getting better overnight. The good news is, that as I've heard it, the RT2000, the new card the video division is putting out due to ship next week, so that _MAY_ free up some pressure internally. It has been said that since the RT is from the Video (as opposed to the MGA) division, it's entirely different people, but I really doubt that personally. All we can do is wait and see (and maybe tweak the NT4 drivers to death).

John

[efty]

Hello everyone, it seems like you guys are experiencing the same trouble I did a few months ago. I actually reinstalled win2k OEM today (don't ask how I got it) and came to the forum hopping that a solution was found.

Anyway I don't know if anyone has mentioned this before but I might aswell say it. Most propably the problem lies with an incompatibility the matrox vidcap driver has with win2000. If you go through the control panel to the Sounds and multimedia settings and try to check the properties of the vidcap driver, after you eventually close the settings window by pressing OK the familiar BSOD appears. However if you press cancel then its fine.

I am not really sure about all that stuff but someone more knowledgable could confirm or dinounce my suspisions. Even better if someone can do something about it

[gibverse]

efty,
Are you saying that after one goes to control panel, clicks properties on the Matrox vidcap driver and presses cancel, then the system won't BSOD when closing PC/VCR and such? If so, please let me know!

John

[efty]

Just a small correction. You do get the BSOD even if you press cancel when you go to the vidcap properties. I actually wrote the previous post from what I remembered from my previous experience. Anyway I tested it now and it seems that somehow when u press properties the vidcap driver is used/enabled and once OK or cancel is pressed, which in a way terminates vidcap BSOD appears.

This had nothing to do with PCVCR remote. I just mentioned that you can get the same BSOD by doing that. I will try to compare the minidump for the two BSOD to see if they are actually related(which i think they are).

One question also. Does premier use the matrox vidcap to capture video or it has its own? If is has its own vidcap then that is a strong pointer to the culprit as with premier even though after the capture it crashed it does no result in a BSOD.

[efty]

Ok guys, I sort of found a temporary solution to the problem unless tou want to do video capturing, which I do not use regularly anyway. As I told you ine the previous posts the problem is with the vicap driver. With matrox quickconnect the vidcap driver is not used.

Just make a search for rrvcap32.dll and remove it from the folder. This way PCVCR what find it and load it, therefore not causing the system to crash after closing it. Before removing rrvcap32.dll i also removed any entries from the registry. I just deleting it doesn't work for you then u can try doing that as well.

I hope this helps a bit. Something that I forgot to mention in my other posts is that matrox has been aware about the problem and I exchanged a few emails with a guy from their win2000 development team a few months ago. Hopefully they will have the matter resolved soon.

Bye

Efty

[gibverse]

So rrvcap32.dll is the only culprit to this BSOD mess.... Hrmmm... well, now we know what file cause the error. I may try replacing NT's rrvcap32 with 9x's... maybe we can get somewhere with that.

Oh well, another project for this weekend ;-)

John