Troubleshooting DX8.1/AGP Textures
 

Aggravation of the week:

I picked up Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind from Target last night, as they dropped it to $29.99 (from fifty). I installed it without a hitch on my home system:

Athlon 1300 (T-Bird)
ASUS A7V133 motherboard
GeForce2 GTS 32MB (ASUS AGP-V7700 DDR SGRAM v6.31c)
256MB RAM
lotsa HD space
ViewSonic Optiquest Q95 19" monitor
Win98 SE

The install process added DirectX 8.1 to my system, which DxDiag seems perfectly happy with.

Long story short: the game is crashing to desktop every time I exit a building. The workaround is to disable AGP Texture Acceleration in DxDiag, which seems to keep the crashes at bay. So far, so good, but I'd like to work out how to FIX the problem instead of dancing around it (i.e. reenable AGP Texture Acceleration AND resolve whatever driver conflict or bug is causing the crash).

As far as I can tell, I have the most current drivers (v6.31c) available on ASUS's site for the AGP-V7700 under W98. In digging for those with similar problems, someone suggested trying Nvidia's Detonator 3 Drivers (6.50) with the ASUS, but I'm hesitant to twiddle with my video drivers unless I'm absolutely sure they're compatible. I believe there are also much more current Detonator drivers since the suggestion had been posted.

Anyplace else I should be looking for AGP-related issues?

It's almost surely a problem with your video drivers. When a 3D game crashes consistently at a certain point, and disabling a video feature "fixes" it, you've pretty much nailed down the problem.

I would certainly try nVidia's latest Detonator drivers. You can always uninstall them if it makes things worse, and I've always found nVidia's drivers to be top-notch.

Just go to their website and download the latest version. I think they call them "Detonator XP" now even for older versions of Windows. The great thing about nVidia is that they make one driver install for all their products; just download the right one for your platform and it figures out what you need.

The other thing I'd recommend is to upgrade to Windows XP. Driver Rollback and System Restore are worth the price of it alone. That is, if one driver hoses you up, you can just click a button and restore the old one, no problems. Or if it <b>really</b> hoses you up, run System Restore (which does the same thing, except for the whole system).

I'd second the notion that it's a driver issue, and upgrading to later Detonator drivers would be my first action. However, I remember how bad upgrading video drivers on Windows 98 SE could be - so that's why I'm recommending the other part as well. :)

Hold on, you're referring to Windows XP as an UPGRADE? You're confusing me.

The Detonator drivers seem to have done the trick.

You mean you don't *want* to surrender your machine to the benevolent control of Redmond? You must be some kind of commie.

Well, I use the Corporate Edition (since I do work at home on my Windows computer, and SAIC's license covers that), so I don't have to do the WPA shizzat.

Even if I did, I'd still upgrade. XP is far better than 98 SE. But different strokes for different folks.

Think what you may of Microsoft's money-grubbing schemes, XP is, by any sane measure, their best OS to date (for whatever that's worth). One might make the case that 2000 was better, but since you're playing games, that's not an option for you. Regardless, 95, 98 and ME are just glorified DOS programs.

If the drivers work fine for you, great. But Dave is right, updating drivers on Win9x is like playing Russian roulette. Play long enough, and you'll eventually lose. One day, your system will just stop working right, and the only way to fix it is an OS reinstall.

Also, some people get the mindset that they should keep installing the latest drivers, firmware, BIOS updates, etc. Unless you have a particular problem you're trying to solve (as in this case), that's a risky path to follow.

Isn't that mindset called "mandatory Windows Update"? :-)

If you're happy with Windows 98, no one's forcing you to update. All I'm saying is that if you insist on using Windows, XP is by far the best version available.

Yeah, I used to be guilty of that. Now I know not to trust Windows Update to update third-party device drivers. For their weekly or daily security patches, though, it is very handy!

(Although not as good as Red Hat Network, which lets you schedule package updates remotely!)

<h3>11 Signs You are Forgetting the Difference Between Your Eyes and Your GeForce</h3>
By Will Walker, Jesse Lee John LaCourse and Mark Vonhoffe

11. You look at the sunset and think "I wonder if I can get this in 1024x768."
10. You blink and think "crap, more frame loss."
9. You stare at a leaf for hours and hours trying to discern the pixels.
8. You refer to people who use artificial things like Glasses and Contacts as "lousy VooDoo folk."
7. You avoid large groups for fear of overloading your polygon renderer.
6. Looking toward the horizon, you proudly announce "I found the clipping plane."
5. Your vision gets blurry and immediately you think "crap, need new drivers."
4. When you drive and the other guy has his brights on, you curse the gamma levels.
3. You seriously believe one eye has better OpenGL support than the other.
2. You complain to your doctor about biased benchmarks after failing your eye exam.
1. You sing the praises of nVidia engineers each time you see your reflection in a car bumper.

http://bbspot.com/News/2002/09/Top_11_geforce.html

Thankfully, I am just the opposite, to the point of sometimes-unwarranted paranoia. If it ain't broke, I don't fix it. This is one reason why I usually stick to console games; console developers have one set platform to design for, and thus have a much easier time corralling bugs. Keeping up with PC upgrades is maddening.

Morrowind is still occasionally breaking -- a once-in-a-blue-moon crash-to-desktop -- but it's much less frequent (and non-easily-reproduced, so far) since applying the Nvidia drivers.

The only thing I really worry about upgrading are my my video drivers. No reason, other than Nvidea does a good job and I feel comfortable all hell isn't going to break loose when I install them. I've upgraded my NIC card driver once and my printer drivers other than that everything is the same as when I bought my computer, other than those changes which windows update installed.

Replace "once-in-a-blue-moon" with "annoyingly frequent", even with the Nvidia drivers in place. It's whomping to desktop with "ddhelp" errors (among others), which makes me suspect my DirectX install is somehow whacky. I'll do some tweaking when I get home.

Crossing my fingers here, but given how it performed last night, I may have solved my Morrowind problem...

...by updating my VIA 4-in-1 drivers.

No crashes since.