Screen freeze - every time !!!

Tankless · Post by **Tankless** » Sat May 17, 2003 5:58 pm

My computer was shut down for three weeks while I was away. When I came back and booted up I found that every time I try to play Bzflag, my screen freezes; every time. There is no way out, other than the one finger Microsoft remedy.

What changed? No one had access to this computer, so there were no changes on it. Any ideas?

Dervish · Post by **Dervish** » Sat May 17, 2003 6:21 pm

Was your CMOS battery weak and its charge didn't survive long enough to keep the BIOS settings for three weeks?

Check these settings and make sure no PnP or system resource settings were changed back to default values.

Tankless · Post by **Tankless** » Sat May 17, 2003 9:42 pm

Good thought. The time clock was ok. But I'll check the settings. Thanks.

Dervish · Post by **Dervish** » Sat May 17, 2003 10:59 pm

The date and time is the last CMOS item to loose power.

It's a good thing to check your settings, as I can't think of anything else that would cause that with the info you provided. Good luck.

Tankless · Post by **Tankless** » Sat May 17, 2003 11:42 pm

The CMOS settings seem to be where I left them. There's no evidence of reset.

Is there anything that could have affected my video card? It's a nVidia Geforce 2 MX/MX400. I can't see why power off would affect it, but there can be coincidence.

Post by **Fiberchunks** » Sun May 18, 2003 12:21 am

have you had any electrical storms, surges, etc in the past 3 weeks? Perhaps windows decided that your driver was carp, and promptly corrupted it (as a non-sarcastic aside, I would strongly suggest re-installing the latest and greatest from nvidia -- or if you have already, and are still getting the problem -- downgrading...I've had issues with the newest drivers on linux of late -- downgraded, and all is well again.)

Just a suggestion.

Peace
fiber

JeffM · Post by **JeffM** » Sun May 18, 2003 12:56 am

acutaly, start from square one.

what OS, what card, and what version of BZ?

Tankless · Post by **Tankless** » Sun May 18, 2003 4:12 pm

Debian (Libranet 2.0) upgraded several times. Kernel 2.4.19. nVidia Geforce 2 MX/MX400. Nvidia version 2960. Processor is Duron 800; mb MSI K7T Pro2A.

KRR · Post by **KRR** » Sun May 18, 2003 8:25 pm

Are you using the default BZ client that comes with Libra 2.0? It's e4, and there are newer clients that run better and look better. Even e6.

I have Libra2.0 (dist-upgraded) on one partition, haven't gone all the way with "unstable" yet to put g0 on. Installed RedHat9 on another partition for that - maybe that's an option for you to try.

I also have the same video card. I occasionally get lockups under this distro (which is Debian-based (Xandros)), have had lock-ups under win98 (g0 client), and haven't played enough on other distros yet to determine if they do the same.

Tankless · Post by **Tankless** » Sun May 18, 2003 8:58 pm

Sorry, I forgot to add: my BZ client is 1.7g0. I got it by apt-get install bzflag.

I have been thinking of upgrading to Libranet 2.8. It should be better addapted to my hardware.

Tankless · Post by **Tankless** » Sun May 18, 2003 10:12 pm

I just discovered that Tuxracer causes freeze ups too. That means that there is some sort of GLX problem. Now, why would having the maching turned off mess up that?

JeffM · Post by **JeffM** » Mon May 19, 2003 1:32 am

dono, but it can't hurt to redo the current Nvidia drivers. Its more then likey a GL problem.

Tankless · Post by **Tankless** » Tue May 20, 2003 3:43 am

Strange. The GL is working again. I've been playing Bzflag and Tux racer again - normal. Yeah! But I don't think I fixed anything. As near as I can tell, I haven't changed anything. Except that my machine has been running for three or four days.

So what are the hardware issues? I checked the fans two days ago and they were running. Have I got a flakey video card? Or mobo? Or something else?

SGI · Post by **SGI** » Tue May 20, 2003 10:30 am

Probably is was.....tooooooooo much beer, don't drink and drive

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Tue May 20, 2003 12:42 pm

i believe you may have installed the snuffleupagus driver.......it does not liked to awaken quickly.........you might want to try the bigbird driver which does allow for quick reboots, but then you have to drop bird feed in the floppy drive every other day.

Tankless · Post by **Tankless** » Tue May 20, 2003 3:16 pm

Not just bird seed; ya gotta use morning glory seeds to make it sing.

Dervish · Post by **Dervish** » Tue May 20, 2003 3:47 pm

Bagheera wrote:i believe you may have installed the snuffleupagus driver.......it does not liked to awaken quickly.........you might want to try the bigbird driver which does allow for quick reboots, but then you have to drop bird feed in the floppy drive every other day.

Darn, and all these years I've been using the Eeyore driver. When my PC boots it says "hell-lo" or "buzz, buzz" over and over again and spontaneously goes to sleep throughout the day.