nOOb that need help badly!! will see you as a god if you help!!

[Rara]

Hi guys, and as the great line in star wars goes "Help me obi-won, your my only hope!" or something like that.
right this is my beef see if you guys cant help me out.
I did have a P266 with a sound blaster PCI 128 in it.
I just got my PC kitted up to a AMD athlon 900 but im still useing the same sound card(and im still useing Windows ME).
Now I always dreamed of playing games like GTA3 and such but couldnt do it because of the 266, all my games i had run slow and lame.
Right so i get this AMD 900 and a nice G force 2 MX 400 (32MB)
and i think "great stuff i have the power, the graphics and the RAM (256) to play these games!!"
so i install GTA3 what do i get? slow running speeds and lame sound, now i know for a fact that its not the AMD or the G force so im thinking soundblaster 128 might have something to do with it.
Now i have the CD that came with it, but as you can guess this does jack for me, just brings me back to the same problems,
So off i go to get new drivers. I download these new drivers from creative. now i stall the things and each time i do its happy as pie, then it tells me to reboot, so im fine with that. Then at the start up screen it comes up with
"Windows was unable to find kennel2CAB
Please put in the disk called Windows ME"
So im thinking
"Ok..................."
I put in the disk, jack all on the disk to do with this file. so i put in the SB128 CD i have, again nothing on here too. only thing i can do is skip the file get in to windows. Then windows shows me the evil
'?????' by my sound card.
I have 0 money to get a new sound card.
Please what im a doing wrong? im i such a bad person this is happening to me because of something in my past??
All i ever wanted to do was play GTA3!! is that so bad!!?
PLEASE HELP ME! I WILL LOVE YOU FOREVER AND GIZ YOU A NICE X-MAS CARD!!

Well thx for taking the time to read guys (and girls)
I hope some one can help me outif not thx for your time anyways

love 2 you all.

Rara.

[ajrettke]

1. make sure you got the right drivers downloaded.

2. delete the sound card from your hardware settings

3. reboot and when it sees it install the downloaded drivers, if the same ba dthing happens, remove the soundcard from your hardware settings....then put the card in a new PCI slot and try again with the CD drivers.

4. It also might just be slow because you have your video settings too high...make sure your only running 800x600 the mx400 is a decent card...and is a huge improvement but it isn't the gf4 ti4200/4400/4600/radeon 8500 alot of us are running. you can have high detailed settings especialy with a weak(compared to high end users) cpu.

hope you can get that stuff working.....and I highly recomend buying *cough*FINDING*cough* win2k pro....or XP but i would get 2k pro first(more stable IMO)


*edit* welcome to OC'ers forums :)

[Overclockerz]

sorry for the double ost i accidently pressed it 2 times

[Overclockerz]

hmm it isnt the cpu i know that the ram is fine

The sound card is really old hmm in th egame what is youre graphics settings on ? for the video card u have they shouldnt be on like ultra high or something cuss that could slow the game down as for crappy sound does youre mother board u have with the 900 athlon does the mobo have integrated sound ? All i can think of is to get a better sound card u can bye a geat sound blaster live 5.1 for like $20 or 30 i have a soundblaster live its awsome :)

But for now install the drivers that came with the cd back on obviusly the ones u downloaded arent working

And if you get youre sound back click on start then run Typ dxdiag, then go to the sound tab and turn the acceleration down to Basic acceleration This might help youre gameplay while still having ok sound

I know you dont hvae any money likeu said but u should look into a new sound card They have some that are like $10

Wait until more people post to help ya out i may be wrong but itold ya all i know

[Rara]

Thx for the help guys, i tryed all your way and still the same thing over and over again. I guess i will never be able to pay GTA3 time for me to throw this PC out the window all i have with Pc's is troublie. *sighs* you know what the most funnest thing of this is? this PC was my mates old one and he gave me it, and GTA3 work perfect on when he had it =*(

Well thx anyways guys, love 2 you for trying =)


Rara.

[Mr. Chambers]

GTA3.... SUCKS. and i dont mean its a bad game, hell i love it - when it runs.. its the worst port over to a pc from a console i have ever seen/played in my entire life. i cant believe i actually paid money for this garbage

sorry bout that :D now, i was going to say that you dont have the hardware to play it and get decent fps, but when you said your friend had it working "perfectly" on that setup and you changed nothing, then its a software issue. make sure you have the lastest drivers for everything, and just plain get rid of ME.. that is slowing you down big time. next i would ask what resolutions and if you have vsync enabled? basically its not gonna ever look steller on that setup, but should be playable. oh and if your complaining about "not playable" being where it drops to below 25 fps - dont be, its the game, not your system my friend! check out www.gt3forums.com they have a bunch of guides on how to improve its performance.. good luck, you'll need it with that game

[Rara]

Right the drivers for it if you read my top post messed me up more then anything else, and I dont really give a monkeys about the graphics of the game i just want to play it, let me explane what i mean by unplayable.
first, the in game movies run like this. I get sound about 3 seconds after its spoken.Then it turns in to still pictures.

secondly, when playing the game i get lag about 1 second then it gets longer and longer up to 8 seconds, then i just turn the blood thing off.

Right i just tried Alice on my PC and the same thing, eventhough i kick the specs ass with this PC (it needs 400MHz 16 MB graphics and a direct7 sound card) I have the same problem again lag when they are talking and the game gets slower and slower as it goes along.
Im running my G force 2 MX at 800x600 on 16 bit colour.
As i said before i dont care about the grashics i just want it to run with out the evil lag =*(

thx for the imput guys =)


Rara

[Mr. Chambers]

well if it does it in other games then it is starting to sound more and more like a directx problem.. or your vid card/mobo/memory or something like that.. are you running at 4x agp? latest via drivers for your board? if it is a via board that is.. try uninstalling dx then reinstalling 8.1 (do a search on downloads.com for direct x uninstaller) also i would completely take off every driver you have on your vid and start over, use detenator destroyer (again download.com or google) its an app that will rid you of all the little bits and pieces of your nvidia drivers so you can start over.. let me know if that helps any

[Rara]

right tried your driver thing for the Nvid drivers and that didnt work, got diretX 8.1 and still nothing.
Now when i load up windows and you hear the lame ass windows start up music, my sound card can hardly play that.
I think the mean thing is a driver problem for the soundblaster.
As i said before eevrytime it installs it asks for a reboot when i reboot it tells me that two files are missing a kennel and a steam.sys mean anything to you?sure as hell dont to me =/
thing that i dont get is if they are in the CD why arent they in the driver update??? I never have problems putting on the CD ones (but then again they are pants) but its the driver up date ones i cant do.
Theres 2 I donwloaded one of them is SPCTW2K.LIB that one comes with an installer. It installs asks for a reboot and bang!

The second one is SBPCI128Setup.exe this one i had to download 3 other files to make it work p128x2k.lib, p128w9x.lib and p128wnt.lib.
Now i can get what their for (9x=windows 9x and so on)
but again i get the same thing with this one too. asks for a reboot and then you guessed it bang! missing files!

got any ideas about these missing files? wtf are they? and why are they making my life hell!!?
sound i just pull out this sound card and throw it as far away as I can?
because this is driving me around the bend really hurting my head =/

again thx for the input.


Rara

[Lt. Max]

in gta3 turn of the trails, that will help a lot. also it needs a very good copm to run i have p3 866 ge2 mx400 oced and 512 sdram, i can run 800x600 almost smooth , not really tho.

[sethticlees]

Sounds strange, I'd check for viruses... or last hope format the hard drive and start fresh. That's sure to fix the problem. Even though it's a royal PITA.

Good Luck

Seth

[Benno]

can i ask a few questions first?

What mobo are you using?, we need to know the details before we can really help.

Are you using your old harddrive or the one from your friend , you cannot upgrade your mobo and not format and reinstall. I suggest you back up and format then reinstall, then via 4in1 drivers, then dx8.1 and other drivers etc.

Athlon 900 with mx400 should have no probs as long as you don't turn up the res to high, what are the res set at?

What drivers are you using, try 29.42, they seem to be very stable to me.

Get a better version of windows, i use 2k pro and am thinking of going to xp pro, but will wait until i go 2 ddr.

Answer these q's and try format and reinstall and I am sure you will be happier.

[Overclockerz]

take that sound card out then try to play the game if it still does what u say then the sound card is to blamm i bet my computer ( well not my computer lol ) that its youre sound card i had a game


Emperor battle for dune and a ****sza sound card and it did exsacly what youre saying it shows the video but the sound comes like 3 seconds later

[Illah]

An Athlon 900 & 32meg MX400, I'm sorry to say, isn't all that top of the line... It's definetely way better than your old machine but it's still not all powerful, you'll probably still have problems in most modern games like GTA3, Dungeon Siege, stuff like that.

--Illah

[Da Whip]

What PCI slot have you got the sound card?
Try moving it to another slot. You could be having an IRQ conflict, especially if you have it in the 1st slot.

[Tracert]

Originally posted by Illah
An Athlon 900 & 32meg MX400, I'm sorry to say, isn't all that top of the line... It's definetely way better than your old machine but it's still not all powerful, you'll probably still have problems in most modern games like GTA3, Dungeon Siege, stuff like that.

--Illah

Not you too!? Have you too succumbed to the marketing hype that says if you don't have Ghz's and Mhz's then you can't play games? I thought better of you.

;)

Don't listen to them Rara,

your machine should be plenty strong to play most any games on the market today. Of course not always with all the eye candy and resolutions that people around here like, but still should be very playable.

I think your definitely having some software problems. Best thing is to do a reformat and start over. Win ME is OK but make sure you are downloading and using the most recent correct drivers for Win ME.

If you would like us to give you a step by step or help in making sure you have all the drivers you need tell us what you have for a mother board first and we will be happy to help you.

One more thing, when you pulled the latest driver for your Sound card, did you get it from here...
http://www.americas.creative.com/support/files/download.asp?Centric=17&OS=11&descID=1251
If so, I think all you needed to to is double click the exe and it will install everything for you with out having to go through the new installation. Is that how you did it?

[madcow235]

gta3 is a picky game when it comes to software. I installed it once worked fine then i reformated installed it again and i can't navigate the menus

[Rara]

right first off i'd like to say every one whos posted here for me rocks, i mean it I love you all!!
Right remember im a right nOOb at PC so you'll have to bear with me on this.
right, The mobo I have is called a MSI 6340 i think =/ now this is the strange part after having a look inside the comp, I did find something strange!!
My sound card is side ways on to the motherboard. I'll try to exlpain for you.
its not part of the PCI slots some how (and I cant really see) its connected right to the mother board. So I was think ok maybe its part of the mother board, if so it will show up in bios as an on board sound card, but it dont!!??? Now i know its a soundblaster 128 PCI because if i remove it when windows finds it again it tells me its that. Crazy I know!!
As for what everyone else is saying i'll go through you one at a time.

Benno:

What mobo are you using?, we need to know the details before we can really help.

Its a MSI 6340

Are you using your old harddrive or the one from your friend , you cannot upgrade your mobo and not format and reinstall. I suggest you back up and format then reinstall, then via 4in1 drivers, then dx8.1 and other drivers etc.

right it was my hard drive a new one i got and it was total reformated last sun day when i got the PC. As for mother board drivers, those words scare me.

Athlon 900 with mx400 should have no probs as long as you don't turn up the res to high, what are the res set at?

I left my G Force 2 at 800x600 As i said before im a nOOb at this, so i dont mess around with settings=/

What drivers are you using, try 29.42, they seem to be very stable to me.

for the Soundblaster128 im useing the New drivers from creative
http://www.americas.creative.com/su...=11&descID=1251

(thx to Tracert for the link)

Get a better version of windows, i use 2k pro and am thinking of going to xp pro, but will wait until i go 2 ddr.

I can get XP pro but i hear theres all kinds of nasty stuff in it, plus I hear many old skool games wont work on it too (I play a lot of emulater stuff)


Right to Tracert:

Yes that was the link I got the drivers from, its also the one i had the problems with (please see one of my top posts)
also you ask about ME updates, in truth i never get them as a friend of mine got them and MS started sending him **** every day =/
and if you could give me a step by step thing I would love you forever!! (dont tell my husband!! =P)

(yes i am a girl)

Thx for the time guys!!

Love to you all

Rara.

[Lt. Max]

madcow, if u cant see menus in gta3 downlado this fix :
http://download.microsoft.com/download/whistler/Patch/Q306676/WXP/EN-US/Q306676_WXP_SP1_x86_ENU.exe

rara: when u got gta3 go to settings then put the resolution 640x480 and turn off trails and frame limiter and vsync, put draw distance to 3 bars. that should help, also try the 800x600 in gta3 it actually works better then 640x480 on my comp, to change reso u scroll wit mouse scroller and left click. make sure its 640x480x16 or 800x600x16, not 32, that will slow it down a LOT.
another thing to help improve perforamcne is get sheepys fix with which u can remove newspapers and leaves from street, put 16 bit textures and remove pedestrians (i didnt do that one..)
link is http://www.sheepyuk.com/ then go on right side high fps, scroll down and dl the file. put it in gta3 directory and run it.
hope this helps somewhat.

max

[Lt. Max]

also, did the person who had copmuter b4 mab had a different sound card and video card thats why it might have played gta3 well.. you sure your volume is turned up? could be the prob ykno :)
also, i think by ur explanation, you have onboard sound (which generally is $hitty...) u could go out and get yourself a soundblaster live or something, their not that expensive anymore i think. i suggest www.newegg.com , the sound blaster section : http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?submit=manufactory&catalog=57&manufactory=1137&DEPA=1
creative sb live! oem is 32 bucks, u should get that ( i have that..)

[Da Whip]

Here is a pic of the MSI MS-6340
and here is the XP. 2K, ME,98 driver for that mobo;
http://extranet.fujitsu-siemens.com/support/consumer-public/sound.html?hyperwave=action%3Dplain.action

[DAGO]

Just checked out that Mobo and it has onboard sound, so I would figure out how to disable it before I did anything...
That board also has the Via KM133A chipset, which has been notorious for sound problems when combined with ANY Sound Blaster card...You might give George Breese's PCI latency patch a try as it was the only "fix" that solved my problem with a similar chipset and an old Sound Blaster 16 (yep, it is a dinosaur...but so am I...:D ) I think you can get the Patch over at Viahardware.com or just punch it in over at Google...There is some risk involved and it will raise your temps a wee bit, but after struggling in frustration for weeks, I had to give it a shot and IT WORKED!!!

Much luck with your problem...Keep us posted...

:beer:

[Illah]

Originally posted by Tracert


Not you too!? Have you too succumbed to the marketing hype that says if you don't have Ghz's and Mhz's then you can't play games? I thought better of you.

;)

I'm not saying he can't play them or that you NEED an XP or P4 system to play games properly, but games like Dungeon Siege put the hurt on modern machines let alone older ones. All I'm saying is that if the FPS aren't all that smooth don't be surprised.

--Illah

[Rara]

Ok boys here the low down.

YEs it does have onboard sound (i found out in bios)
Right i have from my old comp a soundblaster 128 PCI card. So this is what i done.
I went in to bios and turned off "onboard legacy surport" which then made all the onboard soundblaster stuff go gray!
Cool i though, so i put in my soundblaster 128 card.
turned on the comp, before windows it said i had new hardwear!!
I waited and waited and for some reason it loaded to windows but when i looked in device manger it now said I had 2 soundblasters in my PC even though i turned off the onboard on =/
Right it played music ok I loaded up GTA3 it was looking fine!! I was wetting my self waiting for the game to start up, the Moive played at the begining and wOO+ no problems play fine not one slow down at all!! so i gets to the game itself and it crashs right away!! I had to push my reset button =*(
anyways i get back to windows and what do I find? no music at all!!!!!!
I load Mediaplayer nothing there wouldnt even play clicks when i picked something. SO im getting a little ****ed here, and i remove both soundblasters. I reboot to see what happens. it gets to before windows does the same thing again picks up both soundblasters. and this time no music from the get go. *sighs*
So i removed both again and reset, go in to bios and look at the opinions. now under "onboard legacy surport" theres a opp called "Soundblaster" so after rubbing my head i think, ok lets disable that, and i did.
I boot to windows after saving the stuff. and low and behold!! it finds, yes you've guessed it 2 soundblasters again for the 3 time. and again no music at all!!
I sit and cry for a little bit. go feed my baby and come back and cry some more.
Da Whip thats what my motherboard looks like!! yeh!! so what now guys? do i get motherboard updates?
Try this patch DAGO talks about?
or just sit down and stop thinking i can use a PC and go back to being a housewife again?
*sighs* all i ever wanted to do was run people over on GTA3 =/


Thx for keeping this up guys lots of love to you!!

Rara

[Lt. Max]

well try the patch dago is talkin about.. see what happens
if the game crashes, try reinstalling gta3 or something, or in gta3 ioptions choose different sound device
also i guess u could try latest via 4in1 drivers...

[Emericana]

GTA 3 will not run smoothly on my brothers dell P3 1.13 w/ Geforce 2 MX 400 and 512 SDRAM with SB Live at 640x480

this game sucks up more system requirements i have ever seen.

[Illah]

Why not just use the onboard sound?

--Illah

[CrystalMethod]

Ok, I can solve the problem pretty easily, because I've seen it too many times. It may require a reinstall though, unless you can remove everything from creative. The problem is with Windows Millenium and the auto install from creative. Some of of the setting in your BIOS probably aren't helping either. I'll go through the steps as if you were going to re-install.
1) Check your BIOS and make sure the following things are disabled.
- Game port
- Onboard sound
- Onboard modem (most BIOS' will have a setting for this even though there isn't an onboard modem on the motherboard)
- Midi port
2) Boot up and format your harddrive. (I'm assuming you've already backed everything up, and installed once or twice today, so just one more to go.)
3) Re-install your operating sytem.
4) Put the sound blaster CD, but exit the auto run program. DO NOT INSTALL THE DRIVERS THROUGH THE AUTORUN.
5) Go into your device manager, and select your sound card. Click update driver, and let Millenium find the correct driver's on it's own, for all the sound card related hardware. (gameport, midi port, etc...)
6) Reboot, and when it askes you to, and let us know how it went.

[Mr. Chambers]

do all/any of you actually have gta3? as i said earlier in my post check out gta3forums.com for a good laugh, the technical help area has like 3 times the posts of everything else.. lol anyways like i said rockstar can just stay over on the consoles for all i care, the game just plain has too many bugs. when i first got it, about about **** myself, when it wouldnt play very smooth (im talking sub 20 fps here guys) heres the system as it was back then

1600+xp (fsb 145x10.5) = @1522mhz
384mb DDR 2100
audigy x gamer
shuttle ak31
ati radeon 8500le @ 280/280

the problem is the game code, not my system requirements.. too many bugs/problems. check out those forums, a bunch of guys over there helped me out to the point where i could get 35-45 fps, which is definately an improvment! your problem to me though sounds like its your soundcard conflicting with the rest of the system.. have you tried playing without the card installed? or with on board? and yes as Dago pointed out those chipsets had horrible problems with anything that said creative on the pcb..

[Emericana]

funny i can play it very smooth at 1152x864 with my system.... system in sig

[CrystalMethod]

your problem to me though sounds like its your soundcard conflicting with the rest of the system.. have you tried playing without the card installed? or with on board? and yes as Dago pointed out those chipsets had horrible problems with anything that said creative on the pcb..

Like is stated in my post, the problem is MOST likely caused by the auto install software. After you see it 50 or 60 times, you know the symptoms pretty well.

[Mr. Chambers]

Originally posted by CrystalMethod


Like is stated in my post, the problem is MOST likely caused by the auto install software. After you see it 50 or 60 times, you know the symptoms pretty well.

do explain.. i'd like to know more about it crystal.

and like i said emericana it varies from system to system.. my friends duron 1.2 and g3 plays it better than mine, while a guy i work with is plauged with problems and he has a 4400..

[Tracert]

Well,

Im not sure about the rest of what everyone is telling you but you are using the wrong drivers for your onboard sound.

The right ones can be found here,

http://www.msi.com.tw/program/support/driver/dvr/spt_dvr_list.php?part=1&kind=3&CHIP=3&ID=1

and according to the manual for the MSI 6340M Rev 1, the mother board comes with an optional Creative CT5880 built in sound.

I went ahead and attached the correct driver as a ziped file. Its really tiny and you just need to unzip it and then use the 3 files as a updated driver for your onboard sound card.

[CrystalMethod]

Originally posted by Mr. Chambers


do explain.. i'd like to know more about it crystal.

and like i said emericana it varies from system to system.. my friends duron 1.2 and g3 plays it better than mine, while a guy i work with is plauged with problems and he has a 4400..

Sorry for the late replay, Was at a LAN this weekend. If you read the first post, the problem is the sound card, and has very little to do with GTA3. Except for the fact that she can't play it. Something creative did with the auto installer for the drivers doesn't work with Windows Millenium, and the SoundBlaster 128. It works fine for any other operating system, but Millenium. At my previous job, we never actually got around to figuring out why it didn't work, just how to get around it. I actully wrote that reply as I was heading out the door. Here's a link to the Creative resolution to the problem, which is pretty much the same thing I posted earlier.
Link to Creative's resolution. (http://www.americas.creative.com/support/kbase/article.asp?ID=567&Centric=17)

[Captain Slug]

Originally posted by Tracert
and according to the manual for the MSI 6340M Rev 1, the mother board comes with an optional Creative CT5880 built in sound.

I have had NOTHING but trouble with onboard sound excluding chips made by C-Media. Onboard sound is plauged by memory conflict and IRQ errors that cause frequent crashing and sound skips.

Rara:
If you can't get either of yours to work (I hate Creative), try disabling ALL audio to see if that solves your performance problems. If it does, I'll let you borrow one of my perfectly fine C-Media 8738 sound cards. 2-channel sound is the best I can give you for free at the moment ;)

I can drop it in the mail once you give me a hollar...