The Windows 2000 Enigma

EvilEdwin · Post by **EvilEdwin** » Sun Sep 22, 2002 11:32 am

Has anyone had problems running BG under W2K Pro? Mine keeps crashing with strange messages! It worked fine under 98SE (have since done a clean install with W2K). Any help would be appreciated.

PS Have all the latest drivers and DirectX 8.1

Cheers Mateys!

Obike Fixx · Post by **Obike Fixx** » Sun Sep 22, 2002 11:40 am

Have you got the patch? I think that someone else posted a tread about that, a few weeks ago.

EvilEdwin · Post by **EvilEdwin** » Sun Sep 22, 2002 11:45 am

I've got the latest patch. 5512 I think it is.

Obike Fixx · Post by **Obike Fixx** » Sun Sep 22, 2002 2:33 pm

Have you installed ANY mods? especially unofficial mods.

EvilEdwin · Post by **EvilEdwin** » Sun Sep 22, 2002 4:16 pm

No mods, hacks or cheats of any kind! Straight out of the box!

VonDondu · Post by **VonDondu** » Sat Oct 26, 2002 3:40 am

Baldur's Gate runs under Windows 2000 Pro just fine (always has for me, anyway) as long as there aren't any problems with the rest of your computer. For example, I once had a faulty hard drive that kept causing my virtual memory (the Windows swap file) to be corrupted, and that made programs crash regularly until I fixed the hard drive and re-installed Windows 2000.

It's possible that one of the files in your BG directory is corrupt. It might have happened when you installed the game if your CD-ROM drive had trouble reading one of the discs. I've seen that happen before.

In any case, best of luck.

EvilEdwin · Post by **EvilEdwin** » Sun Oct 27, 2002 7:15 am

Whats the spec of your computer Von? Just so I can do a comparison!

VonDondu · Post by **VonDondu** » Sun Oct 27, 2002 2:31 pm

Here are my computer's specs:

Celeron (Tualatin) 1.0A CPU (overclocked to 1.33GHz)
ECS P6S5AT motherboard (SiS635 chipset)
256MB PC2100 DDR-SDRAM
Seagate Barracuda ATA IV 60GB hard drive
VisionTek GeForce2 GTS-V w/32MB DDR-SDRAM
C-Media CMI-8738 6-channel sound card
Hitachi 6X DVD-ROM drive
3Com 10/100 network card
USRobotics 56k external modem
Windows 2000 Professional, Service Pack 2

I have also run Baldur's Gate on a much slower machine under Windows 2000 Professional:

AMD K6-2/500 CPU
Asus PA-B motherboard (Aladdin chipset)
128MB PC100 SDRAM
Western Digital 13.6GB hard drive
VisionTek GeForce2 MX w/32MB DDR-SDRAM
C-Media CMI-8738SX 2-channel sound card
LiteOn 40X CD-ROM drive
USR 56k internal modem
Windows 2000 Professional, Service Pack 1

EvilEdwin · Post by **EvilEdwin** » Sun Oct 27, 2002 2:45 pm

I give up with BG!! I'll just have to put up with it and save often!!

EvilEdwin · Post by **EvilEdwin** » Sun Oct 27, 2002 5:56 pm

I don't believe it!!!!!! Neverwinter Nights has started doing it! What the hell is wrong with my system!?!?!? SOMEBODY HELP ME!!!!

Firinflablaze · Post by **Firinflablaze** » Sun Oct 27, 2002 8:05 pm

You say strange messages. WHAT strange messages? Usually error messages are there to help you.

EvilEdwin · Post by **EvilEdwin** » Mon Oct 28, 2002 5:07 am

Sorry, wasn't sure who technical i should get!

Usually these, although it varies

Kmode_exception usually in win32k.sys
Driver_IRQL usually in win32k.sys
and
Page Fault_in_non-page area, again in win32k.sys

although i've also had memory_management

also other then win32k.sys ther've also been in portcls(think that's right) and ntoskrnl.sys

Any help would be appreciated.

I'm starting to wonder if it's and IRQ problem since there are 8 devices on IRQ 9. Here's a list :

9 Microsoft ACPI-Compliant System
9 NVIDIA GeForce2 MX/MX 400
9 VIA USB Universal Host Controller
9 VIA USB Universal Host Controller
9 ND010 Ethernet/Fast Ethernet PCI Bus Adapter
9 Creative SB Live! series
9 Creative Modem Blaster V.92 PCI DI5791 WIN2K
9 Win2000 Promise Ultra100 (tm) IDE Controller (PDC20265)
12 Motherboard resources
8 System CMOS/real time clock
13 Numeric data processor
6 Standard floppy disk controller
4 Communications Port (COM1)
3 Communications Port (COM2)
1 Easy Internet Keyboard
14 Primary IDE Channel
15 Secondary IDE Channel

Mr Flibble · Post by **Mr Flibble** » Mon Oct 28, 2002 12:30 pm

Originally posted by EvilEdwin
Page Fault_in_non-page area, again in win32k.sys

This is a pagefile error, often resulting from a bad block on the hard drive where the pagefile is being stored. Windows 98 is a lot more tolerant of these problems, but 2K and XP will always bluescreen when it hits one.

Have you tried running a complete check on your hard drive?

EvilEdwin · Post by **EvilEdwin** » Mon Oct 28, 2002 5:07 pm

Hard Disc is fine. Didn't report any errors.

VonDondu · Post by **VonDondu** » Mon Oct 28, 2002 6:08 pm

Yes, it sounds like an IRQ conflict to me. Having a video card and a sound card share the same IRQ is bad enough, but having an IDE controller card sharing it with both of them is even worse. On top of that, you have a VIA USB controller on the same interrupt.

VIA chipsets are known to have trouble running USB devices. Even if you didn't have any IRQ conflicts, I would still suspect that having USB support enabled on your motherboard was interfering with your AGP graphics port and your IDE channels. I've seen USB problems cause system hangs and CD-ROM read errors! The only truly effective solution is to disable the USB ports on your motherboard and buy a good USB controller card. (Or upgrade to a motherboard with an Intel chipset that supports USB properly.) You might improve the stability a little bit by NOT using VIA's IRQ Miniport driver (which creates more conflicts than it solves), but it isn't really worth the trouble.

If I were you, I would go into the CMOS Setup Utility and disable all of the devices you're not using. Are you using COM1 and COM2? If not, disable them and free up IRQ4 and IRQ3. Since you're using a Promise IDE controller card, do you need to be using the IDE controller on your motherboard? If not, disable it and free up IRQ14 and IRQ15. If you're using a USB mouse, make sure that your PS/2 mouse port is disabled (it uses IRQ12). Same with LPT1 (your parallel printer port), which uses IRQ7.

What happened to IRQ5, IRQ10, and IRQ11? I'm not really all that familiar with the way that Windows 2000 allocates resources, so it's possible that more IRQs are being used than are actually being reported. Don't change anything yet, but poke around inside Device Manager and see if you can find any sign of those IRQs.

I suspect that all of your problems can be traced to the way the BIOS is assigning resources. Go into the CMOS Setup Utility and see if any IRQs are being reserved for ISA slots ("legacy devices" ) and PCI slots that are not in use. You might have to rearrange some of your peripheral cards (by that, I mean you might have to plug them into different PCI slots).

And you know what? I just remembered that VIA chipsets are known to have an incompatibility problem with Sound Blaster Live! sound cards. If I recall correctly, it causes hard drive errors! I forget exactly what configurations cause the most problems, but it has something to do with which IDE channels you connect your hard drives to. VIA blames Creative Labs for the problem, and Creative Labs blames VIA for the problem, and I'm not sure they ever really figured out what the problem was.

I hate to bash a company that brings "affordable" chipsets to the masses and supports non-Intel CPUs, but I really hate dealing with VIA chipsets and drivers.

EvilEdwin · Post by **EvilEdwin** » Tue Oct 29, 2002 5:49 am

I've spoken to some guys on other forums and they tell me my IRQ list is fine, if a little messy! Besides IRQ problems don't produce blue screens of death. I had a problem with a modem on WIN98SE and it just kept freezing the computer.

Oh new error messages!

PFN_List_Corrupt
and
Memory_Management

So far I've checked bothe the memory and the hard drive and their both fine!

Any idea?