no POST on 8KHA+

[Memphis Raines]

I have been experienceing several problems recently with my board...

first is onboard sound, Under GTA3 the sound stutters severly, this is a recent thing that it has just started doing

i have tried reinstalling the game and the OS, as well as different drivers, but still the same problem ocours ... it also only seems to effect this one game..

I then tried installing a SB PCI128... this in itsself caused many problems.. firstly the board fails to POST at all just sitting on FF all the time, then if it does post, windows locks up on detecting it!!

Eventually after much fiddling i manages to get it installed and the sound off that card for the game is also distorted!... not stuttering but whirring and rippling..

te important note here is that the game DID work perfectly for a good few weeks



Does this sound like the board is knackered?

cheers
Memph

[Bring the Noise]

SB PCI 128... Thats an old card (inbetween the Awe64 and PCI512).

The intergrated sound chip (Cmedia) propably does a better job with sound. I think the 8KHA's came with intergrated sound?

Questions about your GTA3 install.
1. is it in the "Program Files/Rockstar Games/GTAIII" folder.
2. did you patch to version 1.1
3. are you using a No-CD key and/or one of the trainers from http://www.actiontrip.com.
4. do you run the sounds from the cd or did you copy all of the audio files from disk 2 to to "Program Files/Rockstar Games/GTAIII/AUDIO".

I've found that coping the audio files (.wav and .mp3) from the second disk to the game folder helps (with those on the HD your computer wont constantly be searching the second CD for the files). I've also found that mp3's I have placed into the MP3 folder, some work well and some sound like crap (even though all of them are 128bit MP3 yanked from my favorite CD's).

Questions about your system... do you have a second drive located on the same IDE controller as the cd drive you put GTA3 in.
If you do is their anything acessing it (like downloading stuff from p2p services or pulling files off of newsgroups/ftp's etc.

IDE has a big problem... you can have 2 components on the same controler. But only 1 can be used at a time. So if you try to say play music and download files you end up with system buffering both datasets (your box will read from cd pause cd reading, write section of downloaded file then pause writing file, read more from the cd pause cd reading, then back to download). Most of the time you will not be able to tell if you have a good buffer setup. You computer can pull enough data from the music cd to keep playing from the buffer while it writes data to the hd.... bla bla bla... technical yup!

quick fix's.

Copy the file from the Audio folder on GTA3 disk 2 to the Audio folder for the game. And that should solve your problems.
Now if you already have this type of game setup and you are experiencing problems... then double check to make sure no programs are doing heavy access's to the drive the game is located on.

I just installed it on my new system last night (need to copy over my saves from my old box). Philip's QMSS is wild...

If you have a philips sound card do this... ingame set to MilesFast 2D. Then download the latest Philips audio drivers and make sure QMSS is turned on... sweet true 3D possitioning!

[Memphis Raines]

ok, CD is an emulated ISO file running off hard disk,

game is ver 1.1 with no other patches

hard disk activity is minimal and on seperate channels.


and it isnt the actual CD music that is messed up (well i have it turned off so i wouldnt know) it is the sound effects .. just the general background noise/ the car engines.. etc.

what is this Trainer?

[Bring the Noise]

Trainer is a program that you kick off before you run the game.
It allows for different key commands to do different things.

The one over at actiontrip is a cheat trainer.

For the background sounds... you may want to try and reinstall the 2 files that originally come in the audio folder.

Also double check the sound card settings ingame (set it for EAX with the PCI128).

[Memphis Raines]

even with a clean install i am having problems.. the sound works fine to start with then when things get busy it just starts stuttering and wont stop



But on a more important note i am STILL having the reboot problem.. every time i try to reboot it just doesnt...

it seems that if i change or move some componant, be is a PCI card/ memory stick / USB device.. whatever it will restart...

this must be a mainboard problem... also i dont even have the SB 128 in the box.

HELP

[Holst]

Soft reboot problem will be fixed for most people by flashing to the latest bios.
Reboot problems can also be a sign of a poor quality PSU.

It may be that something is faulty, although it might not be the mainboard (PSU and memory main suspects)

[Memphis Raines]

Its not the same problem that usually related to soft reboot.. it is any boot at all...

its a 550watt OEM PSU, its gone thru tests and is known to handle well

it could be a memory problem.. i have reset the bios, but still the same problem occours