Re: [Plib-users] Video Lockups

[Steve B. <sjb...@ai...>]

Richard Bytheway wrote:
> 
> I am having a problem with plib 1.4.2 based applications on Win2000.
> 
> I appears that the video is locking up, in that the display freezes, the
> mouse stops moving, even pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn't do anything. However,
> if I have WinAMP running as well, playing ogg files, it keeps playing until
> I hit the reset button (which is the only way out).
> 
> This happens when running FlightGear, Map, Atlas and TuxKart, and takes
> anything from a few seconds to about an hour to trigger.
> 
> Video card is an AOpen GeForce 2MX, with the latest drivers from the AOpen
> web site.

This can't possibly be a PLIB problem - in a properly implemented system,
it should be impossible for an application program to take down the machine
like that.

> Does anyone else see this?

I havn't heard any complaints like that - and I'm sure I would have done
if it was commonplace.

I know very little about Win2k - but here is some general advice:

 * Do the programs always lock up immediately?  Do they always lock up
   at the exact same place?

 * Do non-PLIB applications (that use OpenGL) lock up similarly?

 * If WinAMP keeps running, so should other applications that don't
   access the graphics.  You could write a script that sleeps for
   (say) five minutes and then kills the PLIB application.  You should
   be able to use the resulting debug stuff (a 'core' file or something?)
   to see where PLIB is stuck.

 * Rather than use the board vendors drivers, I *strongly* advise you to
   go to the nVidia web site (www.nvidia.com) and download the 'reference'
   drivers for the GeForce-2.  Each board vendor hacks those reference
   drivers - and they are notoriously bad at doing it.  Since device drivers
   most certainly *do* have the power to lock up the whole machine, this is
   the most likely problem.

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