GOTY 1.96 Nvidia 6200 Reboot

[Padooka 0]

Hi

After many many years of service I recently retired my old Flashpoint Machine. (ti4200 finally died)

The problem is that the slightly less older machine I'm trying to install it on reboots when running the game. If I start the game and let it sit at the main menu it will eventually freeze and reboot. If I hurry up and start a mission it will also eventually freeze and reboot. In both instances the sound is repeated for a couple of seconds before it reboots. And both will happen in under 1-2 minutes.

After searching through the forum I turned off 'Automatically Restart' under system failure. I then found that every time the sound started repeating I would get an error message stating n4_dsp.dll(?) had caused an error which I assume is the nvidia driver for my 6200 pci graphics card (stop laughing! )

I'm currently running 93.71 drivers and I also tried 91.47 drivers which are the ones that came with the card with no change. I still get freeze/reboot. I used driver cleaner between to clean old drivers.

Could someone please recommend a driver I might try with this card that would have a fighting chance of working with this game? I really don't want to download the latest and install since it's a pci card and I'm not sure what drivers would support that.

Any help would be appreciated.

BTW, I also tried turning off hardware acceleration for my Creative x-fi xtreme gamer soundcard with no change. Oh and the motherboard doesn't have a agp slot so there is no agp apature setting in the bios.

System specs:

Intel 2.54

1G ram

x-fi xtreme gamer with latest drivers

nvidia 6200a pci graphics card

Only the 'older' machines here are allowed to be used for gaming. The newer machines are strictly work only.

[Operator of dissidence 0]

Hi Padooka,

I know this sounds Cliché, but it looks like you're having thermal issues.

You might want to try downloading hardware monitoring software which supports you're version of windows. I'm guessing it is windows XP or 2000 from looking at the driver version your using. Anyway have the hardware monitor run in the background while running the game and have it log your system temps or bring it up and monitor it yourself.

Here are some things you can check right away.

1. make sure your drivers are up to date. The nvidia driver 163.71 still has the 6200 series under it's support list, but if it complains it doesn't backstep to olderversions until you find the version that does. They have a driver archive page on their site.

here is a link to their windows xp archive page.

2. Check your BIOS for the PCI Latency setting. if it exists try setting it to 32 or 64 depending on what it is set to already. if it's higher than 32 then try 32, and if it's bellow or above 64 try 64.

3. For a last ditch effort you could remove all your cards and install only the graphics and audio card. If it still gives you crap; try switching slots and slowly adding back in the other cards after test running it each time. Make sure to test you memory while at it. If your Mobo isn't dual channel only install one module(the one your most confident that works).

[Padooka 0]

Hi,

It's not Cliche my friend. All suggestions are welcome as it may lead to solving my problem.

Overheating:

I downloaded and ran a monitor and didn't find anything unusual in the temps. They only rose maybe 2-3 degrees. The card also doesn't lock up while playing other games....for instance I just fired up Falcon Allied Force and flew around maybe 20 minutes with no problems. I'm thinking if OFP overheated the vid card falcon would as well but there were no problems there.

Drivers:

I tried so many drivers it's not even funny. I went all the way back until they stopped recognizing the card (maybe 5x.xx) and I also tried all the way up to the current one that was just released a few days ago. None had any effect on the lockups/reboots.

Latency:

My bios doesn't have any settings for this so I downloaded pci latency tool and used that. The vid card was set to 258 and I used the tool to try 32, 64 and 128. None had any effect on the reboots. BTW, the sound card was set at 64. This actually looked promising but it locked up just a quickly at 32 as it did set to it's default 258 which seems high to me.

Cards:

I have the Sound card, Video card and nic card installed. I pulled out the nic card with no effect. I haven't tried swapping slots or pulling the sound card yet.

Memory:

I download one of those memory torture tests and let it run all night. It came up negative on problems. I haven't tried pulling one stick.

*At this point I'm really out of ideas. Any other suggestions as to what I may try would really be appreciated.*

Searching through the forum I noticed people mentioning that the newer drivers (dx9 rather than dx8) were causing OFP problems but I never saw anyone mention any specifics. Could someone explain to me what it is about the newer drivers that gave OFP problems? Maybe it'll help me figure out what is wrong since I really think it's a driver problem more than anything else.

Thanks again Operator of dissidence for the suggestions. Much Appreciated!

[Operator of dissidence 0]

Hi Padooka,

I'm sorry none of my suggestions help. You suggest it most likely is software related.

Hmm, works with Falcon 4.0: Allied Force. Here are some more suggestions:

1. Try different resolutions and color depths.

2. If you are still using a CRT or analog cable. try varing the refresh rate.

3. Run msconfig and disable all services, but the drivers.

4. Reset all the defaults under the nvidia control panel or advanced display settings (depends how new the drivers are, personally I like the old way of doing business).

5. This is like suicide, but run dxdiag and disable hardware acceleration for all devices from here. Don't forget to reset them after testing

6. I'm sure you're doing this already to conform with the systematics, but try running flashpoint with the -nomap command switch and don't load any mods.

7. Here's your last ditch again, try the patch found here.

Now that's all I got.

Good luck, 0perator

[Padooka 0]

Problem Solved!

I finally stumbled upon what the problem was: If AntiAliasing is left set to Application Controlled OFP freezes and reboots every time.

I'm able to manually set it to 2x, 2xQ, 4x, 8x..... and even set it to off with no problem, but it's a no go if left in it's default position Application Controlled.

All drivers I tried (and I think I tried them all) acted this way and it also doesn't seem to be the texture size (running out of video memory) because it freezes even with 64x64 textures at 800x600 16 bit color. Every time I set it to App Control it freezes and reboots regardless of what game settings are used.

I have a feeling that it's just something on my particular machine that is causing the problem but I thought I mention what I had found just in case some day some one else is searching for a solution to a similar problem.

That was a tough one to find.

[Operator of dissidence 0]

Thats good to hear, Padooka.

I would go with the 2xQ because it offers better quality with least performance hit. If it looks blurry to you, anisotropic filtering will clean up the g36's sight too.

That's funny how it's usually always the last thing you would ever think of checking.