posted 05-02- 10:37 AM               

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I return as Skinnyman, once known as Qtip. I've been posting an ongoing problem with my Nvidia video card, which has been somewhat worked out, though not exactly. Activision was nice enough to give me some support with my trouble. Seems some Nvidia TNT2 cards don't work so well with some Nvidia reference drivers so I had to drop from v6.5 to v5.32 and it took one problem (corrupted video after 4 - 5 minutes of a mission) and made a new one (game locks up after 4 - 5 minutes).
Is there a point in installation of the various accessories etc of this fine game that I should stop and say "I have enough addon's to enjoy it and I'm not going to install anymore crap so the game runs good?" I'm running PP6.0, Nations 2.0, WW1 PP 1.0. I have Beta patch 1.5.2.8 installed, realgunsights, stereo sounds (as available) SD Control 2000, meatwaters soundpack, realprops (I think that's most of it). Is there too much going on in my installation for me to honestly enjoy trouble free flight?

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posted 05-02- 10:56 AM               

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I dont install everything.... I had Meatwaters, but took it off (I couldn't hear people on RW during an online game). If you burden you sound card, it will impact the rest of the sim also. Load what you want. If you find there is something you don't use, take it off. The obvious exception here is the PP, especially if you fly on line.....

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posted 05-02- 11:35 AM               

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Welcome back QTip!!

On your question above, there is a limit to what you can install, but the only problem you will get is mising things in the mission editor, but still, that said, there's no reason why you can't have 2 or even 3 installations of SDOE, 1 that has all the online standard stuff, one for additional downloads and one for beta stuff, in that way you never have the game getting over filled

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posted 05-02- 11:35 AM               

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Welcome back QTip!!

On your question above, there is a limit to what you can install, but the only problem you will get is mising things in the mission editor, but still, that said, there's no reason why you can't have 2 or even 3 installations of SDOE, 1 that has all the online standard stuff, one for additional downloads and one for beta stuff, in that way you never have the game getting over filled

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posted 05-04- 09:36 AM               

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Thanks for all the help. Still having the same problem continue though. As I said, instead of the video going all haywire and funky, the game just locks up after 5-10 minutes. I did some testing last night, by uninstalling the game, reinstalling with just the 1.5 patch, nations and PP6 but that wasn't the answer. Then I tried it with just the 1.5 patch and nothing else and still the game froze. It looks and acts just fine up until that fatal moment. I've also tried changing D3D settings on the Nvidia control panel (went as far as turning them all off) with no joy.
Can anyone with an Nvidia card (running driver v 5.32 tell me if they're having or had any problem like mine and what the heck they might have done to fix it. I found that my Nvidia Riva TNT2 M64 32meg card is made by Aopen and they recommend driver 5.32 for the card (I had v6.5 installed and reverted down). This problem is just killing me now as I really want to enjoy this game and I just can't.

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posted 05-04- 09:54 AM               

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Skinnyman

Do this. Take the cover off your case and see how long you can run the game. If it goes noticebly longer before locking up, or if it doesn't lock up you have a heat problem. SDOE is one of the few games that maxes the CPU and the video card at the same time.

I have a friend that had a similar problem. He had to take the cover off of his case and stick a fan next to the computer to keep it running. The problem was alleviated by putting a cooling fan on the CPU heatsink, a 486 fan on the video card heatsink, and an extra case fan on the front of his case.

His sysem used and AMD K6-2 (either 450 or 500) and had a TNT2 video card. Some cases have really lousy airflow and can cause lockups do to overheating.

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Which end does the propeller thingy go on?
(Formerly posted as Da Jug head)

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posted 05-05- 08:24 AM               

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Thanks wing waxer. I'm going to give that one more try though here's my cooling situation. I have a fan/heatsink on the cpu, a fan/heatsink on the video card (thought the heatsink on the video isn't very large), I have a case fan pulling in from the front and another pulling out at the back (as well as the power supply fan). I did try taking the front case fan and modified my case to put that one right on the side blowing directly in on the video card (didn't help). I haven't however tried opening the case here lately after making other changes.
Actually, I did a search of the boards about Nvidia and locking up and found a post from last november that mentioned turning down window's video acceleration. I did that and by placing it all the way off, the game ran without a lockup 15 minutes (I ran out of aircraft flying to go longer) which is longer than it's ever run. That was with the game installed and only patch 1.5. Nothing else. It seemed that this was the fix to the problem, so I decided to install Nations and PP6 and SDOE Control 2000.
Here's a little side note on SDOE Control: when I extract it, I get an error saying something along the lines of "your user blah blah has been blah blah and something about the system being messed up. When I return to the desktop there are some system tray icons missing (all that's left is my Wingman tray icon and speaker. The maintenance and video setting icon are both gone). I've restarted the computer then installed the extracted Control 2000 program and restarted the game to find my lock up happening in FSSDOE again (even with acceleration still set to none). So, I deduced that it must have something to do wit the install of Control 2000. So I uninstalled it and ran the game. It froze up again. I'm about to try uninstalling PP6 and Nations again to see if they might have something to do with it. If they do though, that sort of f _ _ cks up the game for me since all the mods from the PP and other Patches make the game so much better. I think I might lose my mind this weekend if this doesn't stop. (And I thought computers were supposed to make life easier BAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!).

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