[RESOLVED] Voodoo 4 4500, SB Live, and Direct X 8.0

[madmurr]

When I run Diablo II, Homeworld, or Need for Speed - High Stakes, my machine randomly locks up completely. I've noticed that when I run dxdiag.exe, it says that my video and sound card drivers are not certified, yet I have the latest drivers for each. Are these 2 problems related? I talked to a Sound Blaster tech and he said make sure the sound card is not in pci slots 1, 4, or 5 (which it's not, it's in slot 3 with a NIC in slot 2 (all others are empty). I'm running a T-bird 850, 128 mb RAM, Voodoo 4500, SB Live value, Maxtor 13.6 gb UDMA 66, and a SOYO K7VTA-B motherboard. Any suggestions for the lockup or direct x issue? Thanx in advance for your help.

[Lycia]

Originally posted by Madmurr:
When I run Diablo II, Homeworld, or Need for Speed - High Stakes, my machine randomly locks up completely. I've noticed that when I run dxdiag.exe, it says that my video and sound card drivers are not certified, yet I have the latest drivers for each. Are these 2 problems related? I talked to a Sound Blaster tech and he said make sure the sound card is not in pci slots 1, 4, or 5 (which it's not, it's in slot 3 with a NIC in slot 2 (all others are empty). I'm running a T-bird 850, 128 mb RAM, Voodoo 4500, SB Live value, Maxtor 13.6 gb UDMA 66, and a SOYO K7VTA-B motherboard. Any suggestions for the lockup or direct x issue? Thanx in advance for your help.

Your problem is a common one. The problem lies with the SB conflicting with the VIA chipset on your motherboard.

Go to www.viahardware.com to find possible solutions. Note however that they might not work and the only thing to do is replace the SB sound card with another, NON-Sound Blaster product, such as Turtle Beach, Philips, etc.


This has nothing to do with the drivers being certified or not. Certified means, to me anyway, that MS finally got of its @$$ and took a look at a certain companies drivers and said, "Oh yeah, these work fine."

[CobraTekMax]

Okay, follow Lycia's suggestion to check viahardware.com, and I've got a couple more off the top of my head.

While you're on Via's website, make sure you've got the latest revision of the VIA service pack. Also, get the VIA USB filter, while you're there.

If you aren't playing any DOS based games on you're machine, disable SB 16 emulation. It's under "Creative Miscellaneous Devices" in Device manager. If you ARE play DOS games, then make sure you reserve IRQ5 for Legacy ISA in your BIOS.

Make sure you're using the latest revision of DirectX, which is DX8A. Much more stable than DX8, but still not quite as good as 7A, IMHO.

[imd14u]

What OS are you running?

[madmurr]

Great suggestions! I will do all of that as soon as I get a chance...tomorrow morning...I'll let you know if it works...btw, I'm running Win 98SE.

[madmurr]

Ok, now I've disabled SB16 emulation...I'm assuming that the resources that it used to use are now free, right?...Anyway, should I also disable the Creative Multimedia Interface too? (I disabled the Creative Gameport Joystick...have a USB joystick)...I also upgraded to the latest bios (ver. 4.30V) and also the USB patch (1.08). All is well so far...thanx again to those who answered.

[CobraTekMax]

I'd say if it's going good so far, don't mess with anything else. Leave well enough alone.