Demigod

Its modding that does it. Honestly, when I was modding morrowind I went through two hardrives. Im getting a new mouse and keyboard in a few weeks as these are starting to fail. I hope the rest holds up!

Can you test your hd's in another comp?

This may be a overheating/damaged south bridge chip I get the north and south bridge mixed up but one of these contains the HD controler. If this is faulty you will get the stalls in windows as it drops the line as it were, and the startup problems. Then again as Dram pointed out the stalling could be a faulty driver install, fixable by a reinstall. Though that doesnt explain the hd not being detected. the only other thing I can think of that would explain all this is a flaky bios. Flashing it may fix the problem or give you a dead mobo if the chip is faulty rather than just the firmware being flaky.

No it shouldnt cause any boot problems. This is an odd error. Do you have a windows cd handy? If so cop these two files to your c: drive X:\i386\NTLDR C: X:\i386\NTDETECT.COM X being your cdrom drive. Reboot and boot from the cd. It should ask you if you want to repair an instalation select yes next if I remember right it should ask if you want to do it automaticaly or go to the recovery console. Go to the console. type fixboot and hit return type fixmbr and hit returm Hopefuly that should work. Both of the above will mess up any linux bootloader you have though.

Is this the boot drive? It may just need a reinstall of windows, but it does sound most odd. Does the drive click at all? Thinking about it the only time I have seen erors like that is when I overclock. What is your cpu temp? As it gets hotter more erros occur and progs fail. It may also be your memory as a dieing stick can do the same thing. I think the best approch is to do what you are doing. Disconnect the drive and see if the errors still occur. Its not a maxtor drive is it?. I ask as I have a box of Hd's next to me. It has two seagates a 20 and 40 gig, about five years old that still work, but are slow being udma 33. But it also has three maxtor drives all dead, none lasted more than six months.

I have only once bought a prebuilt and it lasted that way for about a month. Since then I’ve built about twenty different rigs for people. The trick is to research everything you get, not just reading the reviews but going to the tech forums and checking for the common problems. That and knowing what the post error beeps mean. It is only worth doing if you feel confident in doing it, but stability and speed wise I would put one of my systems up against a comparatively spec'ed dell any day. Warranty wise you are covered on the parts, and extended warranties on pc's are worthless due to the depreciation (imho) Dell and hp have improved over the last few years on the gaming side of things, but they do use custom cases and components so upgrading can be a nightmare as one of my friends found out. At the end of the day its all down to what your comfortable doing. The above spec I gave should be available from dell in any case edit Ive been looking at xp 64. It seems good but is built on the server 2003 kernal so it has some app issues in the beta, hopefuly sorted in the gold release. Im still running win2k so it a couple hundred £ if I decide to get it.

I had no problems with my 9800 either, apart from the drivers, to be honest but they aren’t the best cards for doom3. The newer brand of ati card the x800's are faster at shader model 2.0, than the current nvidia cards but not by much. The opposite is the case with opengl shaders as nvidia has allot better opengl support. Nvidia also offers hardware shadow support which is or isn’t used much depending on who you talk to but there is defiantly less of a performance hit on nvidia cards when any type of shadow is in play than on ati cards. The heat thing with the 6800 isn’t a problem I’ve stressed one past 90c and it shuts down, came back up fine. Normal temps very between 50c and 80c. The newest and most expensive graphics card available is the ati x850 pe xt (the names are getting silly) But again a 6800gt can beat this in doom3. Also keep in mind that nvidia cards are a hell of a lot faster in cad and 3d apps. If you use Linux at all forget ati cards. They have just about got the installation issues done on the drivers, but to give an example, my old ti4600 gets more than twice the fps than my 9800 does in some of the 3d apps and games CPu wise. Intel have just launched a dual core cpu which should be in shops in about a month. This currently has much better support for multithreaded apps, light wave etc. but its single thread and 64bit performance is still slower than the comparable a64 chip. A normal single core Intel chip has better multitasking support, thanks to hyper threading (emulates two cores) this is not available in all of the new dual core chips, only in the extreme edition chips in fact which cost an arm and a leg. The a64 are much better gaming chips and no slouch in anything else tbh. Their dual core isn’t due out for a couple of months. Best set-up I would recommend (bearing in mind I hate ati drivers) a64 3200 or better (Winchester or better Venice core if you can get it as they just came out. the normal heat sink and fan is fine if you don’t over clock madly) 6800gt pci express MSI K8N Diamond SLI ATX AMD S-939 pci-e 1 or 2 gig of ram pc3200 or better audigy 2zs or audigy 4 (internal sound is ok but takes more cpu time than a dedicated sound card) 120bg or 250 gb Seagate HD (sata or ide. Ide is easier to setup)

Would this work http://coppermine.sourceforge.net/? My brother uses it on his site for image hosting here

With the 1.3 patch, which I havnt heard off, it must come with the expansion? Here is the link for the win2000 drivers they are dated apr 5 http://uk.europe.creative.com/support/down...me=Windows+2000 the udate includes

That is realy cool

AH Im a bit late so happy unbirthday

I’ve modded for a few the biggest was for Morrowind. I was working on a mod of my own, weighed in at 80mb with models but is still sat unfinished on my hard drive. I didn’t finish it as I joined the children of the night 3 mod team. I built about a hundred interiors, most with new statics, for that mod and it too wont see the light of day now until after oblivion is released. The mod leader who never wrote anything down had to leave so the rest of us couldn’t finish it. Pity as it was really good and I spent more than a month getting those damn horses to run in a chariot race properly. It was supposed to ship at about 600mb but my last archive of the content comes to 900mb compressed, with no sound :lol: I’ve dabbled in unrealed and the lithtek editor (shudder). The most work I did on an fps was part of a Jedi knight level which looked ok but I was still in the land of csg subtract so I never released it. Other than that I did a series of mission in Fred for freespace, where you were an nsf spy (I think that’s who it was its been to long). I only finished three of them though and two bug tested. I think they are still on the net somewhere. I’ve only got a copy of the first one buried away on an old floppy somewhere in the jungle of my attic. I’ve never made a thief level in my life. My elder brother has but DromEd’s UI put me off. But I love playing the games and fan levels I still cant ghost the lost city in thief gold though

RJ really needs to finish wheel of time. I want to know the end but I really hate the way he writes women, major issues or what. Though I have known some like he writes them but most are human at least. :lol: Bet in the next or the one after he somehow brings Morianne (or however you spell it) back. Min hints as much in one of the books. I tried to read them all again for the realise of the new one, due in august btw but I got stuck in book6 it gets very tedious at times cant say why. I haven’t read a Terry Goodkind since temple of tears. Which I had to import as at the time it took ages to get the uk version for some reason. I may get the audio books of them. Time to join the library again I suppose Between the cinema, games and books I have no money left. Still beats drinking and smoking I suppose

I didnt know there were audio books of prattchets works. Very funny and satirical books I must get going postal, I realy liked that book, I see amazon has them Is Tony Robinson any good at reading them?

Personaly I like to have a small powerdvd window open in a corner and have one of my dvd's playing. Which is lots of fun when I build the bsp :lol: Currently Ive just started on the James Bonds, after finishing of the pixar's I own (finding nemo is Ok but is their worst imho). I finaly got On her majesty's secret service after about a year of looking. I cant stand George L but the story isnt bad, besides I had to compleate the set didnt I.

http://www.thief2x.com/default2.asp Its sat in my download que atm, So I havnt had a chance to look at it. But Ive been looking forward to this mod for a while.

Happy easter everyone!

I just wondered. Im sure I say something about it being out in april?

I quite liked the demo. I have a preorder for it, but I also want resident evil 4. Choices choices.

In case you havnt played it http://www.geocities.jp/lledoece/nanaca-crash.html Its japanese but lots of fun. The basic idea is to keep the poor guy bouncing as far as possible, you get some boosts from the pedestrians you hit, other's slow you or stop you. The best I can do is 8710.31m I have seenover 10000. IT DOES HAVE SOUND for those of you at work

Go upto scotland every few months. Its great driving around the scenery on the west coast especialy is amazing. There are some great castles too. My family is half scotish with a bit or irish and some english along the way. Im sort of part of clan grant, but dont ask me how.

Happy Birthday New Horizon I hope you are having a great day

Great, I working on some of my own testures too, So I can a tleast get away from the steal until the Darkmod is released. Im also glad to hear about the skybox (from the hexen mod) as I have given up on them atm I tell you modding for morrowind is a damn sight easier

Can I start a map in doom3 now and convert it to be dark mod compatible when you release the dark mod? I realize this would be easier if I just make geometry only, rope arrow targets etc cant be done for example until dark is done (though I assume this will be someway texture based?) but can you envision any big hiccup if I or others try this? My "biffords" remake has restarted after a crash that nuked my maps directory, I realy should make more backups

As well as the site mentioned above go to 3dbuzz.com create an account and you can download some training videos, that are very helpful