VOGONS


First post, by JamesF

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Hi everyone,
i got HP Vectra VLi8 pc , it's a office pc with 440zx chipset , integrated Matrox agp with 8mb and Slot 1 cpu.
Intel Pentium iii 550mhz katmai
Creative 3dfx Voodoo banshee pci
Creative Sound Blaster Platinum
256mb SDRAM 100mhz
Windows 2000 pro sp4

My issue is that when playing Half-Life 1 with MiniGL driver at 640x480 the game runs fine for about 5 minutes until the pc Locks up ,music continues and i have to restart it.
It doesn't happen in other games i have on the PC such as System Shock 2 , Gex Enter the gecko and American Mcgee's Alice .

So far i tried reinstalling Windows , Different Drivers , Flashing the Banshee to newest firmware , updating PC's bios to newest ,i strapped fan to it as well , tried different pci slots , tried different versions of the game , fully patched and unpatched , no difference.
The only thing that seems to "delay" this issue is minimizing the game and restoring it back , if i do that every few minutes it doesn't lock up , there's also nothing in event viewer and no BSOD .

If anyone has a clue to what is happening here , i'd appreaciate it . Thank you

Reply 1 of 19, by auron

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did you try it with the ICD (full OGL driver) or D3D?

could also try one of the updated MGL files from falconfly, i'm not sure if later game patches updated that, so it might still be targeting only V1/V2...

Reply 2 of 19, by JamesF

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i will try ICD and i tried MiniGL 1.46 , 1,47 and 1.49 .

Reply 3 of 19, by JamesF

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Ok so i disabled MiniGL and just used OpenGL , it locked up within a minute and the screen was all garbled.

Reply 4 of 19, by JamesF

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And now Direct3D , no lock ups , runs ok until there's big explosion and it turns into powerpoint for a second , and hwne i exit to main menu i get black screen and have to End Task in Task manager , but no Lock up.

Reply 5 of 19, by Spark

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You could try the MesaFX 6.2 opengl32.dll. For me on a voodoo 2 it would play the game but hang when switching between game and menu. But if nothing else is working for you it's worth a try.
Also, you could try the 3dfx opengl driver included in Return to Castle Wolfenstein. There were two drivers included, one for voodoo 5 and one for other voodoos. They were from WickedGL I think.
You cen rename these to opengl32.dll and try them in your HL game folder one at a time.

Reply 6 of 19, by JamesF

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So i did install MesaFX and WickedGL 2.99 , it just locks up , same as before , 5 minutes .

Reply 7 of 19, by Spark

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There's plenty of videos on the internet of people playing HL on banshee. Phil has one here. So there doesn't appear to be a common driver issue with this game.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eIOrPLjph7k
Doesn't seem to be hardware issue either as you can play American Mcgee's Alice. And you've tried things like adding a fan.
I would suggest uninstalling any drivers for the on board Matrox to see if it makes any difference but that's just a wild guess.
Can you try with Win 98 instead of 2000 in case it's a weird W2K issue?

Reply 8 of 19, by JamesF

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Well well well , so i did find 40hdd and put Win98se on it , it ran flawless . So it would seem it is indeed Windows 2000 problem .

Thanks man

Reply 9 of 19, by RetroLizard

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What version of Half Life is installed?

Reply 10 of 19, by JamesF

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i used 1.0.0.9 and 1.1.1.0 , both had identical issue on Windows 2000

Reply 11 of 19, by JamesF

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But right now i keep it at 1.0.0.9

Reply 12 of 19, by RetroLizard

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Hm. I'm not really sure why the latest patches would cause problems with a Voodoo Banshee.

DirectX version?

Reply 13 of 19, by JamesF

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Not sure what you are referring to , Game , Banshee drivers or Windows ?

Reply 14 of 19, by JamesF

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Here you go i guess

Reply 15 of 19, by auron

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win2k has some type of win9x compatibility mode if i recall, might be worth a try.

Reply 16 of 19, by RetroLizard

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What version of DirectX are you using in Windows 2000, I mean.

Reply 17 of 19, by JamesF

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i have fully updated Windows 2000 ,so i guess it has DirectX 9.0c , i don't use KernelEx.

Reply 18 of 19, by JamesF

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So i somehow solved it , i decided to completely remove 3dfx software and drivers from the pc .
I went with the BansheeTeam Evolution V0.9 drivers , installed MesaFX and WickedGL , disabled the Matrox card in Device manager as i cannot disable it in BIOS , reinstalled the SB Audigy as well just to be sure , and it worked somehow , it no longer locks up and runs very good , so i went and tested the other games if they still run , American Mcgee's Alice and System Shock 2 ran as good as they did before but Gex Enter the Gecko had occasional artifacts and bad fps drops , and after 5 minutes it locked up .
So i decided to mix and match Glide DLLs , i downloaded IceMan Driver V1.03.00 and and took glide2x and glide3x DLLs from it and replaced the Banshee Evolution ones, and it worked , no artifacts , running well and no Lock ups ... what an ordeal this was.

Reply 19 of 19, by JamesF

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I would like to thank everyone for their effort and tips here , i am very thankful .