Most stable Detonator drivers?

[gotenex]

I recently installed a Leadtek GeForce4 Ti4400 into my system. I was previously using a GeForce2. With the GF2, I never had any problems playing games.. the only thing about that was it wasn't powerful enough to handle some of the newer games. I always used the latest official Detonator drivers. Now, I'm getting frequent lockups/bsod's while playing games.. Mainly I play Warcraft III so I don't know if this happens with other games. It would randomly freeze, and I have to hard reboot my computer. It doesn't happen quite that often if I don't ALT+TAB out, but on my GF2, I could ALT+TAB and have many programs running in the background. I'm thinking it may be an issue with running multiple background programs. Also, I occasionally run into a BSOD when exiting the game. I'm getting really annoyed by these minor things, but I'd rather stick my GF2 back in if this keeps up. I wanted to know if the Det4 drivers are more stable than the 30.xx ones. Anyone else run into this problem and has solved it?

 

[CMRvet]

Those signs could be many things so please post all the hardware including the PSU model and wattage.

<b>(<font color=yellow>as good as it looks</font color=yellow>)</b>

 

[gotenex]

MSI K7T266A MOBO (Pro-U2 I think. It's the one without RAID.)
AthlonXP 1600+
512MB DDR Crucial RAM
Soundblaster Audigy
2 Western Digital HDs - 100GB, 40GB
Enlight 300W PSU
2 Dlink 530TX+ NICs
Plexwriter 24/10/40A
2 case fans

That's everything.

 

[CMRvet]

OK.
To rule out an “insufficient PSU” problem please disconnect as many things as you can:
1 HDD
Case fans (just leave the case door opened)
The LAN cards.
CDRW if it’s not necessary for the game

After that just play your games as usual and see what’s happening.


<b>(<font color=yellow>as good as it looks</font color=yellow>)</b>

 

[flamethrower205]

I agree, 300W seems kinda small.

dusijtpmo- don't use stupid internet jibberish to piss me off

 

[Artanis]

Well. Going back to my benchmarks, the 29.42 Detonator was more stable than the 30.82 version. About the Det4 I dunno.

And yeah. With all that stuff in there, 300W is small. Take some out, or get a 350W if u got cash...

 

[flamethrower205]

Don't go there yet. Must first rule out hardware faults. Plus, I haven't had issues w/ NV drivers, nor have my friends.

dusijtpmo- don't use stupid internet jibberish to piss me off

 

[gotenex]

Thanks for the help guys. I think the problem may very well be insufficient power. I haven't had a lockup with some freed up power. I was holding off on getting a new PSU, but I guess I need it now. I'll be back to let you guys know if a new PSU fixes everything. Thanks again!

 

[Skipper007]

My system seems to have trouble with a lot of newer detonators under 98, and had some with 30.82 under XP. 28.84 (I think) ran great but still had some problems with freezing (the audio seemed to loop - maybe that's the problem?). Under Jedi Knight 2 testing, though, I only got 51.1 FPS and 3974 3dMarks in 2001, less than what is in the VGA guide. Maybe it's the fact I have a slower CPU...

Athlon 1200
MSI K7 Master (basic)
256MB Micron PC2100 (at least Sandra says it's Micron)
Leadtek Geforce 2 Pro 64MB
40 and 6GB hard drives (two fourties, actually, but only one of them is plugged into the power at a time - one for 98 and one for XP, just while I'm testing XP, then I'll be running two 40s again)
Sound Blaster Live Value
generic 300watt (second unit - blew first under warrenty)
Aopen modem
SMC lan card
Sony CDROM and Lite On CD-RW
two extra case fans

I'm not sure it's PSU because I once left all three hard drives plugged in by accident and it worked fine.

 

[Ghostdog]

Just remember to get a good and powerfull one if you plan on ever upgrading the components.

<font color=red>I´m starting to feel like a real computer consultant.</font color=red>

 

[Booky]

I still use 12.90 in WIN98SE. If I go any newer then I get lock ups on my GF2 pro. So I wouldn't say it is the PSU. I have a 300W in here now from Enlight, the damn thing is better than the POS POWMAX 400W I had. Anyway, if your getting lockups in 98 try 12.90.


Crap, all the good ones are already taken.

 

[gotenex]

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that I'm running Windows 2000. Quick update: I disconnected 1 fan, 1 HD, and my CDRW, and I still got a BSOD when I exited the game. So I'm not so sure it's the PSU anymore, but I'm going to need one sooner or later because I'm out of power connectors.. and I have a 3rd HD I want add. I plan to get the Antec 430W Truepower PSU.. that should be sufficient for my system + an extra HD and a HD cooling bay, right?

 

[johnoh]

Also, I occasionally run into a BSOD when exiting the game.

A repeatable non-power consuming event like this suggests it is not your psu.



I recommend that you take a few steps that will probably not fix the problem but will help you on the path to fixing it.

1) Run the shareware detonator destroyer, and reinstall the card as a standard vga card.

2) Update the video driver using old detonator drivers. 12.90 or 23.11 have good reputations.

3) Go into your bios and reset it to fail-safe defaults if you have them.

4) Run 3dmark a few times.

If you can do this without a hang then I think the problem is not hardware. Try it and let us know how it comes out.

John A

 

[gotenex]

I could not install the 12.90 or the 23.11 drivers. It said it could not detect an Nvidia product on my system. Maybe they're outdated for my GF4? I did try the beta drivers. I'm currently using 40.72.. and it's showing good results. However, I still get the BSOD from time to time. This is the error I receive: page_fault_in_nonpaged_area and it also mentions vsdatant.sys. Any ideas?

 

[johnoh]

I have a system that has the same problem with those older drivers. <A HREF="http://www.tweakersasylum.com" target="_new">http://www.tweakersasylum.com</A> has the most drivers I'ev seen.

vsdatant is a Zonealarm file if I'm not mistaken so you might try disabling zonealarm (you may have to uninstall it altogether) and see if that fixes the problem. If that turns out to be the culprit you could switch to Tiny Personal Firewall, a freeware program which takes up less memory than zonealarm.

John A

 

[gotenex]

Ahhhh... you may be right! I overlooked the fact that I started using ZoneAlarm around the time when I installed my GF4. Thanks for the input!