Unreal Tournament and Santa Cruz problems?

[AppleTalking]

Okay, here's the deal. I built a brand-new system from scratch. However, it took a couple days for me to get my Santa Cruz sound card (backordered), so I used the onboard sound in the meantime. Now that I have my Santa Cruz, I've been experiencing random lockups and crashes in Unreal Tournament that I never had when using the onboard sound. Here are my system specs:

Epox 8K7A
Athlon 1.2GHz. (266 FSB) <-- not overclocked
256MB PC2100 DDR
3D Prophet 4500 (Kyro II)
Realtek 10/100 PCI NIC (PCI slot 2)
Linksys 10/100 PCI NIC (PCI slot 3)
Additional USB header (PCI slot 4)
Santa Cruz sound card (PCI slot 6)
Windows 98 SE
DirectX 8.0a

When I play Unreal Tournament on this box, I can play for about 5-15 minutes before the sound completely cuts out and is replaced by only a high-pitched whining. Sometimes the game locks up, once I got a BSOD, and once I got a GPF error. Most of the time, though, it's just the sound that cuts out.

Now I know that the Santa Cruz is supposed to have issues with DirectX 8, but I tried disabling the DirectSound acceleration in both the Santa Cruz control panel and in the dxdiag application with no effect. I even unchecked the &quot;Use Hardware Sound&quot; option in Unreal Tournament. And I still get this weird behavior. Does anybody have any suggestions?

Thanks in advance!
Nick

 

[bjc112]

did u update your Santa Cruz drivers?.. there was a fix for a Santa Cruz card.. ill look around, in the meantime.. try and update your drivers.. You turned on board sound off on Mobo didnt u ?!

 

[AppleTalking]

I downloaded the latest version of the drivers from Turtle Beach that I could find when I originally installed my card. I think they were dated in March.

Yeah, I got the sound turned off in the BIOS too. It doesn't show up in the Device Manager, so I take it it's turned off.

Thanks!
Nick

 

[AppleTalking]

Any other suggestions?

 

[Remedy]

Me myself never had that SC problem in last 10 months but i can look at your system and see that 2 NICs look suspect(don't ask me just my intutition.) Also i would move the sound card to PCI 4 as i always use that slot with no probelem. Then again its win9x so i can barely tell what can cause that stuff(9x is a frequent culprit). Also i would try to uninstall the drivers and reinstall them in each slot. LuK what happens.

 

[joinT]

this IS on your Mac, right Nick ??

 

[Thyme]

Install the latest 4-in-1s from VIA Hardware.

 

[Thyme]

By the way, I have the 4.31 drivers installed and it locks up for me, but not nearly as much.

 

[AppleTalking]

Thanks for the suggestions guys. Unfortunately I won't be able to try them out until I get home tonight. I think I'm gonna try moving the sound card, as I do remember noticing that the sound card and the USB hubs were sharing IRQ 5. Maybe that's the source of the problem. But then why doesn't this happen in any other application?

I'll also try installing the 4.31 drivers.

Thanks again!
Nick

 

[LukFilm]

joinT - haha, I love your sig What music you listen to?

 

[AppleTalking]

Well, that didn't work. I tried switching PCI slots (moved to number 4) and installing the latest Via drivers for the motherboard. Oh well, guess it's back to the drawing board on this one!

Thanks!
Nick

 

[Thyme]

Try disabling sound in UT and seeing if it's the sound doing it or just the IRQ and stuff.

 

[AppleTalking]

Well, I tried disabling the sound altogether, and I played for at least 15 minutes without crashing. I'll have to try it for longer again tonight. Is there any other solution? I would really hate to have to play UT with no sound!

Nick

 

[Thyme]

Try installing windows to another partition and installing all your drivres and stuff and then UT. See if it's just a windows problem without having to reformat.

 

[drewski]

Hmm, I've got the TBSC and no problems in UT (other than my own motion sickness). A7V133 though.

I always use PCI slot 3. Usually this doesn't share with anything else, if I recall.

You might try disabling ACPI which has been known to cause stability issues. There are some detailed posts on how to do this, if you do a search.

You might try taking out some components to see if there is a conflict. Specifically I was thinking one of the NICs or the extra USB port header (of course, I don't know what you use them for, so they could be critical for you). Go with the sound card only and see if you still crash.

 

[AppleTalking]

Thanks for the response drewski. Unfortunately I can't take either of the two NICs out of the system as I need them for ICS. I'm too cheap to buy a hardware router.

I will try to disable ACPI and see if that helps. I already unplugged the extra USB header yesterday when I found the USB -> PS/2 adapters for my keyboard and mouse. Maybe I'll try disabling USB altogether and see if that helps.

On another note, when I moved the Santa Cruz card to PCI slot 4, it still used IRQ 5, the same as USB. Does that strike anyone else as a little weird? I find it hard to believe that slots 4, 6, and the USB ports all share the same IRQ.

Nick

 

[grygrx]

I've had problems with sound cards trying to share with USB ports before. Does that motherboard have a reserve IRQ for USB option?

 

[AppleTalking]

grygrx: I haven't seen such an option, but I'll take a look when I get home tonight!

Thanks!
Nick