ZeFyre

Greetings all! You guys may kill me for not figuring out and/or troubleshooting this on my own, but, the short is that I found the problem (a bum PSU) and fixed it by "out-boarding" the PSU from my old case. So, at least for now, I am up and running until I can get in a new internal CPU later in the week. Once again, you guys may feel free to hack on me mercilessly, but, even if you do, I still cannot thank you enough for your kind help! Thanks again so very much! --Quinn

LiquidSage, Thanks as well for your reply! Not many power-hungry items in there - I don't have an AGP or PCI card in there yet, just the CPU, RAM, HDD, and a DVD recorder. Thanks again! --Quinn

DMan, Thanks very much for your reply! I'll grab some lunch, re-seat everything, and let you know what I come up with. Thanks again! --Quinn

Greetings, Nice to be back on the MSFN forums after being idle for several months. ;-) I just completed my first complete system build yesterday - an AMD XP 2600 with 333FSB inside a black Shuttle XPC case, and it seems that my CPU may have died, but, I am not quite certain, so, I would like to see what you guys have to say about it. Anyway, I should say that the build was a complete success - got everything into the case as it should be, booted it up, installed Debian 3.1 Stable, rebooted into debian, installed Video Drivers, and rebooted into SETUP to make sure all of my motherboard settings were as they should be (I hadn't bothered to set up the BIOS yet, which I know is quite lame.) About 15-30 seconds after the system entered SETUP, it just plain died - no wierd sounds or anything - just cut off, and now I can't get it to power-on again. I can see the little power LED on the mainboard come on when I press the power button, and it will turn off the standard 5-15 seconds after holding the power button again, just as if the PC had been turned on, and then been forced to hard-off by holding the power button. I should say that I find this very odd, because the system had been running for at least 10-20 minutes before it died, so I have my doubts about a fatal processor overheat, but, then again, this is my first time installing a CPU by myself - as I usually have somebody do it for me, due to a significant visual impairment I have. Any suggestions or solutions would be greatly appreciated, as I have been technologically out of commission for about 24 hours now, and it is drastically affecting my little software development business. ;-) Thanks in advance for any help you may offer! --Quinn Ebert --President, EbertSoft

Greetings! I just put myself together a new PC with the following hardware: - AMD Sempron 2400 CPU @ 1.67GHz - ASRock K7 Upgrade-880 Motherboard - 512MB Kingston PC2700 Single Channel Value RAM - 80GB Seagate Barracuda SATA/150 Hard Drive - nVidia GeForce FX 5500 256MB AGP 8x - On-board C-Media 5.1 3D Audio - On-board VIA Rhine NIC I am experiencing poor performance (random frame and audio hitches) in Half-Life 2, and it's extremely annoying. My older machine, in fact, had much better performance in HL2. Any suggestions or feedback would be appreciated! Thanks! --Quinn

SS, Thanks for your suggestions! I have run some further tests, and their results point to the fact that it's probably either a configuration or software (driver) issue, in that order of possibility. I am feeling kind of crappy today, so I'm going to "call in sick" (BTW, I work for myself,) and spend some time working on fixing this. I'll post back sometime this evening, and let you all know what I've found... Thanks again! --Quinn

Brian, Thanks for your reply. The speakers I have are Creative [Labs] Inspire! 5300 5.1 speakers, so, by no means are they "cheap" or "pretend." Then again, I've had them for 2-3 years, so that may have some bearing. Still, I strongly doubt that it has anything to do with my speakers. I am also going to try and replace the card that's in there with the card that I had as a part of a SB Audigy 2 ZS GAMER Edition package, as they are both, simply put, just the same SB Audigy 2 ZS card, only with different accessories and software. Finally, I also have an Audigy NX (the USB-based Audigy,) and I'll hook my speakers up to that, and see what happens. Since I just got back from a weekend camping trip, I have some stuff to do, but, I'm going to try these tonight, and let you know what happens, and maybe we can figure something out from there. Thanks again! --Quinn

Greetings! Some of you who have been roaming these forums for a while will remember my past posts about my system that was continuously having split-second video freezes while playing various games. Now, my brand-spanking-new SB Audigy 2 ZS Platinum card is giving me trouble, and, I was wondering if any of you had any advice as to what I could try to get things up and running normally again. For advanced reference, here is my hardware: - Athlon XP 2400 @ 2.0GHz - Asus A7N8X Deluxe Motherboard - 512MB Kingston PC2700 RAM - 40GB Maxtor 7200RPM IDE Hard Drive - Verbatim DVD+RW - Artec CD-RW - MSI nVidia GeForce FX 5200 128MB Personal Cinema GPU - Creative SB Audigy 2 ZS Platinum with Audigy Drive / Joystick Bracked installed The exact problem is that, out of nowhere, sound is messed up in several apps, for instance: - In Doom III, sound will work fine for about the first 5 minutes of play, but, then it will start to flange and make "static noise," and after a few more seconds, the sound will completely stop. I have tried running "s_restart" from the D3 console, and this cycle will just start all over again. - In several other games, a loud "squeak" or "pop" will be emitted every 45 seconds or so. This is most noticeable in Quake II. - Most non-game applications, including things like Windows Media Player and WinDVR work perfectly, without any problems. I have tried the following to fix the problem, to no avail: - Reinstall the OS and upgrade the SB Audigy 2 ZS software to the latest versions available - Re-seat the SB card, and check the connections to the Joystick bracket and Audigy Drive. I should also note that this card worked without a problem for the first 1+1/2 months that I had it. Any ideas or suggestions you have would be greatly appreciated. Also, if any of you would be interested in buying my "problem child" as a fixer-upper for a reasonable price, please PM or e-mail me and make an offer. Thanks much! --Quinn

Doggie, I generally use either a res. of 800x600 or 1024x768 in the games i play. I rarely use 640x480, because I have a dual-monitor (CRT + TV) setup, and my 21-inch ViewSonic doesn't seem to like 640x480 mode when it's connected to a dual-display card. I *never* use any res. higher than 1024x768 because I am visually impaired, and higher resolutions are murder on my eyes. I probably should have mentioned what KIND of performance issues I'm having from the get-go. In most games, my graphics performance will be fine for 95% of the time, but, at random points during gameplay, my "poor performance" games will stop rendering frames (and sounds will start to skip) for a large fraction of a second, and then everything starts running fine again. And, I guess I should also mention that Halo: CE is my most problematic game - it has extremely poor frame rates all-over, but it doesn't seem to have the "frame drop" issue that some of the other games (inc. Q3A/TA) have. Let me know if this tells you anything. Thanks! --ZeF

Doggie, Thanks for a good shot, but both of these are supported and enabled. If you think of anything else, please do let me know! Thanks again! --ZeF

Doggie, I am a big fan of BlackViper.com's XP Services and Super Tweaking guides, so, I am pretty sure that it doesn't have anything to do with too many background processes. Also, there are some games that run fine, such as: Call Of Duty Unreal Tournament 2004 Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield Quake I, Quake II ... and those that have the performance issues, such as... Halo: Combat Evolved Quake III Arena Any other ideas? Thanks, my friend! --ZeF

Gandalf, I don't think it's the FX 5200 - I have one on another machine, and that other machine runs like a dream. However, just to humor your theory, can you recommend an FX-model video card with TV & VIVO that might work better? Thanks! --ZeF

Hey guys and gals! I am having problems with my system performing poorly when playing some games, and I can't seem to figure out what's causing the problems. Here's my spec list: AMD Athlon XP 2400 @ 2.0GHz ASUS A7N8X Deluxe nForce2 w/ SiI 3112R SATA RAID 512MB PC2700 Kingston Value RAM 40GB 7200RPM ATA/133 Maxtor HDD MSI Personal Cinema GeForce FX 5200 128MB AGP 8x Creative SB Audigy 2 ZS Gamer Windows XP Home OEM (SP 1a) I have tried the following in my quest to fix the problem: 1. Install/Reinstall all the latest hardware drivers. 2. Uninstall nVidia's crappy nForce IDE drivers 3. Fiddle around many times with BIOS settings. Does anybody know of anything else I could try to get my game performance up to par which I haven't tried yet? Your help, especially from those of you with similar hardware, is very much appreciated! Thanks in advance for any help you guys can offer! -- ZeF

Hello, I'm trying to make an Unattended XP CD with all of my drivers on it, and I'm running into problems doing a silent install of nVidia's Personal Cinema Card WDM drivers... I've tried the following methods: 1. Install from OEMPnPDriversPath -- didn't work, and couldn't see any "problem" devices for the WDM components in Device Manager after install. 2. I tried making a .ISS script by first extracting the files from nVidia's package, and running "setup.exe -R" -- it worked as it should, except that it automatically rebooted. Also, I tried running Setup.exe with no switches, but under this circumstance, I was given a yes/no reboot option. I also noticed that when I unpacked the package, there was already a setup.iss in the installer's directory. Any suggestions are appreciated! Thanks, Quinn

Aaron, You were, indeed, right about the nVidia IDE drivers being the cause of the problem -- since I uninstalled, I'm able to install software, and play games, without a single hitch. Thanks so much for your help! -- Quinn