Wayfarers of Veeshan

I have 2 puters and my main one plays EQ just fine, but I sometimes like to side-by-side with Talinoth or Thunderhart and on my older (Win98) system, it has basically become unplayable lately.

It takes a much longer time to load than usual
then once in game:
1) I have NO text in ANY windows in game
2) A few of those (blank) windows begin to disappear
3) The lag is just ungodly, unplayably bad now

At first I thought this was related to a "" problem, which just had a "fix" posted, but since the fix didn't fix MY problem, I began a on the EQ forums. Anyway, if anyone has ideas or has seen something similar or just to serve as a warning to Win98 users, thought I'd post.

Drex

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Drexxell , 71st GNecrOMancEr -- Wielder of ()
Druul , 60th Troll Shaman () + Wielder of and
Driss, 51st Dwarf Priestess of Brell Serilis
Dralia, 36th Erudite Enchantress

Does the win98 box have same hardware config? i.e memory / video?

Maybe bite the bullet and upgrade the OS to XP?

Mal

I feel ya Drexx. I am running a 1.2G, 512M ram and a 64M video card on a WIN98 comp. Lag is horrid in outdoor zones sometimes, not too bad in pok most of the time. But I think I will be 'biting the bullet' and upgrading my video sometime in the near future. (keeps fingers crossed).

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Vaeuryte Moonchaser
70 Overlord


"SUCCESS isn't a result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire"
-Arnold Glasgow
'What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?"
-Dr Robert Schuller

Part of the problem is that absolutely NOTHING was wrong (except a bit more lag on the old computer than on the new...I was/am still running pre-Luclin graphics on the old computer to keep things as fast as possible) until about 3 weeks ago. It played fine, just a tad laggy. Then, boom, out of nowhere, the game is unplayable.

Hmmm....now let's see...what CHANGES to my computer happen every few weeks and might specifically influence EQ...hmmm...I just don't know...could it be....SATAN? (I mean..."could it be...THE EQ PATCH?")

Anyway, I honestly wouldn't know how to upgrade a video card and the idea of upgrading my OS scares the bejeezus out of me. The down time involved (old software no longer runs properly, etc) would probably make me pull my hair out.

edit: Just to clarify my position, by analogy....Say I go into a McDonald's day in and day out and pay them for a Hamburger. Now, say that one day I go in and they hand me a CHEESEburger. And I say "hey, you changed something", but they say "no, I'm sure we didn't change anything, but if you're unhappy with how your hamburger tastes, you can always try scraping the cheese off". That's how I feel. They have spent years building up an expecation in me that EQ will be fine day in and day out then when THEY change something, *I* am expected to be reactionary and "fix it on MY end".

Just one more "tick" in the column I've listed as "reasons to go the way of Zbik"

Drex

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Drexxell , 71st GNecrOMancEr -- Wielder of ()
Druul , 60th Troll Shaman () + Wielder of and
Driss, 51st Dwarf Priestess of Brell Serilis
Dralia, 36th Erudite Enchantress

A problem I had leading to the upgrade of my OS from win 98 (unrelated to drexxell problem) was the RAM. I deceided that I wanted to upgrade from 256 to 768 so I installed a 256 chip and a 512 chip unknown to me win 98 only supports up to 510 ram. having more didnt not effect any of my application the OS just didnt use the RAM, However when I went to log into EQ POOOOOFFFF nothing. A few hours later in a tech support chat room with verent it was discovered the the extra RAM was giving me grief. So I removed it and upgraded my OS for the extra boost.

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Laldaas Arrowsligger "Retired" 62nd Season
People knew him as the "Mighty Ranger"

"Never Give Up"

What happens if I take both the red and the blue pill at the same time?

win98se recognises and can use large amounts of ram properly (i have 768 megs in mine) provided the vcache setting is set for something less than 512 megs (if i went into it deeper, id be hijacking the thread with 'hardware' instead of 'software')...going to max ram was the best thing i ever did to it, btw...

fire up msconfig, under system.ini tab check the entry...i dont recall the exact syntax for setting it (check the mskb on it - run a kb search for 'vcache') and set the max...my 98se box is set to max of 400000 (the entry is in kbytes)

also, if i turn off the ram test during bootup, i have problems in eq...dunno why, it just is...

my best guess for a solution (if your ideo drivers are current) is to go up to a 128 meg video card...theyre getting cheaper, but keep an eye on the system requirements - all that i know of with a nvidia chip above the 5200 series require a 250W system power supply

Lald - putting in unmatched ram chips probly contributed to the *poof*

The ranjjaa has been corrected!

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Laldaas Arrowsligger "Retired" 62nd Season
People knew him as the "Mighty Ranger"

"Never Give Up"

What happens if I take both the red and the blue pill at the same time?

Found this on EQtech:

WanderingKen
Newbie
Posts: 1
Registered: 05-19-2004

Viewed 116 times

Hello everyone,

I managed to fix this problem on my computer. I had no text on my character select screen and no characters in the game. I was able to restore the font in game as described in earlier messages, but the character select screen remained blank. I bought a new card since I needed an upgrade anyway -- no luck. I put my old card in an older computer and to my surprise it worked in the old computer just fine -- text everywhere without any special commands. I was then able to compare the systems side by side.

I ran msconfig from the Run menu, selected system.ini, expanded the "boot" folder, then noticed that the system.drv=****** was different on the two systems. The working computer said system.drv=system.drv, and the non-working system said system.drv=atmsys.drv or something like that. I searched for the file, checked its properties finding it to be an adobe file. I edited the entry to read system.drv=system.drv, rebooted then everything worked fine. I don't know what side effects will result with adobe programs.

I hope this works for everyone else. Good Luck!

Magobrillo, The Tribunal

Mal

I was already there Mal....the 2nd or 3rd post after the one you quote is me saying "this didn't fix my problem"

But thank you for looking. I've started a new thread looking for an answer there.

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Drexxell , 71st GNecrOMancEr -- Wielder of ()
Druul , 60th Troll Shaman () + Wielder of and
Driss, 51st Dwarf Priestess of Brell Serilis
Dralia, 36th Erudite Enchantress