Windows XP and Diablo 2

[policetow]

I have noticed a massive increase in the framerate and overall playability in Diablo 2 since upgrading from Win98SE to XP. All of the crashes I was suffering playing SiC have disappeared. My thoughts on this is that the crashes we have all suffered at one point or another with D2 SiC are related more to the OS instead of the mod.

Here is my current puter config:

AMD Duron 950
256 meg PC100 ram
Nvidia GeForce2 MX400 AGP
Soundblaster 16 PCI
Windows XP Home

Let me know your thoughts :>-O

[jbouley]

I wouldn't be surprised if OS problems were responsible for many crashes.

Although, all things considered, most crashes seemed to go away recently...especially for anyone who downloaded by 1.09b .dll files and used those (at least the d2game.dll) when playing my mod.

[Ashurbanipal]

Thought I would mention that I've been playing the mod prior to 1.09 on W2K; only one member of our adventuring party isn't on W2k, and instead uses 98 SE -- and we've never experienced crashes...

Cheers,

[jbouley]

By the way, Ashurbanipal, geocities doesn't allow image-linking, which is why your avatar isn't showing up.

I've been told that if you change the extension from .gif to .txt you can "fool" geocities to allow linking, but I'm not sure that works.

Better yet, check out www.boomspeed.com

Lots of people here host their images there...it's a site devoted just to hosting userimages/avatars I think.

[policetow]

Adventuring GROUP??!? Where can I sign up??!?

[Ashurbanipal]

Yeah! Three or people regularly, but with many complaints of too many people striking out on their own! How's that for adventuring party + cooperation?

And I've tried several different locations for the avatar, sometimes it appears on my end and sometimes it didn't -- since a version appeared under profile, I thought I was fine... guess not. Thanks for the heads up.

[policetow]

Last night I suddenly started having multiple CTD's, and blue screens of death...I was ready to cry, cause I lost two VERY nice uniques of Jeff's making...Thought I might have to come here and tell Jeff I was wrong, XP hates SiC. Then after a little Reading into Windoze XP, I found out what the problem was. Windoze XP, no matter what game, no matter what graphics card insists on rendering ALL games at 60 mhz. I blinked several times, mouth wide open. Last time I could remember 60mhz being a GOOD refresh rate was when I bought my first (and last!) EGA monitor. There is a solution for owners of Nvidia cards, however! Go to www.digit-life.com and download a tool called RivaTuner. RivaTuner fixes this "feature" of WinXP and sets the monitor to optimal (meaning maximum) refresh, which is a standard part of All Win packages since 95 all the way to Me. Microsoft decided to eliminate this feature in Xp for whatever reason. Hope this helps some of ya'll who might be frustrated with XP in general.

[Myhrginoc]

For whatever reason, Windows XP does default to 60Hz (not 60MHz) out of the box, but you don't need to download any utility to change it. Right-click on the desktop, choose Settings tab, then Advanced button. Go to Monitor and there is your selection dropdown. There is no "optimal" in the list, but if you leave the "show supported modes" checkbox marked, you can pick the highest visible setting and then see if it works right.

In Windows 98, that function is on the Adapter tab, and does include Optimal as a setting.

It is annoying when things like this change, but for once Microsoft was changing as an improvement, since refresh limitations are due primarily to the monitor, not the adapter.

[policetow]

You can do that, however as soon as you switch from a 2D desktop type application to a 3D game, the monitor's refresh rate is set to 60hz (I was reading on overclocking my GeForce right before writing here, so that is where the mHz came from ). I will relook up the relevant posts on the various sites I haunt and post links to em so you can read it yourself.

[jbouley]

Gotta love Microsoft, eh?

[policetow]

Gee, Jeff, remember, Bill Gates is the guy who said 640k ram should be enough for anyone . I have a single link for you all to check out that describes this particular thing with XP. To check it out go to http://www.xp-refresh.net/

Hope this helps everyone, and toward the bottom, there are fixes for most of the modern vid cards

[jbouley]

Thanks for the link.

I'm still using Windows 98 myself, so it's not an issue for me.

It might be, though, if we ever figure out why my wife's laptop (a gift from a family member who knows computers) keeps telling us there's a bad sector in the hard drive...thus making it impossible for us to even get into Windows XP (her computer's operating system). Because if we can get her laptop fixed, I think I'll be sneaking some stuff of my own onto it for when she's not around...it was a much nicer computer from what I was able to discern when it was still working.

[belz]

if we ever figure out why my wife's laptop (a gift from a family member who knows computers) keeps telling us there's a bad sector in the hard drive

wild guess...maybe the hard drive is bad =p My folks got a Gateway a year or two ago and the hard drive died almost instantly, so bad sectors aren't necessarily age related.

@policetow:
Thanks for that link. No wonder I coudn't sit still for long gaming sessions after moving to XP.

[jbouley]

The relative in question mentioned that Windows XP is really touchy if you turn off the computer without going through shutdown...and that he sees this happen pretty often when that occurs.

I don't know one way or the other...but I like your theory better, given that we ALWAYS used the proper log off and shut down sequence before flipping the "off" switch. In any case, I'm getting a free estimate at a computer repair place...so hopefully I'll know more soon.

[policetow]

If you happen to have air purifiers in your home, that can also be the culprit. An air filtration system is great for computers, but lots of modern purifiers use magnets and ionization to elimiate odors, and dust and such. If ANY computer is too close to one of these devices, say bye-bye to the HD . Laptops seem to get the worst abuse by purifiers, cause people hae a tendancy to carry em around, and set them down where ever they are. Doesn't take a magnet, or magnetically ionized air very long to wipe something slightly important, like the boot sector

[D2crazed]

A suggestion that I've found to work for frame rates!! If you set your screen size/color the same as D2 manually, and then manually select the framerate you want, you can then switch back to your prefered desktop and now whenever you play D2, you get the 'manual' set framerate.
G