Please Help

Mary wrote:

Hi Gary:

"GTX_SlotCar" wrote in message
...
Mary, your card could be a Sapphire. My Sapphire 9800 Pro has no Sapphire
markings on it, only ATI. It's ATI OEM, meant for a computer
manufacturer,
but sold in bulk to places like newegg.com as well. So if you bought a new
Gateway computer, for example, and ordered it with a 'Built By ATI' card,
it
would be this Sapphire card that is actually installed.

Yes, I knew what OEM was, and thats definitely what I bought because their
web page said OEM and its just in a static bag with a CD and you get a year
warranty with the card because its OEM, but thats with the store. If its
retail, you get two years with Ati, so the store guy told me.
I notice that now ATI seems to have "partners" which they list on ATI site,
and Sapphire seems to be the main one and from what I heard is good, though
maybe others are just as good. ATI still make their own cards though and
list them for sale on their site - expensive though. I wouldn't buy one
there. From what I learned , Sapphire makes the cards and ATI makes the
chipsets. I thought Sapphire video cards were pink boards? at least all the
ones I've seen ads for have been like that.

The part # is listed
on the ATI site as a Built-By ATI card.

I have a part number on my card, would I be able to find it on the ATI site
if the card and the chipset were both made by ATI?
Not that it really matters as long as the card works, but just for
curiosity, I wonder how I could find out if I have a Sapphire card?

When sold in bulk to retailers (or
distributors), it must be marketed as a Sapphire product (of course, since
that's what it is) so they include a driver cd with a Sapphire label.
However, they are not required to change the "built by ATI" label on the
card.

It may very well be a Sapphire card. But the card itself is dark green same
as ATI brand cards and same as my previous ATI card. It has a part number
and serial number on the front of the card, and just a white sticker on the
back saying its a 9000 Pro. The guy in the store said it was an ATI card and
they have Sapphire cards in the store, but they are pink cards, so they
stand
out as being different from Sapphire cards. The card I got has an ATI red
sticker on it, but thats just a sticker. The store guy said they are OEM
cards they got in bulk so they don't always get an Ati card, so I presume
all he had was a Sapphire CD but he said that would be ok to install my
card. Do all Radeon cards use the same install CD, no matter which model of
Radeon?

As far as I know, ATI still makes some of their own retail cards.

Yes, they sell Retail ATI video cards in boxes in Staples and Future shop
and Best Buy and other computer stores here (I'm in Toronto,Canada). And in
the store I bought mine, which is a smaller store, but in higher end cards,
they seem to mostly have Retail Sapphire boxes and a couple of lower end
Retail ATI cards (Radeon 7500). As far as I know, ATI used to make all
their own cards and chipsets. Its not long ago that I heard of Sapphire
cards with Ati chipsets.
Asus, Connection and even Gigabyte seem to make ATI video boards now.

The drivers on your cd should work fine, but it doesn't really matter
whether you use those or the ones you downloaded. I just thought it would
be
easier for you to use the ones on the cd.

Well, as I mentioned in my message I just posted to JLC, I finally got the
problem solved. He thought from the start it was an old drivers problem and
it was. I never realized how important it was to delete old drivers. I
thought all of them were already deleted when I took my ATI Rage 128 card
out. I just used the drivers I got from the ATI site, but maybe the CD would
have worked just as well when I got rid of the old cards drivers.

Since you've been getting a lot of error messages and swapping a lot of
video drivers, you might want to run check disk. In Win98 I think it's
under
'tools' when you right-click your C drive. If there is a corrupted file,
nothing else you do will work, so run it before trying anything else.

Do you mean Scandisk? I usually run it from start/programs, but comes to the
same thing - whatever you get used to. I sometimes go the long way about
things only because I am so used to it. So Yes, I have been running Scandisk
all along for the reasons you mention above. Its very important and I use it
frequently.

Now that I have my card going ok (so far). (I am skeptical about new parts
till they have proven themselves to me) I can't get my American McGee's
Alice game to run , though it ran fine with my ATI Xpert 2000. I copied and
pasted my problem in my message to JLC - it seems to do with Open GL which I
know nothing about. I notice in the video card settings that you can put a
dot either in 3D or one in Open GL, but not both, but I have no idea where
you would put the dot.

Thanks for the information Gary. It would be interesting to know if I have a
Sapphire card or brand ATI card.

Mary

AIW cards use a different cd, and possibly some of the newer 9800xt
cards. The radeon display drivers (CAT XXX)themselves work and are the
same across the whole radeon product line.

Mary wrote:

"JLC" wrote in message
news:M1d0c.145364$uV3.679780@attbi_s51...

"Mary" wrote in message
able.rogers.com...
"JLC" wrote in message
news:EWW%b.75142$4o.100215@attbi_s52...

but with his name attached. JLC

Haha - this is funny. I can see why you were confused. I didn't really
want
to use Mary for a reason on that NG, so I used Gary. I replied to you
over
there and said I was Mary, then I had second thoughts and cancelled the
message. I thought someone there might know why I had a problem with
Open
GL.
BTW, are you male? Just wondered.

Mary Mary Mary! You really had me going! And yes I'm a 42 years old male.
JLC

Hi JLC -

Well, I felt forced to "come clean" last night when you posted that message
on the action NG so you wouldn't be confused any more, but you "blew my
cover" -hehe. But thats ok. someone over there wrote to me today with
another couple of suggestions. Maybe they were confused too so I didn't put
any signature. Oh well, as long as someone tries to help, it doesn't matter
who the helpee is - I just thought it was kind of funny. And the message
never did get cancelled, so in the other NG they probably think I'm some
troll.

I am still struggling tonight with the same problems. I still get those two
errors from DirectX and I was thinking that I can either install DX 9.0a
again which is what I have installed at the moment.The one error is Direct
3d has a problem and so does Direct play.
Or I can download DX 9.0b and see if that will help. I might try the DX 9.0
uninstaller from majorgeek site you referred me to (for the glsetup file
that I can't get to work).

Maybe Open GL won't work in Alice till I get DirectX to work properly and
right now it isn't. I tried Sandra and wondering if it works ok. It seemed
to say that all the features of my card are not working. Something is
wrong, but what.
And I don't have a 3dfx card. I told a computer friend about that and she
plays a lot of games - mostly adventure games, and she was saying that the
message in Alice referring to 3dfx is probably the game putting in there and
assuming that is what I am using because maybe the game has issues with 3dfx
cards.

By the way, I downloaded that glsetup.com that you gave me in the
tinyurl.com and when I click on it, it says its a beta version use at your
own risk kind of thing and says to go to their web site for the latest
drivers, and when I clicked on the part that said "go to website" or
whatever it says, a blue blank screen comes out - sheesh! what is it with
those corrupted commands and files that don't work.
Patrick on this NG mentioned to me today to get a registry cleaner called
jv16v1.2 which used to be free, but now is not, so I did a search on google
and downloaded a zip file and in the zip file, there is only one .exe file
and I clicked on that, and it said "no languages available" - another dead
end file. So I am not getting anywhere fast.

Do you think there is a chance that there is a problem with the card itself?
or do you think my problems are all software related?

Mary

Mary
I'll give you one piece of advice, and only once, get the cleaner I
suggested, read the instructions, uninstall EVERYTHING ATI except the
video drivers via control panel reboot after each uninstall, run the
cleaner and reinstall your video card and its drivers.
Do not install directx9.0a its borked get 9.0b or reinstall 9.0b

do not use the registry cleaner recommended above, if you let it run auto
you may have probs, you have to supervise the entrys it thinks are
irrelavant.

Gordon

"Gordon Scott" wrote in message
...
Mary wrote:

By the way, I downloaded that glsetup.com that you gave me in the
tinyurl.com and when I click on it, it says its a beta version use at
your
own risk kind of thing and says to go to their web site for the latest
drivers, and when I clicked on the part that said "go to website" or
whatever it says, a blue blank screen comes out - sheesh! what is it
with
those corrupted commands and files that don't work.
Patrick on this NG mentioned to me today to get a registry cleaner
called
jv16v1.2 which used to be free, but now is not, so I did a search on
google
and downloaded a zip file and in the zip file, there is only one .exe
file
and I clicked on that, and it said "no languages available" - another
dead
end file. So I am not getting anywhere fast.

Do you think there is a chance that there is a problem with the card
itself?
or do you think my problems are all software related?

Mary

Mary
I'll give you one piece of advice, and only once, get the cleaner I
suggested, read the instructions, uninstall EVERYTHING ATI except the
video drivers via control panel reboot after each uninstall, run the
cleaner and reinstall your video card and its drivers.

Different people suggested cleaners. Do you mean the Driverheaven site you
gave me?
I just downloaded it, but if I uninstall Catalyst 4.2 and put it back, it
might be the same because I now have Direct X 9.0b and it doesn't support
Win 98SE looks like.

Do not install directx9.0a its borked get 9.0b or reinstall 9.0b

I installed DirectX 9.0b tonight (I had 9.0a Catalyst drivers for my 9000
pro from the ATI site), and this time I don't get the two pop up error
messages about problems with Direct 3D and Direct Play, BUT, there are other
problems. Direct X 9.0b doesn't seem to support Windows 98 SE which is what
I am using.
Under the Display tab area, Direct Draw Accelerator, Direct 3D accelerator
and AGP texture are all not available and they should all be Enabled. Even
standard VGA drivers have two of these enabled.
At the bottom of the Display page, it says:
"The file ATI2dRag.drv is not digitally signed which means it has not been
tested by Windows Quality Labs. urrent drivers tested for WHQL logo are only
available for Windows ME, Windows 2000 and Windows XP. New Windows 98
drivers are no longer tested for WHQL logos. Direct Draw tests were
successful. Direct 3D functionallity not available. You should verify that
the driver is a final version from hardware manufacturer. "
So now, what do I do about that? Maybe I should install earlier Catalyst
drivers that are not the latest ones. The latest ones don't fix the problem
of Open GL. I still don't have it and it should work. It is required for
some games.

do not use the registry cleaner recommended above, if you let it run auto
you may have probs, you have to supervise the entrys it thinks are
irrelavant.

Mary

"Gordon Scott" wrote in message
...

When sold in bulk to retailers (or
distributors), it must be marketed as a Sapphire product (of course,
since
that's what it is) so they include a driver cd with a Sapphire
label.
However, they are not required to change the "built by ATI" label on
the
card.

Mary wrote:

Now that I have my card going ok (so far). (I am skeptical about new
parts
till they have proven themselves to me) I can't get my American McGee's
Alice game to run , though it ran fine with my ATI Xpert 2000. I copied
and
pasted my problem in my message to JLC - it seems to do with Open GL
which I
know nothing about. I notice in the video card settings that you can put
a
dot either in 3D or one in Open GL, but not both, but I have no idea
where
you would put the dot.

Thanks for the information Gary. It would be interesting to know if I
have a
Sapphire card or brand ATI card.

Mary

AIW cards use a different cd, and possibly some of the newer 9800xt
cards. The radeon display drivers (CAT XXX)themselves work and are the
same across the whole radeon product line.

So you can use the same CD for all Radeons?
As far as what card I have, somebody asked if I had a fan on my card and I
said yes, and they said it was an ATI built card as they have fans on them -
do Sapphires not have fans on their cards? Its surprising that it doesn't
say anywhere on the card what make the card actually is. It has a part
number.

Mary

"Mary" wrote in message
le.rogers.com...
"patrickp" - take five to email me wrote in
message ...


snip


I use Win 98SE and don't use PAL. I am in Region 1 so don't have PAL.
I looked for ages last night for DX 9.0a and when you do a search it comes
up with all kinds of DX9 stuff like Updates, Software Developer Kit,
Runtime, Tuner fix. I even found DX 8.0 which seems to be the entire
program
for win 98, but I never found DX 9.0, except for DX 9.0b. But when I think
of it, DX 9.0 is in the drivers I downloaded from ATI for the 9000 Pro
card
which I have. So should I reinstall it again.? It will be on top of the DX
9.0 I already have installed, as MS don't let you uninstall any DX's.


That's cool, Mary, I use W98SE myself, still. If you're not in a PAL area,
you don't need to worry about DX 9.0b, you won't have any problems.
However, DX 9.0 is _not_ included in any of the ATI drivers available for
download. If you go to update to DX 9.0b, you'll see that you can just
download what your system needs to bring it up to DX 9.0b - usually 10MB+.
The full DX 9.0b redistributable, though, which is what would be needed if
it were included with anything else- like the ATI driver set - is about
36MB - a little larger than the ATI driver set, in fact! What you've
probably read on the ATI download site is that the current ATI drivers
_require_ DX 9 to be already installed. :-) However, if you have an ATI
install CD with Catalyst 3 or 4 drivers and MMC 8.x, that should have DX 9.X
on it, although not necessarily 9.0b


snip

I'll see if I can find it. Is it called "jv16v 1.2" ? I'll do a search and
see if I can find it. and maybe find driver cleaner as well.


Look for jv16 Power Tools, or Reg Cleaner. if you go for Reg Cleaner, look
for a mention that it's part of jv16 Power Tools - there are other things
(like MS' RegClean) it can be confused with. When you find jv16, look for
the version number - 1.2 is the highest version you can use as freeware now;
I was using v 1.3, but it stopped working at the end of last year :-(.
Other lower version numbers will probably be Ok, but 1.2 is the best one to
look for.


Many companies' uninstall routines are quite inadequate - video card
drivers
being notorious for this - and leave a lot of stuff on your system that
MS'
RegClean (as opposed to jv16 RegCleaner ;-)) won't remove, and, of
course,
if you don't ininstall properly (as JLC pointed out) a whole slew of
stuff
stays in your registry and can cause severe systemic problems.

It caused me a lot of problems all right with these old drivers.

There are also specific driver cleaners: ATI, for instance, do their own
cat-uninstaller, which seems very effective, and for NVidia there's
Detonator Destroyer, although I'm not sure whether it's actually
produced
by
NVidia or how effective it is.

I am not sure that a cleaner is what I need now. I got the ATI drivers
installed, and DX 9.0 was part of the drivers which also installed, but
when
I run DX 9, it comes up with two error messages, one is Problem with
Direct
3D and other is problem Direct play. Thats why JLP said to reinstall DX
9.0.

If you've had a different card on your machine before, you should have
uninstalled its software and drivers before removing it. That should
forestall any problems but, unfortunately, as I mentioned before, a lot of
videocard companies have woefully inadequate uninstall routines.

Does sound to me, though, like your problem is with your DX version, or with
your card drivers not being properly installed, which may, again, be down to
a DX problem. Alice, AIR, is only a DX 7.0 game, so your version's unlikely
to be an issue with the game; either your DX installation is messed up
(which upgrading to DX 9.x should fix) or your card driver installation has
a problem because you didn't have DX 9.x when you installed it (see above;
DX 9.x is not included in any ATI driver installation except on recent
CDs.).


The other problem is I can't run a game I was in the middle of before I
got
my new motherboard and CPU and video card. Its American McGee's Alice. I
don';t know if you have played it or not. But when I try to run it, it
comes
up with error messages about Open GL is not working properly. On ATI site,
it mentions that games that use Quake engine can have a problem with Open
GL
if they have an ATI Radeon with dual monitors and says to disable the
Secondary monitor in ATI/display area. It looks like the secondary monitor
is disabled there as it has a big red X through the middle.And in device
manager, Secondary monitor is disabled. I uninstalled Alice game and
reinstalled it by the way and I don't know if you know what this means,
but
this is the error message I get every time I try to start the game. I
tried
another game which doesn't use Open GL and it seemed to be ok.

Config: config.cfg
execing default.cfg
couldn't exec menu.cfg
couldn't exec config.cfg
couldn't exec localized.cfg
couldn't exec autoexec.cfg
...detecting CPU, found AMD w/ 3DNow!

------- Input Initialization -------
Initializing DirectInput...
Couldn't set DI coop level
Falling back to Win32 mouse support...
Joystick is not active.
------------------------------------
----- Client Initialization -----
----- Initializing Renderer ----
----- R_Init -----
Initializing OpenGL subsystem
...initializing QGL
...calling LoadLibrary( 'C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\opengl32.dll' ): succeeded
...setting mode 3: 640 480 FS
...using colorsbits of 16
...calling CDS: ok
...registered window class
...created window@0,0 (640x480)
Initializing OpenGL driver
...getting DC: succeeded
...GLW_ChoosePFD( 16, 16, 0 )
...-1 PFDs found
...GLW_ChoosePFD failed
...GLW_ChoosePFD( 8, 16, 0 )
...-1 PFDs found
...GLW_ChoosePFD failed
...failed to find an appropriate PIXELFORMAT
...restoring display settings
...WARNING: could not set the given mode (3)
...shutting down QGL
...unloading OpenGL DLL
...assuming '3dfxvgl' is a standalone driver
...initializing QGL
...WARNING: missing Glide installation, assuming no 3Dfx available
...shutting down QGL
----- CL_Shutdown -----
-----------------------
GLW_StartOpenGL() - could not load OpenGL subsystem

JLC asked me if I ever had a Voodoo video card since it mentions about
3dfx
above, but I never had one. The message definitely means there is a
problem
with Open GL, but I am not sure what it means by 3Dfx.
I only hope that these problems are software related and not something
wrong
with the card itself. I want to solve the Open GL problem, so I can go
back
to my game. JLC gave me a site to go to last night to get an Open GL test,
but I haven't gotten to that yet. Ive been kind of busy today and need a
break from computers.


Does sound like it thinks there's some element of a 3Dfx driver there, and
an OGL test might well be a good idea.

Did you install the appropriate chipset drivers for your new mobo before
installing the videocard drivers? Might seem obvious, but a lot of people
forget! The recommended order for setting up a new system is chipset
drivers DX videocard drivers - that's without other cards installed.
Then add and install the other cards one at a time.

That brings up another point - did you try to transfer your previous Windows
installation to your new mobo/CPU/videocard system? If you did, then that's
a very likely cause of the problem, and will be of many more to come. You
should always re-install your OS anew when upgrading your system like that:
old stuff from your previous installation will always mess things up. It's
a good idea if you're going to need to reinstall Windows completely to add
another hard drive or partition your current one, so you can put everything
you want to keep on the other drive/partition - that can include emails,
game saves, etc - I always move my My Documents folder to a non OS partition
as soon as I've reinstalled the OS, too. Then you can format the OS
drive/partition and reinstall.

If you did reinstall properly, though, I think that what you need to do is
uninstall your ATI card software (if any) and drivers, upgrade to DX 9.0b,
then reinstall the card drivers. What will happen when you uninstall the
ATI drivers is that Windows will revert to the default standard Windows
driver - it'll look horrible, because you'll be stuck on 640 x 480
resolution and 256 colours, but it'll be useable if you don't have a handy
version of DX 9.0b and have to go to the MS site to do a web install. If
you've got a fast connection and a bit of drive space, though, you could
download the full redistributable (just scroll down the page and look for
the link on the M$ DX download page) so you've got it handy to install when
you've uninstalled the ATI drivers. It's a two-part install: first you have
to unpack it (it'll unpack to your WINDOWS\TEMP directory by default,
although you can have it unpack somewhere else), then go to where you
unpacked it and run dxsetup.exe. That should clear the problem; if not,
then at least you know you have your card drivers properly installed.


Mary


HTH patrickp

"Mary" wrote in message
able.rogers.com...
"Gordon Scott" wrote in message
...

snip


AIW cards use a different cd, and possibly some of the newer 9800xt
cards. The radeon display drivers (CAT XXX)themselves work and are the
same across the whole radeon product line.

So you can use the same CD for all Radeons?
As far as what card I have, somebody asked if I had a fan on my card and I
said yes, and they said it was an ATI built card as they have fans on
them -
do Sapphires not have fans on their cards? Its surprising that it doesn't
say anywhere on the card what make the card actually is. It has a part
number.

Mary


Most OEM Radeon cards do have some optimisation of the ATI Catalyst drivers
for that card, Mary, and some can't even run ATI's MMC software at all.
However, they can all run the Catalyst drivers. AFAIK Sapphire use pretty
much the same - or even exactly the same - drivers as ATI's own, but
nevertheless, the guy should have given you an ATI CD with an ATI card.

I believe if you make a note of your card's serial number, there's a section
of ATI's site where you can check who it's made by. The bit about the fans
is nonsense, though - some of the OEMs have better fans than ATI!

patrickp

"Mary" wrote in message
able.rogers.com...
"Gordon Scott" wrote in message
...
Mary wrote:

By the way, I downloaded that glsetup.com that you gave me in the
tinyurl.com and when I click on it, it says its a beta version use at
your
own risk kind of thing and says to go to their web site for the latest
drivers, and when I clicked on the part that said "go to website" or
whatever it says, a blue blank screen comes out - sheesh! what is it
with
those corrupted commands and files that don't work.
Patrick on this NG mentioned to me today to get a registry cleaner
called
jv16v1.2 which used to be free, but now is not, so I did a search on
google
and downloaded a zip file and in the zip file, there is only one .exe
file
and I clicked on that, and it said "no languages available" - another
dead
end file. So I am not getting anywhere fast.

Do you think there is a chance that there is a problem with the card
itself?
or do you think my problems are all software related?

Mary

Mary
I'll give you one piece of advice, and only once, get the cleaner I
suggested, read the instructions, uninstall EVERYTHING ATI except the
video drivers via control panel reboot after each uninstall, run the
cleaner and reinstall your video card and its drivers.

Different people suggested cleaners. Do you mean the Driverheaven site you
gave me?
I just downloaded it, but if I uninstall Catalyst 4.2 and put it back, it
might be the same because I now have Direct X 9.0b and it doesn't support
Win 98SE looks like.

Do not install directx9.0a its borked get 9.0b or reinstall 9.0b

I installed DirectX 9.0b tonight (I had 9.0a Catalyst drivers for my 9000
pro from the ATI site), and this time I don't get the two pop up error
messages about problems with Direct 3D and Direct Play, BUT, there are
other
problems. Direct X 9.0b doesn't seem to support Windows 98 SE which is
what
I am using.
Under the Display tab area, Direct Draw Accelerator, Direct 3D accelerator
and AGP texture are all not available and they should all be Enabled. Even
standard VGA drivers have two of these enabled.
At the bottom of the Display page, it says:
"The file ATI2dRag.drv is not digitally signed which means it has not been
tested by Windows Quality Labs. urrent drivers tested for WHQL logo are
only
available for Windows ME, Windows 2000 and Windows XP. New Windows 98
drivers are no longer tested for WHQL logos. Direct Draw tests were
successful. Direct 3D functionallity not available. You should verify that
the driver is a final version from hardware manufacturer. "
So now, what do I do about that? Maybe I should install earlier Catalyst
drivers that are not the latest ones. The latest ones don't fix the
problem
of Open GL. I still don't have it and it should work. It is required for
some games.

do not use the registry cleaner recommended above, if you let it run
auto
you may have probs, you have to supervise the entrys it thinks are
irrelavant.

Mary


Mary, DX 9.0b most certainly _does_ support W98SE - I use that OS, too, and
I've been using DX 9.0b since it came out, over a year ago.

In addition, it's up to you what driver cleaner you use - I've never used
the DriverHeaven one, so I don't know what it's like. I'm not quite sure
what Gordon is talking about - jv16 Power Tools has no "auto" mode. But the
whole point of it _is_ that you "supervise the entries;" i.e. you can see
what entries are on your system and decide what to remove. It also has an
excellent backup in case you do remove something you shouldn't have.

patrickp