Well this is my problem. I have recently put together a new pc and after having some initial problems decided to reformat and start from scratch again. The second installation went without a hitch. Windows loaded up and I manually installed the vid and sound cards. System resources sits at about 80%+ freemost of the time, and general performance seems good. However I have installed a few games back onto the pc and the installation process seems to take forever. There are constant slowdowns, ( can tell because the mouse becomes very unresponsive and moves very slow and jerky). One time the froze during an installation as well. Does anyone know what the cause of this could be. I have considered it could be temp but I have an ASUS board with ASUS probe installed and the temps and fan speeds and voltages never come up with error messages from the probe ( set at deault settings). CPU generally runs around 50 degrees Celcius. Mobo 20-30. CPU fan I think about 5000rpm.

My PC specs:

ASUS A7A-266E Motherboard
AMD Athlon XP+ 1900 with heatsink and fan
384 MB PC133 SDRAM
PCI nVidia GeForce2 64MB MX 400 3D Card
Soundblaster Live! Value
Seagate 60 Gig 7200 ATA100 HDD
Lite-On CD-W/RW 40x24x10
Windows 98SE OS

Thanks in advance for any suggestions you have

Did you also install any software that may have came with your motherboard?.. like chipset drivers and such?.did you enter the bios and make any changes relating to performance?..and last you never mentioned what size power supply fires up this monster. Just a few things that come to mind ..post back that and maybe someone with a bigger head and thicker glasses than me can help ya out.

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**How TO End Task A FREZZE**
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No I haven't installed the mobo software...thanks for that piece of logic. I'll let you know if that works, ( so I'm not a pc king but was my first time building a pc..guess I should stop after forgetting something like that!!) Oh and the power supply is a 300Wer. Oh and what performance tips have you got for the BIOS settings?



[This message has been edited by Syzygy (edited 06-24-2002).]

The other thing you have to remember (speaking from experience with ASUS mb's) go to the manufacturer's homepage (www.asus.com.tw) and get the latest bios version for your board. Having three diffrent ASUS mb's that is the first place I head when putting together a ASUS based system.

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Reason.......there is no reason, it's policy!

Do you shut down all programs, except Explorer and Systray, by doing a Ctrl-Alt-Del on the Desktop prior to installing any software?
Antivirus programs in particular can bog down a system, even during normal operation.

Also, make sure DMA is checked for the CD-ROM drive in Device Manager.

Thanks for the suggestions. I have installed the ALi drivers for the chipset ,and added the newer update, now and the software installation is much better with no mouse lag at all, but now I have another problem. I installed Jedi Knight 2 and the install went well. When it come to playing the game though, everything ran well until about 1min or so into the game and the system froze, no response from anything......Cd tray would open, but couldn't exit the program or even get a ctrl-alt-del box. Only cure was to restart with the restart button. Upon restart the system booted up ok. Now this actually happened later on when I went to scroll down a window in mIRC it froze. At the time I had maybe 2 explorer windows open, but thats all. I can't be sure but I think my internet connection was on while I was running JK2 as well, (56k external modem). I have a heat and temp monitor as mentioned before and the temps seem to be ok.

cpu temp - approx 55 degrees C
mobo temp - approx 35 degrees C
cpu fan - approx 5000rpm
chassis fan - approx 2400rpm

I will include a pic link to my IRQ Setup (http://www.geocities.com/git_bozza/Pics/IRQ.jpg) just in case this helps. Thanks again in advance.

Ok good..now go to the Microsoft update page..Click Start then Windows Updates and grab Direct X 8.1 upgrade and check to for any updates that may be available for your video card. Sometimes the Microsoft update can be a event in its self so if that isnt a go heres a direct link http://www.microsoft.com/windows/directx/downloads/drx81.asp

If the Microsoft updates go fine grab the critical updates also.

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**How TO End Task A FREZZE**
ALT-CTRL-POWER BUTTON

Sorry I should have mentioned that before. I have downloaded the latest nVidia detonator drivers...29.42 from memory, and have Direct X 8.1 downloaded. I have not yet upgraded the BIOS,(flashing is it called?). I also haven't made sure DMA is on in the cdrom.

[This message has been edited by Syzygy (edited 06-25-2002).]

Ok..then it may or may not be your system at all..alot of these games on the PC have to be almost perfectly setup in the advanced options to avoid a crash..trust me i have a 10 year old who is into them as well. Some i have yet to get going correctly. Using the latest drivers and lots of ram usually will keep ya in straight line..being thats not a issue here i suspect its the way the game may be setup..and wish i could be of more help with that but games on the PC is still a learning curve here as well. Hopefully someone else may be able to add some insight.

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**How TO End Task A FREZZE**
ALT-CTRL-POWER BUTTON

Check to see if the SoundBalster and the GeForce card are "playing nice" together. Make sure that they are not sharing any resources (check in Device Manager).

You grabbed the latest drivers for the vid card how about for the sound card?


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mjc
Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.


Please Post Questions in the forums, not my email. Thanks

I have managed to fix the problem. But I'm not really sure what was wrong. All I can think is that maybe mjc was right. Anyway what I did was to buy 512MB DDR RAM and a new GeForce 3 Ti 500 ,(this 3D card with AGP). So basically I replaced a PCI with an AGP card and replaced SDRAM with DDRRAM. My only ideas are maybe some sort of compatability problem between the PCI vid card and the pci sound card although there was no conflicts evident in either system information or device manager. Can you get driver incompatabilities? As is drivers not playing nice between each other, (as I am sure I had the right drivers). Anyway I thank everyone that has posted suggestions here and I will continue reading these forums to try and help some other poor soul as you have helped me...thank you.

The PCI vid card was the culprit. Almost ALL new games, especially FPSes, like Jedi Knight, ABSOLUTELY require an AGP video card to play. You fixed the problem when tou installed the G3 AGP card.
Another note, ALWAYS check the readme file for any games you install, you can usually troubleshoot any problems by referencing these text files.
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