tain.totalcodex.net

Posted: **Fri Jun 11, 2004 4:29 pm**

Here's my deal-io, I have two computers in my house:

1.) Pentium III 733 Mhz
128 MB of PC 133 RAM
Radeon 9700 PRO
Windows 98SE
SB PCI Card

2.) Pentium IV 2.54 gig
512 MB of RAM (forgot which kind)
GeForce II (utter crap card, basically)
Windows 98 SE
On-board sound (as far can I can tell)

Computer #1 is mine. Computer #2 is my sister's. I've persuaded her to let me take over her computer, which sits unused currently, as the house's, thereby my, main computer.

The problem is, her computer is horribly messed up. I recently went to a LAN party, taking her computer, in which I swapped her video card w/ my Radeon. At the lowest resolution of BF 1942, and ANY other game, I was getting single digits frame rates. It was so bad, that I had to drive home, swap computers and cards. The sad thing is my weakly P III is able to outperform her computer.

I've done a similar thing with her computer before, putting my video card into her computer, and I got great frame rates as HIGH resolutions. So I'm guessing that she did something horribly wrong to the computer.

I plan to "fix" whatever she did to that otherwise decent computer, by wiping the HD (since there's only a few gig's of crap on there), and reinstalling the OS, Windows 98 SE probably. I was also thinking about going into the BIOS, and resetting everything to default, but I'm not sure if that's a wise choice.

Let me know if anyone is willing to give me advice here, and I'll provide some better info, like motherboards, and other things I can track down.

Cheers,
Pete

Edited By Pistol_Pete on 1087004008

Posted: **Fri Jun 11, 2004 8:32 pm**

It appears that computer #2 has a problem with the BIOS, because when I go into it, I am prompted for a setup disk. Btw, there's an ASUS P4PE ACPI motherboard in that computer.

Edit: I went to ASUS's site, and made a boot disk for DOS and copied the newest BIOS files, version 1007. The Aflash program seemed to update the BIOS, but when I try to enter the BIOS setup, I am told to reinstall the BIOS. After I do, and restart again, I'm told to install the BIOS files again. Feh...I'm a bit stuck, and I could use some help.

Is Rubba still lurking in these forums? If so, could you give me some tips please.

Edited By Pistol_Pete on 1087070222

Posted: **Mon Jun 14, 2004 2:56 am**

Holy mackeral this message feature is kinda cool. ::winks@magma::

Anyway Pete, ::shakes head:: ... heh I dunno what the problem is off hand ... altho it sounds like bios got corrupt.

Not familar w/the model offhand but the newer asus mobos have a reset feature (some combined with jumper settings).

U can try the quick/dirty method of clearing cmos.

Power off puter ... disconnect the power cord and make sure all the lights on the mobo go off.

Remove cmos battery ... wait a few minutes. Power on w/out cmos battery (u will get an error message). Power OFF again. Insert cmos battery and power on. Upon boot up it should auto the cmos setup screen. Save default settings and boot into OS. From here if things look ok ... try the new flash. Err oh yea, make sure the flash is a "whole" and not and update on an update (which would require a previous flash etc).

Fwiw, Id check asus to see if that mobo has configuration jumpers that set/reset the mobo (ie, auto, manual) .. that's the only thing I can think of off hand aside from corrupted bios.

Best wishes bro,
Rub

Posted: **Mon Jun 14, 2004 7:20 am**

You might also want to check that computer for having spyware installed that might be slowing it down. Download Ad Aware from http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/ and run it, see if it detects anything.

Posted: **Mon Jun 14, 2004 3:50 pm**

Rubba, I recently realized I was pressing alt + F2, trying to get into the CMOS, but I was actually telling them computer to run AFLASH, a BIOS upgrading program. As it turns out, I was able to upgrade the BIOS, and get into the CMOS, resetting everything to default.

I've since wiped that HD, installed Windows 98 SE, and I'm about to throw my Radeon 9700 PRO into that sucker. Then I can get into some 100 plus frames per second in Myth, hopefully.

Myrd, I'm quite aware of that program (pun not intented), and I use it frequently. But her computer was...just..screwed up. I tried to install IE, but I was told I needed to reboot, as some files were being used in a current installation. But when I rebooted, I got the same message. I plan on going to PcPitStop and tweaking that sucker to no avail.

Thanks for the comments, Rubba and Myrd.

Posted: **Wed Jun 23, 2004 7:55 pm**

Resolution of the story:

After a few days, and countless hours spent banging my head against a wall or two, I am now running the P4, with the ethernet card finally cooperating. All of that time and energy became utterly worth it, when I was able to play Myth II at 1600 x 1200 resolution, on a 19 inch flatscreen monitor, and hit 1,000+ FPS. I was unaware that FPS counters could go into 4 digits.

tain.totalcodex.net

Pc horribly screwed up -need clean os advice - Non myth related problem