Forgot to mention that before my new 475W power supply, I was unable to run through 3d Mark tests... Not so with more power!

Jovi,

Since you have Windows XP, you can revert back to 8.1 by using system restore. How long ago did you install ver 9? All Windows programs create a system checkpoint just before installing just in case you want to go back. Just keep in mind that any drivers, setting change, or programs you've added since the directx 9 install will be lost if you do this. However, your data files should still be intact. Try it, and if you find that you lost too much, you can go back again. System restore is a nice feature.

I have the following system:

AMD Athlon 1400+
Freshly installed Win XP + SP1
NVidia Geforce 4 mx440se 128mb ddram
SB Live 5.1
Latest NVidia driver (44.03)
DirectX 9.0

The problem is as follows:
Every new game, like Morrowind, C&C Generals, Vice City, Postal 2, crashes after 2-20 sec. I have read many possible solutions, I tried disableing 4x in the bios, i disabled write combining, nothing works.

Does anyone have the solution?

I am TOTALLY desperate.
I want to play games!

Thanks!

Have you tried turning off AGP Fast write in the BIOS?

Also, the Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 series had some serious compatibility issues with Windows XP. As a test, you could take the Sound Blaster out and try the game without a sound card (if it will). If it works, you know it is the sound card. I had a similar issue when I put Windows XP on. I replaced the Sound Blaster and voila! It worked fine. Check the Sound Blaster web site, they may have a solution for it.

What OS did you have on this system before you put XP on?

Have you tried turning off AGP Fast write in the BIOS?

Also, the Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 series had some serious compatibility issues with Windows XP. As a test, you could take the Sound Blaster out and try the game without a sound card (if it will). If it works, you know it is the sound card. I had a similar issue when I put Windows XP on. I replaced the Sound Blaster and voila! It worked fine. Check the Sound Blaster web site, they may have a solution for it.

What OS did you have on this system before you put XP on?

Oh, and one other question. When you say it crashes, do you mean it 1) gives an error message 2) Dumps you back to Windows 3) Freezes your system or 4) reboots your system?

I can't find the option 'AGP fast write' in the BIOS menu. So i couldn't try that. When the games crash the system usually goes back to windows. With Vice City it also gives an error message, some code. And sometimes the system reboots. It never freezes though.

And the sound card thing, I took it out, uninstalled it and the problem persisted, so i put it back again.

Thanks for your tips.

Well, at least we know it isn't the sound card.

When you updgraded to Windows XP, did you add any new hardware, such as RAM, processor, motherboard, graphics card?

Also, if you could get the code for me on the error messages I could look at it and determine approximately where the problem lies. With XP, you can look in the event view under system log and get the information. On the surface, yours sounds like a memory problem, but if it worked fine before you installed XP it should work fine now. Could be a lot of things. That error message will help.

What brand and model motherboard do you have by the way? How much RAM?

JT,

Did you try upgrading to DirectX 9.0a?

Worth a try if you haven't.

Jay

The problem started when I first tried to played a newer game, Morrowind. Now it appears that none of the newest games work. The games I used to play before I last changed any hardware/software still work fine. So maybe the problem was there all the time.
The most recent changes I made in the hardware are adding memory, I put in an extra 256 MB 4 months ago. I tested the games without the new memory yesterday, didn't help, so I put it back again. Also about a month ago I changed from geforce 2 to geforce 4. Proccesor + motherboard are unchanged since I bought the computer 3 years ago. I dont know brand names, can't find em anywhere.
The error message for Vice City says :

Unhandled exception: c0000005
At address: 004896d3

when i close the window a get the error report. The content says:

Exception information
Code: 0xc0000005
address: 0x00000000004896d3
plus a lot of other info

And i have directX v9 installed.

Thanks

I was afraid you were going to say that. This is a very general error message. It is an "Unhandled Exception" which generally means Windows had no idea what went wrong, just that it did. It would help me to narrow it down if you could check the full text of the error in the event viewer.

One other thing I would like to know is are there any "exclamation points" showing up in your device manager? A lot of times, when you install a new OS, it can't find drivers for a device (particularly the motherboard), or he drivers included with Windows won't work (usually due to it detecting the device wrong on install)

However, on the surface, I'm betting it is related to the new GEForce card. The fact that it only happens on newer games makes sense as well. Newer games will access the advanced features of your new card that old games don't know about.

There could be several things here. You could have a problem with the motherboard being so old and the new card. I wouldn't be able to tell you unless I know what brand and model your motherboard is. You can open the case and it should be written somewhere on the board. Also, when you first boot up it should tell you the brand name and model. Should be one of the first things that pop up when you restart. Here are some things you could try, but not necessarily in this order.

1) Update the BIOS for your motherboard (Need to find out which one first)
2) Play with BIOS settings for video, particularly the AGP settings. I would focus on the AGP speed, write combining, and fast write settings. My suggestion is to use the failsafe defaults and try it. Or, just set everything having to do with video or AGP to the lowest settings and try. If it works, you know it is one of the settings and it will just be a matter of changing one setting at a time, booting, trying the game until you find the setting that causes the problem. It is a pain, but it works.
3) Update the video driver
4) If you have Kazaa installed, uninstall the Delfin Media Viewer. I know it sounds silly, but Delfin causes numerous problems including this one.
5) Play with BIOS settings for memory. Use the procedure for this I outlined in step 2.
6) Update your chipset drivers.
7) Take out your old RAM chip and leave the new one in and try. Most likely, this isn't the solution, but it never hurts to try in your situation.
8) If there is a PCI card in slots 1 or 2 move them to other slots. A lot of boards share slot 1 with the AGP port. And other boards even have problems with cards in slot two. Mine does.
9) Try assigning an IRQ to the video card in BIOS. Usually this is an "enable" or "disable" thing.

I would be able to give you more specific things to try if I knew the specs on your motherboard, and I knew more about the error message. But, we are at least narrowing this down.

I also had this problem - game (usually direct3d eg GTA 3 Devastation ETC) caused freeze/BSOD/restart. Did not have any problem with open gl - could run all day fully pumped without any probs.
Error msg originally stated error with driver until I updated to DX9 & latest NVIDIA 44.03. Same problem occurred but msg changed to error with directx dll.

Tried everything mentioned here - pulled PC apart twice and reconfigured everything - location of hardware - IRQ's, fiddled with BIOS in every way possible without any result.

Final solution came by accident - I reinstalled a driver previously used without success (40.72) as well as a BETA VIA driver patch which rectifies a memory timing issue. It can be found here-
http://forums.viaarena.com/messageview.cfm?start=201&catid...eadid=3759

PC has run problem programs successfully since with no issues at any resolution/refesh rate etc.

Quite a few of the issues here may be a result of other issues such as power, heat, faulty hardware, software conflicts but if this is of any help
glad to be of service

GC

Yea, this is a very common thing. It took me 3 months to nail down my problem. I finally resorted to changing one setting at a time in BIOS and rebooted. Took forever, but I found out I had two problems instead of one. One of them was a RAM timing issue causing my system to reboot. The other was AGP fast write. Once I disabled that, no more problems.

Over the last year I've noticed a lot of other people with problems. It seems to be most common with VIA chipsets and NVIDIA based video cards. NVidia has blamed it on VIA and VIA blames Nvidia. However, this is going to be an NVidia issue as it is now beginning to pop up on Pentium systems as well. Knowing NVidias track record, I doubt they do anything to existing cards. But, hopefully, they will wake up and prevent it in future cards.

I had the same problem with an Asus MoBo, gForce4 PalitDaytona Vcard, and an Aureal Vortex sound card.
After a month of trying everything with negative results, I decided to use a Biostar MoBo, yes VIA bios and AMD CPU. Ok, it was risky because the problems seem to happen with AMD and VIA more frequently. Well, the MoBo had a Sound Card so I figured that the ASUS, WinXP and Aureal Vortex was the problem.
Guess what, now everything is perfect.

Apparently the problem is not a particular piece of hardware. Is the combination of hardware that causes the problem specially if one of them is older.

Everyone will have to find their combination.

My combination is
AMD 750 mHz
Palit Daytona gForce 4 MX 440
Biostar M7VKB ver. 2.1 w/sound card
WinXP full update 6/17/2003
768 RAM, 512/128/128 sticks
System/vCard/CPU fans
120 GB HDD

Wish you luck finding your combination...
jrs

Jaime,

Hey, I haven't thought about that, but you may be onto something there. It could have something to do with different combinations of hardware. That could apply to the software as well.

Hmmm, I wonder. If you took an Asus Nvidia based video card (mine is the Asus v8200) and put it in an Asus motherboard, would you have these problems? Interesting. Anyone watching this post tried this before?

Good luck, you'll find your combo.
The only catch to it is that you must own a WinXP registration. Is a pain in the but to call them everytime you change a significant part of your hardware, in my case the MoBo, and wait on hold, then talk to a representative that believes that Microsoft has the right to regulate your computer configuration. Yes, if you change your hardware, your XP has to be re-activated.
Talking about monopolistic bevavior, there is MS.
I placed a good complaint and said the bad word, UNIX.
Good luck again

For those with the infinite loop problem which is not related to general hardware instability caused by pushing your machine to the max this may help.

This is the readme of a BETA patch posted by a VIA technician in response to a flood of similar complaints and queries.

"This is a BETA patch only - NOT an official release. If you downloaded this patch anywhere apart from the VIA Arena forums, please visit http://forums.viaarena.com/ for more information.

VIA Technologies, Inc. takes no responsibility for the use of this patch.

Hi All,

I have an update for you. Thanks for being so patient. Here is a beta patch. I must stress very strongly the word BETA here. This patch has to go through more testing in Taiwan from several departments before it is released officially and in fact will probably end up being a silent install patch in the next version of the 4in1 drivers – that is if further rigorous testing proves that it is in fact a fix to this issue. If you choose to install this patch on your computer, you do so at your own risk and full responsibility yourself. Speaking frankly, normally new fixes, patchs, drivers and the like are never released beta to the public. We do not like to use end users as guinea pig testers so to speak. However, many people in these forums have asked for the details and you have all been very patient and helpful in giving me information so out of respect for you I am making it available as a beta fix. To install it, unzip the file and run the setup.exe Do not run the setup from the compressed folder.

So what does it do? It closes the RX55 memory register in BIOS. The RX55 register's official name and function is Memory Write Queue (MWQ) timer. The MWQ timer is actually a timing device included in the memory host controller to prevent write data being held in the memory queue too long. After the data has been in the queue too long it times out. This timed out data is then given a higher write request priority. Now that might sound nice – a bit of extra performance BUT the procedure fails when overloaded. 3D games and Win XP put too much load on the memory queuing timer procedure. The nVidia new driver exaggerates the problem even more as the driver enables nVidia cards to use even more memory than previous driver versions.

So in a nutshell it’s a memory timing problem that only happens when the RX55 register is opened. Some motherboard manufacturers have already released new BIOS that have the register closed. In other instances, this patch is needed.

One thing I have noticed is that I think some people in this thread are confusing one issue with the issue that I am referring to here. Symptoms I am talking about are the infinite loop error, dropping to desktop in 3D games or spontaneous reboot in 3D games. What I strongly suggest is that you try these trouble shooting suggestions before trying the patch:

- Load optimized defaults in your BIOS and do not modify memory settings
- set your memory settings in the BIOS less aggressively and test
- make sure you have an adequate power supply
- update your BIOS and test
- disable or enable AGP fast write and test (this has worked for some people)

The reason that I make these suggestions is that I think some people are confusing general instability because their systems are being pushed to the max, with this error. For example, if you have a 250watt power supply, 128mb RAM and have all your memory settings at max then you may be asking for trouble – the symptoms may be similar to this issue but it’s not the same. If you still get the issue after gong through these suggestions then try the beta patch (if you want to – remember it is BETA).

This thread I think has broken a new record in these forums. I am going to lock it but also keep it at the top of the category so that it’s easily available to people as there’s quite a lot of useful information in it. I’ll also start a new thread with this announcement so that no one misses it."

From: http://forums.viaarena.com/messageview.cfm?start=201&catid...eadid=3759

All the best and good luck

GC

Finally, a fix, after nearly 2 years of waiting. When I got my PC about a year and 1/2 ago I ran into this problem. I even underclocked my PC and it still happened. Finally, I went through the BIOS changing one setting at a time and rebooting. I finally found that my problem went away when I disabled AGP Fast Write in BIOS. Since that day, I've watched forums and suggested people turn of AGP Fast Write. Some listened, some did not. Anyway, it is good to see VIA taking some responsibility here even though NVidia refused to.

Disabling fast write did nothing for me but obviously this is a problem that in not caused by any one individual cause although the result is always the same - an inability to process some 3d (very often direct3d) instructions.
Quite obviously hardware manufacturers do not continually and fully test their products leaving it up to the guinea pigs in the market to go crazy with frustration.

GC

GC,
That's why my next motherboard won't have the VIA chipset and the next graphics card won't have an NVidia chip. So far, I haven't seen any complaints about other combinations. For the last couple of years now, NVidia has been blaming the problem on VIA and VIA has been blaming it on NVidia. Both have continued to manufacture new chips with the bug still present. I have the NVidia GEForce2 chip on my card and the VIA KT266 chipset on my mobo and have this problem when Fast Write is on. Now, the GEForce4 is out and the KT400 chipset, and STILL, people are having problems with this same issue.

I think it goes along the lines of what you are saying. Most chip manufacturers (and software manufacturers) don't do much testing any more. I think the reason is they are in too much of a hurry to put the latest and greatest on the market before the competition does. This does nothing but hurt the consumer. I used to upgrade my PC once every year with the latest and greatest. Now, I only do it once every two years and go with cheaper tried and true products that have been on the market long enough for me to research the issues via forums like this.

3 years ago, I made a prediction that the growth in the technology sector would soon come to a near stand still. Here were the reasons I sited....1) The average consumer is tired of buying technology, only to have to upgrade in a year or so to run the latest software 2) The consumer is tired of having to relearn software with every upgrade 3) The consumer is tired of buggy software 4) The consumer is tired of hardware problems between vendors. 5) The consumer is tired of expensive software upgrades. 6) The consumer is more than tired of increasingly very, very poor technical support

Sure enough, it happened, and tech companies seem to be running around like chickens with their heads cut off wondering why the consumer isn't running out and buying up their latest and greatest like they did in the past. It's as if they are saying, "We don't understand....It is faster and has more features than our last model. You should be buying them like crazy."

Come on, vendors, it's time to get your heads out of the sand. People want stability now. We don't care how fancy it is any more. What we want to know now is, "Does it work like you say it will?" "Is it going to be obsolete 6 months after I buy it?" "Are you willing to give me IMMEDIATE tech support after I buy your product?" This is what we want now.