For starters, here's a pic of the PC intestants. Most of the crap i "labelled" up there is for no reason, mostly cos i had fun doing so and to show you bastards that i know where the elementary parts go and what they look like.

Anyways; my question is two-fold:

1)My CDR/RW in my former PC has three cables right. Feeding, the grey plastic thingy cable stuff i forgot the name off atm, and there was another one, the one i took the other pic off. The keyboard helps in estimating its size, heh. Now, the end that should fit on the mobo (like it did in my old pc and mobo) doesn't fit on any outlet on this one. I pointed with the arrow to the thing i think it is that it should normally go into.

I haven't experienced any apparent problems with the cable not installed; so i figure it's either to do with the drive's music playing abilities or with the possibility to use headphones. Beats me tho, any thoughts would be appreciated.

2) this one is just curiosity. What is the thing i marked with "no clue"?

that's a digital audio cable. It has something to do with playing audio CDs, but it doesn't seem to make a difference. Dunno for sure what it's really for.

the 'no clue' is the north bridge, I believe. Either north bridge or south bridge, I forget which is which. here, from webopaedia:

In Northbridge/Southbridge chipset architecture designs, the Northbridge is the chip or chips that connect a CPU to memory, the PCI bus, Level 2 cache and AGP activities. The Northbridge chips communicate with the CPU through the FSB.
The Northbridge chip is one of two chips that control the functions of the chipset. The other is the Southbridge. The Northbridge can consist of more than one discrete chip while the Southbridge is typically only one discrete chip.

clear things up for you?

Thank ya kindly sir.

Ok, this ain't about my question anymore, but i gotta find a palce to rant about the shit i've been going tru so far.

As i said i had win2k running properly but with games crashing etc., prolly cos of crappy driver installation. Now, i'm playing a game, and it crashes once more (like all those times before when i just restarted the game or rebooted), i reboot win2k and it freezes on the loading screen every time. So, i format again, reinstall it, install mobo drivers first this time, and then install modem to get the SP's and updates for windows. BUT; when restarting it freezes AGAIN on laod screen, on exact the same amount of "loadness". I format AGAIN, and now immedeately install the modem, and BANG, freezes once more when i reboot after install.

Having restrained myself from kicking the living crap out of my wall, i decide to install win 98 again this time. After some initial problems with the modem, i manage to install it after all. (which was a relief) I also installed the Gfx card driver but NOT the mobo drivers because it has isseus with win98. When i start the install (with the cd ofcourse) it says "give me the win98 cd", but when i replace them the stupid explorerish screen keeps saying it's the nvidia cd in there. That is to say, the cd icon changes, but the name stays "nvidia blabla".

So i think: mm, well, let's give it a go without the mobo drivers, install postal 2, and run it. Everything goes well, but when i'm 2 minutes in the game: CRASH and auto-reboot.


So: Win2k won't let me install my modem for some weird reason, which i was able to do a day ago. Win98 won't let me install my mobo drivers.

I SO hope XP isn't gonna give me that crap with my modem. I think my pc may a bit advanced for win98, but i don't got the slightest clue why win2k freezes on installation of my modem. After it went without any problems a day ago and after a format. Fucked up.

Guess i should be glad i managed to get on the internet tho.

is it an old modem? Old hardware has issues with Win2k (and XP, actually, though less of an issue). And they should make mobo drivers that work with win98. I can tell you that my machine is working pretty damned well since I fixed the sound card driver issue, and I seem to have a very similar motherboard. No old-ass modem, of course.

So, for Postal2, did you get the 1337 patch?

Lol - poor ox.

It's weird though... I can't see why it's throwing a paddy....

Meh - on the note of new pcs.... check out this baby.... RAOWR!!^!^&!!

http://www.alienware.com/system_pages/aurora_ddr.aspx

On that note, I'll post this in open topic....

The modem isn't THAT old, it's not state-of-the-art either. It's an Eicon Diva adsl USB modem. Wanna know something ridiculous? Postal 2 crashed once more in win98 and now win 8 wouldn't boot anymore.

So, format AGAIN and install win2k once more. And now my modem installs without any problems....this is just too weird.

I installed

1)OS
2)mobo drivers
3)Modem
4)windows updates and patches and SP's
5)diretx 9.0b
6)gfx drivers
7)other stuff

I didn't install or play a gamle yet because i was afraid t might make my windows crash to eternity again. Maybe when i get winXP i will try games on this OS again, and if it crashes it's winXp time.


But since both win98 and win2k crash in games i'm beginning to think that reason is the cable that's not plugged in, you know, the one i told you about. Or maybe it's my HD being crap, and should i install the OS on my big HD (and newer one).


Another future problem...in win98 my modem is in the standard windows list of hardware. In win2k it's not so i have to use the modem install cd instead. But the install cd also says "for windows 98, ME and 2000". So no winXP. Let's see if i can find later drivers on the net.

Blaaaah...this sux...man i hate windows


P.S. yeah i got the postal l337 patch, but it still crashed to boot. So it's the pc itself, as was likely from the problems with other games.

ya. It's not that cable. I don't know what the problem is. It sounds like you're doing everything right. Maybe it's a device driver somewhere, like one that's automatically using a MS driver that blows. Or it might be a failing piece of hardware. Or something else entirely. No idea. I hate issues like this because they're a bitch to troubleshoot.

Bah - no one has commented on that pc! Gits.

/me dribbles

i did in open topic you blind fool.

Mm, i think i may have found the problem! Since a few of the times it crashed on me, apart from spontanious rebooting and black screens, i got a BSOD saying "IRQ_not_less_or_equal" and shit, i decided to check up on that on the net.

Seems like win2k and winXp have a knack for crappy assigning of IRQ's, so i checked all devices for their IRQ and for possible conflicts.

Now, i found that three(!) things are assigned the same IRQ (IRQ 20)

->the mobo's "audio codec interface"
->the mobo's "Nvida network adapter"
->the "openHCD USB host controller"

Which seems a bit fishy to me! So, waddayasay, think i should assign the network adaptor and the USB controller with new IRQ's?

(i migth add that none of the three devices reports a conflict with other devices in the "sources" screen where you can read the IRQ's values, for some bizarre reason )


i got IRQ's 02, 05, 07, 12, 16, 17 and 18 free so that won't be a problem.

I think and hope that this is it..it makes the most sense anyhow.

lol bj - that didn't ccount - you were the only one....

lol, arsehole....

yea, if you've got free IRQs, by all means, assign away. 20I IRQs? Now, I've never screwed with IRQs in XP, but there USED to only be 16, 15 useable (1 was a cascade). 0 is usually system timer, I believe, 1 is clock, 2 is cascade, blah, I forget the rest. I memorized all that crap for an A+ certification I never ended up taking. Waste of time, IMO.

Lol, beats me how there are 20, but if my gfx card is on slot 19 i figure it has to be like that. Anyway, i say: the more IRQ's, the merrier!

Now i gotta work out how to re-assign IRQ's in the BIOS. Been in it a few times now but not to much avail...i go like this:

->press del, enter BIOS
->go to advanced settings
->go to PCI/sumthing settings
->set IRQ assignig from auto to manual
->then i'm a bit stuck..i get a list with the IRQ's; which all have the status "PCI device". The only thing i can get to is to change that status into status "reserved", but which doesn't make a bloody difference apparently. Maybe i should get deeper in on that on the net...any hints in the meantime are welcome ofcourse.

P.S. i might install and try to play a game again tonite or tomorrow morning, as i'm getting winXP anyways tomorrow afternoon, so if there would be troubles i'd format anyways. If not, then i'll stick with win2k for now.

P.P.S Mm, another thing struck me: I have two HD's, right...one came with the original compaq (8gig) and has had numerous problems, is pretty old by now as you could have assessed from the fact tat it came with the compaq, and has been formatted over 50 times i think. The other is 40 gig, formatted once tops, and i never installed an OS on that one. Think i should try to install my next install of windows on my big HD? I read somewhere on the web that IRQ errors like i have could be the signs of a dying HD. not to mention all the other shit it caused so far.