Slow shutdown after installing latest X-Fi and 7900 GTX drivers.

Hello,

I was playing the closed and open beta of Company of Heroes Online and I
decided to install new drivers for the soundcard and videocard in my
computer to be fully up-to-date and maybe it would give some more
performance.

The drivers installed a

1. SBXF_PCDRV_LB_2_18_0013.exe
2. 258.96_desktop_winxp_64bit_english_whql.exe

As expected it caused problems... it's rare not to get problems these days.

The symtomps are as follows:

1. Windows shutdown takes very long.
2. First the GUI does nothing except shutdown a few tray icons.
3. It stops with the connection icon which is still displayed and any other
icons after that.
4. After a minute or so it goes to the shutdown screen and shows something
like:
5. Closing connections.
6. Saving profile settings.

All of which take multiple minutes to complete.

Any other activity I have done is defrag both harddrives a little bit...
other problems with the operating system are a corrupted account/profile...
windows update needs another account but it never had the slow shutdown
problem. Even with high fragmentation (33% to 56%) it would still shutdown
fast.

Now there is no harddisk activity... and it just seems to twiddle it thumbs
and do nothing for a while.

I don't like it and I want it fixed.

I already tried:

1. Disabling the Nvidia tray icon in msconfig.
2. Disabling the nvidia display driver service.

None of which helped so far.

Perhaps I will need to deinstall one of the drivers and install an old one
to see if that helps.

Question is which driver would be responsible for slow shutdown... it's
difficult to diagnose...

Are there any windows xp tools/help options to see a shutdown log ?

Bye,
Skybuck.

The manual of the nvidia driver said to deinstall NTune... there is indeed
an older version of NTune on my harddrive.

At the time I tried to deinstall it... but no deinstall program available
?!?

Now I come across this message on a nvidia forum which mentions NTune in
connection with a slow shutdown:

http://forums.nvidia.com/lofiversion...hp?t28221.html

I also tested X-Fi drivers with 4 GB of RAM.

I think the youtube music video's sounded a bit noisy/crackling... just
slightly... so I switched back to MaxMem = 2GB option.

Bye,
Skybuck.

I did a little bit of experimenting myself with accounts... I used a
different account to login/startup and shutdown and the same problem occurs.

So it's not related to windows account/profile problems.

It's quite an annoying problem which already has led to too many resets for
my taste...

I want the problem solved so now I am going to try and remove the nvida
display driver to see if that is indeed the cause of the shutdown problem.

Bye,
Skybuck.

First however I am going to delete the ntune files to see what happens... if
they are in used I should get a lock/access violation...

Bye,
Skybuck.

Also the ntune and nvidia drivers dissappoint me big time... I was hoping
that temperature information was available like in the very old drivers...

However I have found another tool which does show temperature... just one
tiny little sensor and reading but it's better than nothing the tool is
called
GPU-Z instead of CPU-Z

So now I am going to delete NTUNE and if nothing happens then I remove
NVIDIA display driver as well and simply boot in 640x480 and shutdown in it
to see what happens

Bye,
Skybuck.

NVidia Display Driver removed.

The problem remains.

I was kinda hoping that it was the display driver.

Other possible causes which are on my mind:

1. X-Fi Soundblaster Driver. (I am going to remove that next)
2. .NET Framework 4.0 which was installed by Company of Heroes Online.
3. Modifications to DirectX9 by Company of Heroes Online.

When 2 and 3 happened I kinda had a bad feeling about it... Same with 1 as
well.

Hopefully it's not 2 and 3... I am used to 1 being buggy but please not 2
and 3...
that's just to much ****.

Bye,
Skybuck.

Something interesting happened while trying to deinstall the x-fi audio
driver.

It said something like:

"Cannot stop the X-Fi..."

Then it tried to restart and hang again and I pressed the reset button...
for the 15 time
or so.. I have better things to do with my life than wait for a ****ty
computer to shutdown...
like sleep.

If all went well which it didn't then now the computer should shut down
fast... but I doubt it..

Let's try anyway.

Bye,
Skybuck.

I think I have identified the problem.

The problem is indeed with the X-Fi soundblaster driver which I kinda
expected it to be...

Others have warned for laggy sound issue's with that driver... but I have
not seen shutdown
problems being mentioned... well it's probably real... or it was a lucky
shutdown... but I don't
think so it was lightning fast shutdown with the x-fi audio driver.

So now I will go back to my previous X-Fi soundblaster driver which was
probably this version:

SBXF_PCDRV_LB_2_18_0008.exe

Or either an even older one:

SBXF_PCDRV_LB_2_15_0006.exe

Me gonna try the 0008 one...

Good thing I kept these drivers... Since I just cleaned my system a
bit... I think I did
delete something related to drivers... but maybe not...

NVidia also constantly changes installation folders and doesn't have a
custom installation folder
neither does creative... well at least with nvidia I knew which was the
older driver cause the files
stay there or something... at least the unpacked files or something...

With creative I am not sure...

So a little bit more experimentation to come. I am probably close to a
solution.

At least I can probably use the newer display drivers

Bye,
Skybuck.

Ok,

I think the problem is now solved... and I am pretty glad/happy that I
solved this problem... because it was starting to annoy the **** out of me !


NVidia driver back installed...

Older X-Fi driver installed...

It's kinda interesting how the older X-Fi driver did preserve my x-fi
equalizer profiles and how the newer driver seemed to delete it..

So the newer driver is bad in many ways !

Now I have to go find myself a good defragging program or simply use
windows's defrag... because this slow harddisk/file system is slowly also
getting on my tits... and it really needs a defrag... 33% to 56%
fragmented... yeah I would say it needs a defrag...

This will also make my system run faster and ofcourse load COH faster...
since especially COH was fragmented badly... 16.000 fragments just for the
data file hehe.

But but but but but I shouldn't be so hasty... and first do a check disk on
C: and D: because ofcourse I don't want no defragging to take place if the
file system was hit but the memory corruption I had a long time ago... or if
anything else happened to it... especially since all these resets...

So a check disk seems more than wise... and then I shall see if I can find a
nice optimization defragging utility... hopefully without nasty bugs...

And then I'll give my harddisk the long defrag treat... which will probably
take at least 24 hours maybe even up to a week...

I did delete some stuff... 50 GB on each drive... but window's defrag says
it's not really enough... but it could run... but it's kinda strange.. it
wants 15% free... that's a bit much Mr. Defrag !

Man I had to delete my Reptile video's and my Predator vs the iJustine
video's that kinda sucked but I had no choice... I had to give my harddisk
and mr defrag some space to eat and work with... and I rarely used that
stuff anymore and it's just bull****... **** the bull****... I need a fast
system !

And I also delete some old movies... like battlestar raptor and razor and
what not... and ofcourse theeeeee euhm gladiator thing... sparta or
something.. I still had those hehe... and some games install files like
quake4... and stuff like that... quake4 install files were fragmented too..

Let me check.. nonono don't worry the game is still on my drive... I don't
like Quake4... but I do like Quake3... but I feel Quake4 is mandatory in
case I ever want to install some new special mod that ever comes ya never
know ?! LOL what a bull**** reason perhaps ?!? Maybe not... time will
tell..

I have seen it happen with RTCW ET/True Combat Elite ! That was a pretty
cool/sweet mod... I wouldn't wanna miss out on something that cool

But I doubt the plastic like graphics engine of Quake4 will ever have such a
thing ! Hihi

By the way... I did see an interesting youtube video today it was called:
"MineCraft"...

It looked ****ing cool/awesome... the graphics like really old school...
which took my attention... like what is this ****.. I gotta check it out...

It was almost like quake pixelized big zoom pixels you know...

And it turns out it's some kind of mining game... where you can walk around
with an axe and cut yourself into the depths... like stones/boxes
representing
the earth...

I think the concept is pretty ****ing cool... especially if some quake sauce
is added to the mix...

I am not sure if it's a boring game just ment to construct mines... or if
your supposed to kill one and another... but that last would be preferred !


LOL.

None the less I gotta check it out and play it a bit I think... I wanna
place my own torches too ! HIHI =D

And play with the flooding water or flooding lava ?!?!? I am not sure what
that's about but sounds kinda exciting...

And my grand daddy was a miner... so gotta show him some respect and do it
myself too... virtually LOL.

So I don't get dirty ! Eat that grandpa ! LOL.

And now you can all go **** off in hell ! YEAH ! =D

Cause I gotta go now do some awesome stuff like usual !

Byebyebyebybybybbbbbbbye bye,
Skybuck.

P.S.: Company of Heroes Online is pretty sweet... but also highly
addictive... so watch yourself there people ! But I got it under
control... after
two weeks of non stop playing or so ! Man it ****ing wrecked my life for a
short period there ! Fricking unbelievable... but it was nice...

Like a big group orgy ! HAHAHAHAHA. Dirty ****er ! LOL.

Hmm, changing audio drivers for X-Fi like that is apperently not without
consequences.

During the installation of the older driver it askes if I wanted to
overwrite newer driver files and I said yes.

Now I boot twice and each time the following error message is displayed:

"
EAXModule: DLLML.exe Application Error

The exception unknown software exception (0xC0000005) occured in the
application at location 0x73ed2659.

Click on OK to terminate the program
"

I used to get this error message when I shutdown the system... but now it
pops up when I boot the system...

Weird...

Oh well later I will have to test the sound to see if it's still working or
not...

I don't think I got this message right after driver installation and boot so
it's kinda weird...

Maybe bad fluck of luck or so... or maybe it's because I changed settings in
x-fi console... hmm..

Bye,
Skybuck.