Voodoo 3dfx..Hardcore problems dudes

Wed Jun 18, 2003 6:08 am by Zog

Okay, this is the biggest duesy that ive ever encountered when trying to play a game on my Dell XPS T 500 computer.Webmasters...please dudes, dont ban this post, i really need help and this is the only place thats provided remedy in the past. I figured this would be the best place for help because the retards over at sierra just give me automated responses, which ive followed to try and solve the problem, and obvously to no avail! First ill give system specs. IM runnin windows 98 with 256 mb-o-ram on a dell p1110 21 inch monitor, oh yeah p3 proccesor. My graphics card is a 3dfx Voodoo 3(16mb)( i know its old, but im poor, and its worked for the game in question HOMEWORLD:CATACLYSM pretty much flawlessley for the past 2 years. This is the problem. When i go to play the game it starts to load up, but when the monitor switches to play the game i get an illegal operation program will be....etc error. Then when i hit close on the error message to return to windows, my monitor (the 21 inch) has set itself, automatically to 640x480.WHY THE HELL IS THIS HAPPENING all of the sudden. Ive never freakin seen anything like this before and ill bet that no one has just my damn luck. Heres the error message copy pasted from the box

CATACLYSM caused an exception 10H in module CATACLYSM.EXE at 0167:0051c628.
Registers:
EAX=000000c4 CS=0167 EIP=0051c628 EFLGS=00010206
EBX=00001388 SS=016f ESP=00ecf304 EBP=00000001
ECX=00000003 DS=016f ESI=0000002d FS=77c7
EDX=04f3f340 ES=016f EDI=00000000 GS=0000
Bytes at CS:EIP:
d9 5c 10 f8 8b 15 38 ae a6 00 0f bf 7a 04 3b cf
Stack dump:
00ecf342 00895bb6 0000000e 00000001 00000000 0051c8e9 001234dc 00000000 00000000
04f40580 6e756f53 5c584664 71657246 636e6575 756c2e79 00000074

Dont know what any of that means but I hope that one of you dudes does, cause i know theres a couple of you guys in these forums that know what your talking about that can help me fix this. Ive followed sierras instructions to change my hardware accelertion from full(which its has always been on anyways without error) to basic which didnt work. I tried a nosddraw line command in the run box , another sollution sierra said would work. And i updated my video card with the latest update from Voodoofiles.com which turned out to be the one i already had installed.WHAT IS UP WITH THIS, i just wanna play my space strat game on-line and my stupid computers screwin me over. Please any help you guys can give is greatly appreciated.
Still Pulling hair out of my head,
A fellow freelancer and avid fan of the lancers reactor

Wed Jun 18, 2003 6:27 am by spacedrive

Looks like a problem with video drivers. Have you checked the official Freelancer site? There may be an issue with old Voodoo cards.

Wed Jun 18, 2003 7:01 am by Zog

Thanks for the suggestion dude, but its not about Freelancer, again webmasters, please spare this post for a little while, i need help. Its with Homeworld Cataclysm

Wed Jun 18, 2003 8:04 am by Chandrasekhar Limit

Did you:

1) Try reverting to the original hardware config (if you added any new pieces of hardware that might have screwed things up)?

2) Checked your BIOS settings to make sure there were no changes that might screw up things like vid card settings or memory timings?

3) Try uninstalling then reinstalling the game?

4) Try reverting to an earlier version of DirectX?

5) Try reverting to an earlier version of your vid card driver?

6) Make sure things on your HD are not going corrupt by running Scandisk?

7) Consider that it might be time to "clean house" and reinstall your OS to get rid of all the crud that has accumulated in the registry and in the Windows directory?

Hope these hints give you some new options to explore.

Wed Jun 18, 2003 8:12 am by Sweeper

Well, I think I know whats the problem.
Have you installed DirectX 9? If so, then you are in deep ****, because the Voodoo drivers don't support it.
You will then have 3 choices.

1: Buy a new budget card like Radeon 9000, GeForce4 MX GeForce FX 5200 I recommend the first.

2: Search for a way to delete DirectX 9 and install DirectX 8.1, should be supported I think.

3: Wait for the Swedish people to release a DirectX 9 patch, currently being worked for a Voodoo 5, but if you find them, ask them nicely to give your card DX9 support.

That is all I can do at the moment, obvously it is a driver issue with your card, I can see that from the memory dumping errors.

Wed Jun 18, 2003 1:36 pm by mustang

Exception errors are really needle in a haystack type stuff, I chase them down a lot at work and it's very rare to find a fix for them unless it's a common problem. In fact I don't know why I even bother half the time.

However Im in agreement with the rest of the guys, it is definately a driver issue and seriously you do need to upgrade your card because even if you solve this problem your bound to have another one soon enough. Unsupported cards make life suck.

Thu Jun 19, 2003 11:56 pm by Zog

Thanks for the advice guys. But i dont understandwhy it would stop working now.Its worked fine wit the same drivers, same video card ,same game, my voodoo even plays FL, With DX9 installed, so whats the prob. Ive reinstalled HWC too. My monitor keeps switching and it seems like the game isnt prepped to handle 640x480 resolution on a 21 inch screen. Or wouldit just black out the area that wasnt neeed> I dunno, im watin for a second response from sierra too, ill see what they say and report back. Thanks again

Sat Jun 21, 2003 2:45 am by mustang

It's near impossible to say why things stop working like that all of a sudden, it could be a piece of spyware that's downloaded onto your system, a virus that screwed with your registry, you may have inadvertantly changed a setting, installed a new program or a thousand other things.

Sat Jun 21, 2003 4:24 am by Setsuna

...But mostly it's because you use Microsuck Windows...

Careful what you wish... You might just get it.

Sat Jun 21, 2003 4:13 pm by Fear Factor

Hey, Windows is not perfect, and Microsoft is definitely not perfect, but without them you'd be operating on Apple OSX

, or whatever OS you can write on your own.

Sun Jun 22, 2003 1:30 am by mustang

XP is almost as stable if not more stable than a lot of Linux installations i've tested. It's unfortunate that it's become cool to bad mouth microsoft because their new products are very good. Their security still needs some work though, I wouldn't be game to open up ports to an MS server on the net.

However those who are adament about running a DOS kernel then feel the need to bad mouth Microsoft are getting exactly what they deserve.

Sun Jun 22, 2003 2:35 am by Setsuna

OK, XP is much more stable then it's predecessors, but it still has some serious glitches/bugs/security holes. It's far from unusable, but it's also far from good. And we all know that Microsoft can do a 50 times better job, they just don't want to (and don't need to), because Bill Ga(y)tes is the Monopoly Guy. If Windows is so good, then why does, say, IBM ASCII Blue (and White) use Unix? So do all the "serious", important servers. The secret of Windows' success lies in games...
I just hope that this will change soon...

Sun Jun 22, 2003 12:37 pm by Fear Factor

I think it's because XP is more PC-oriented, for "common folk" use. Let's face it, it is much too versatile with pretty interface and all. Servers are best adviced to operate on more specialized OS. It's just the matter of using the right tool for the right job.

And as for Windows could be 50x better, well, it is true. But then there's this thing called economic reality. Analogy: Airlines should provide parachutes for its passengers for safety reasons. I know I'd be glad if they did. But I wouldn't be glad if they charged me 10x the price of the ticket for the additional parachute. It's the matter of balance between performance and affordability.

Sun Jun 22, 2003 2:55 pm by mustang

If Windows is so good, then why does, say, IBM ASCII Blue (and White) use Unix?

Horses for courses, would you put a Unix box in front of the guys in sales?

Unix kicks ass when it comes to crunching numbers but no-one in thier right mind would use it for desktop or even low level server use. It just isn't viable as Unix is designed to wholely and souly run background server applications and daemons and some high level crap that you and I will never see. But you can't view an mpeg or even a jpeg with unix, if memory serves there is a Unix app that'll let you do text based web browsing but that's about it.

Im not saying that XP is the greatest thing since sliced bread but it's the best desktop os available at the moment. Red Hat 9.0 is pretty good but I still prefer XP.

Sun Jun 22, 2003 3:55 pm by Setsuna

Partial credits.

My point is, as it stands, Windows XP is the bets overall choice. But the fact is that this choice is a forced one. What if people started making games and quality utility software for Unix? Or Linux? (I mean there are good progs for Linux, but the tech support is catastrophic...) Alas, that is not a very likely scenario, since Microsoft isn't going to give up their monoploistic ways... They improve their software every 7 years, they pay everyone to make & optimize their products for use with Windows, they intentionally leave security holes in their OS/software... That's why I badmouth the Redmond Giant.

Important Message

You are browsing the archived Lancers Reactor forums. You cannot register or login.
The content may be outdated and links may not be functional.

To get the latest in Freelancer news, mods, modding and downloads, go to
The-Starport