Jorge E. Ravelo said:
I have a Sapphire Pro9800 128 ATI/Soyo Dragon Plus KT266A MB/AthlonXP
2100+/1 Gb Corsair XMS/SCSI 2HD & 2CDROM setup/ SB Live Platinum/
Enermax 465w PSU that works beautifully with Photoshop, Half Life,
Nascar games, but which runs into an infinite loop on flight sims like
IL2 and MS Combat Flight Sim 3 (two to three minutes after start I get a
locked screen with repeating sound).
All drivers and BIOS are the latest, and I maximize resources by
shutting allmost all progs down with FSAutostart, to no avail.
I have run ALL AGP apertures, 1X to 4X AGP, all RAM timings, all
possible combos of video quality & performance settings, to no avail.
I have been on Ubisoft tech support for hours, same results.
As the 9800 Pro has its own power input I doubt I have an issue with
power, but just to put this thought to rest I am thinking of runningthe
video card on its own PSU as I have several 300W units lying around,
this in addition to running the rest of the setup on the aforementioned PSU.
Is anyone doing this separate PSU trick?
Jorge
When I went through the infinite loop my system was at first stable from a
fresh install at 166/333ddr fsb with PC2100 DDR SDRAM running at the
overated 333DDR and I had happened to have APIC mode disabled in the BIOS
although APIC mode wasn't at all significant to me at the time (I`d never
heard of the infinite loop).
Then in my infinite wisdom I decided to restore a backup image of Windows XP
I had ghosted becuase this backup had my system setup exactly the way I
wanted. The problem started when I had to enable APIC mode in the BIOS to
load the image as the Windows XP image contained in the backup was installed
with APIC mode enabled - I enabled it without hesitation it was just a BIOS
setting right.
From then I started getting infinite loops in the 166/333ddr fsb
configuration I was running (it didn't occur to me it had anything to do
with APIC mode) I discovered that if I lowered the settings to run on the
133/266ddr fsb configuration with BIOS fail safe settings loaded the system
was stable but I didn't want to run 133/266ddr fsb.
I couldn't figure out why suddenly my system had gone from being stable at
166/333ddr fsb to so unstable then I decided that perhaps my PC2100 ddr
wasn't working properly at 166/333ddr fsb anymore so I bought a stick of
PC2700.
When this arrived I was shocked to find that I was still getting the
infinite loop at 166/333ddr fsb and for much of the time when I needed to
use the system for long periods of stability I lowered the settings to run
133/266ddr fsb with BIOS fail safe settings loaded - this stability was
guaranteed or so I thought.
In my quest to get back to the system that ran the 166/333ddr fsb stabley I
decided a 550W PSU change was required so I ordered one and while waiting
for it to arrive I started testing the PC2700 I had only just bought to see
what the overclocking potential was. I did this by raising the fsb in small
amounts to see how high I could go and still get it to POST.
I tried 173, 175, 180 and finally 185 and they all made POST. However after
a few posts at 185 the system suddenly stopped posting at 185 I thought
nothing of it at the time but I decided it was time to stop testing and
backed off where it still posted at lower settings. I didn't know it at the
time but I had damaged the new PC2700 DDR stick by making it POST so far
over its rated 166/333ddr fsb.
This introduced another problem the system would now infinite loop at
133/266ddr with BIOS fail safe settings loaded although it took me awhile to
notice this significant change. Of course when the new PSU arrived it did
nothing for me at 166/333ddr fsb or indeed 133/266ddr fsb and my system was
just totally unstable.
It was only when I swapped a PC2100 stick from my other system that I
noticed stability returned at 133/266ddr fsb and so after all I had been
through and the time it took I was happy with some stability and stopped
trying to get back to the stable 166/333ddr fsb I once had.
I had after all tried just about everything BIOS settings, fresh installs,
various nvidia drivers loading the 4 in 1`s not loading the 4 in 1`s but one
crucial thing was that every fresh install I had made had been with APIC
mode left enabled in the BIOS - while I had tried disabling it while running
the prized backup I couldn't becuase Windows XP was installed with APIC mode
enabled in the BIOS - therefore APIC had to be enabled in the BIOS for it to
load and another fresh install was not an option at this time.
After some months of happily running my backup in a 133/266ddr fsb
configuration it dawned on me that APIC mode that was causing all the
problems at 166/333ddr fsb and it was time for it to go, so I started from
scratch and re-installed Windows XP with it disabled - from then on I never
saw another infinite loop.
Here is some more information on APIC mode APIC: Benefit or Trouble
*With Windows XP you can do a repair install from the boot CD whilst having
APIC mode disabled in the BIOS to "repair" an APIC mode enabled Windows XP
installation to an APIC mode disabled state - the repair option was not
available to me (for reasons I won't go into here) so I had to fresh
install.
