RainGod wrote:

My system: Celeron 800, TNT2, Windows XP.

Need more detail here. You've said nothing about your audio.

Using VDMSound only, the sound continually pops and crackles. Tried the suggestions in the guidelines and installed update 1, and the launchpad and changed polling period to 1/3 and 2/5 with no noticable change.

Is your audio from a chipset built-in to your motherboard? Many of these seem to have a hard time handling a heavy audio workload.

...when it should display the rotating menu, it sits on a white screen.

I started getting this myself on my XP OS with v1.18. I'm Thinking it's aproblem with the new VESA code.

Try this backup & delete/rename/move/or ZIP your GliDOS install directory.
Then try an older version of GliDOS while making sure you install it to the same directory as you did on the first GliDOS install. (Whatever you do, don't mix the files together)

Update:
(file removed) Should have thought to check the configuration but it was really late and my brain was running out of oxygen.

You should try both Snover's and "GliDOS' suggestions.

You can turn off the new VESA code in 1.18 and later as mentioned here (while this isn't the symptom, it is probably the cause):

Originally posted at glidos.net: Movies cut short. Some people find that the movie sequences in Tomb Raider get cut short. This […]
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Originally posted at glidos.net:
Movies cut short. Some people find that the movie sequences in Tomb Raider get cut short. This can happen if your computer can't keep up with the data generated by Glidos's VESA support. If you find this happens to you, try editing the file called Glidos.ini which you can find in the folder

C:\Program Files\Glidos

and removing the line

VESASupport: Yes

Without VESA Support, there is a risk that your graphics card will play up during the movie sequences, so you may have to replace the line, and go back to having the movies cut short.

Try setting up with no sound, just to take that out of the equation.

And the bit about everything running slow when you have to crash out. The system isn't stuffed up. It is just that there is a very high priority ntvdm process running. If you can get the task manager up (which takes time because it competes with the ntvdm), and kill the thing then all is well again.

Run Glidos in Windowed mode, and look out for messages in the server window.

I usually run with a Task Manager minimised, just in case. (Being able to access it like a regular program is nice, but trying to get it to load when something is clogging up your computer is not.)

Thanks for all the help guys. I tried Nicht Sehr Gut's suggestion first which let me load up the actually game finally, although it tends to crash a lot. I'll try the newest version again with the tips given and let you know.

Is your audio from a chipset built-in to your motherboard? Many of these seem to have a hard time handling a heavy audio workload.

Oops, yeah, sorry, I forgot to mention my sound card. It's a SB Live. Sound built-in to the motherboard is the work of the devil. And yeah, it still snaps, crackles and pops.

And the bit about everything running slow when you have to crash out. The system isn't stuffed up. It is just that there is a very high priority ntvdm process running. If you can get the task manager up (which takes time because it competes with the ntvdm), and kill the thing then all is well again.

Yeah, I figured it was something like that, but didn't know (couldn't be bothered to find out) what the process was called. Thanks for the heads up.

Strange, I'm always hearing bad things about built in sound, but it's always worked better than a sound card for me. I have a CMedia 5.1 chip on my current computer and it never give me any problems.

I had to rerun setup and use the soundblaster setting instead of the auto-detect selection that was soundblaster16/Awe32 .(still using the auto-detect settings for Port:220-DMA:1-IRQ:7 though)

It got rid of alot of scratchy audio during the intro video's and fmv videos , scratchy isn't pop and crackles I know , but I thought it might be worth mentioning.

The ambient in game sounds and menu music sounded real good eigther way, made no difference there.

RainGod wrote:

It's a SB Live. Sound built-in to the motherboard is the work of the devil. And yeah, it still snaps, crackles and pops.

You're not using the drivers that came with XP are you? If so, they're terrible (I used to have a Live card myself and had the same problem after my XP install). There is a XP driver update from Creative that fixed it for me.

RainGod, have you tried running TR setup and selecting no audio, and putting Glidos in Windowed mode? That experiment may tell me something about the white screen.

Glidos wrote:

I have a CMedia 5.1 chip on my current computer and it never give me any problems.

It seems to be dependent on the circumstances. IE:If you're trying to run something that needs 800MHz on a 800MHz PC with "built-in" audio, you're "pushing" your PC because it's going to need some of that processor power for the audio (That's probably not so common for "GliDOS" games as they would tend to have lower requirements).

Have you tried running DOS games in a "True DOS" environment? A lot of the built-in audio chips seem to have trouble with that, as well.

After my last "massive crash", I tried going back to the C-Media motherboard audio, but it failed to work with the majority of DOS titles I tried (this included TombRaider with GliDOS).

I know I could get around that for a lot of them by running it under XP (using VDMSound), but XP is no longer my primary OS until I can figure a way to stop triggering the "activation" function.

Wildman wrote:

It got rid of alot of scratchy audio during the intro video's and fmv videos , ...

When those are played, audio and video are being "streamed" from your CD and it tends to drain a lot of resources. By setting your soundcard to one that was "less demanding", it made it easier for the A/V streaming.

(By the way, this is a good rule of thumb for troubleshooting SoundBlaster problems with DOS games. Start with the most accurate choice for your sound card. If you have trouble with audio, keep moving it down towards the generic "SoundBlaster Compatible".)

The ambient in game sounds and menu music sounded real good either way, made no difference there.

That's audio being "streamed" from the CD. It should sound the same regardless of your sound card settings in Tomb Raider (even if you choose "No Sound Card") as the card just passes the audio on to your speakers without processing (usually).

Once again, guys, thanks for all the help.

You're not using the drivers that came with XP are you? If so, they're terrible (I used to have a Live card myself and had the same problem after my XP install). There is a XP driver update from Creative that fixed it for me.

Yeah, I'm well aware of the crappy XP drivers. 😀 It makes The Sims sound like they're all talking from somewhere beyond the U-bend. So, I've already updated the sound drivers....

RainGod, have you tried running TR setup and selecting no audio, and putting Glidos in Windowed mode? That experiment may tell me something about the white screen.

Sorry I didn't mention it before, but one of the first things I tried was selecting no sound and it made no difference. However, your earlier suggestion of deleting the Vesa setting from the glidos.ini did the trick. It works just as well as the earlier version of Glidos now. But also crashes to black at seemingly random times. eg. when I exit out of Lara's home and try to start a new game; swimming to the bottom of the pool in Lara's home; trying to exit to the menu from a new game.

These crashes don't happen every time, but fairly often.

And the sound problem is still there. Most noticeable during the movies and when Lara speaks. I'll try Wildman's suggestion of switching to Sound Blaster 1.

Also... just to be trouble 😀 , I tried Caramageddon using Glidos and it didn't go too well either. Loaded up fine and showed me the potential of very cool 3d effects, but ran very slooow. Even the menu ran at seemingly half-speed.

I have the platinum version of Carmageddon which already has 3dfx installed, and has the choice of a windows and dos version (I used the dos version obviously).

RainGod wrote:

Sorry I didn't mention it before, but one of the first things I tried was selecting no sound and it made no difference. However, your earlier suggestion of deleting the Vesa setting from the glidos.ini did the trick. It works just as well as the earlier version of Glidos now. But also crashes to black at seemingly random times. eg. when I exit out of Lara's home and try to start a new game; swimming to the bottom of the pool in Lara's home; trying to exit to the menu from a new game.

These crashes don't happen every time, but fairly often.

Now that disabling VESA has got you into the game, have you tried disabling sound to see if that lessens the crashing?

Also... just to be trouble :) , I tried Caramageddon using Glidos and it didn't go too well either. Loaded up fine and showed m […]
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Also... just to be trouble 😀 , I tried Caramageddon using Glidos and it didn't go too well either. Loaded up fine and showed me the potential of very cool 3d effects, but ran very slooow. Even the menu ran at seemingly half-speed.

I have the platinum version of Carmageddon which already has 3dfx installed, and has the choice of a windows and dos version (I used the dos version obviously).

Carmageddon has a lot if direct frame buffer writes which, under Glidos, requires large amounts of data to be piped from DOS to Windows. A Celly 800 is probably not going to be able to do it. I have ideas for improving this part of Glidos, so this may speed up in time. The TNT is probably happy, but the celly's being pushed.

Aside from those crashes that I mentioned directly to you Paul in an email, I've found that Carmageddon runs fine here. That said, I'm on a 1533MHz AMD Athlon XP with a GF3Ti500 and PC2100 DDR SDRAM. *eg*

Snover wrote:

Aside from those crashes that I mentioned directly to you Paul in an email, I've found that Carmageddon runs fine here. That said, I'm on a 1533MHz AMD Athlon XP with a GF3Ti500 and PC2100 DDR SDRAM. *eg*

That's about the same spec as my computer. Yeh that should be fine. I don't know why it crashes. It is only Carmageddon that has this problem. Well, I get reports of crashin in other programs, but that's always system dependent; Carmageddon seems to always crash on particular levels. Annoying.

Send me a debug-enabled binary and I'll mess around with it for a while.

Snover wrote:

Send me a debug-enabled binary and I'll mess around with it for a while.

Thanks for the offer, but it isn't Glidos that is crashing. The game dies. I'd need to send you a debug version of Carmageddon - not so easy. 😁

Didn't happen when I had my old 8MB Voodoo^2... (yes, it was Voodoo^2, not just Voodoo 2. People don't remember these things very well..)

Snover wrote:

Didn't happen when I had my old 8MB Voodoo^2... (yes, it was Voodoo^2, not just Voodoo 2. People don't remember these things very well..)

Yes I'm sure that's true. I didn't mean the game is buggy. There's something about Glidos that makes the game crash. It's going to be on the DOS side, which makes it very hard to debug.
It could even be something like the extra memory usage upsets the game.