I've recently been struggling with Windows 2000 to make it run to the best of its ability for my needs.
 
Here are my problems/queries:
 
[o] OpenGL in Windows2000 leaves a little to be desired. I am an avid quake2/3/half life player and therefore OpenGL is very important to me. However, I have been having some problems. Initially, I could not even get Quake2 and a couple of OpenGL dependant games to work, although Quake 3 and Half Life chose to run stormingly. After a bit of searching, I came across the registry fix with NVidia Detonator 2 drivers here on ntcompatible, applied it and all my OpenGL games worked. However, performance in all games suffered a great deal. With my TNT2 Ultra, I get a timedemo of 60fps at good times. However, with this registry tweak I couldnt hit 40fps.
 
Anyway, to cut a long story short, I want to know if there are any other ways to prevent the "Glide Buffers failed!" error message when running some OpenGL games. If I could get Quake2 working without tweaking the registry, I know that my fps would be a hell of a lot more satisfying.
 
[o] My second query is upon software compression on internet service providers. Back when I had Windows 98 SE installed, a local ISP (Jolt), which supports STAC compression gave me very satisfying pings indeed (I'm on ISDN and I got as low as 26 in Quake2 - no ****). However, as hard as I try Windows 2000 refuses to allow this compression - so my pings are in the 50-60 region again, as opposed to my previous 30-40.
 
Many of you will be wondering what I'm complaining about (I know that some people ping 250) but if I can reach such pings on Win98, surely there is some way to enable STAC compression - is there a patch, will it be in SP1?
 
[o] Next question is about DirectX. I understand that Windows 2000 Professional already has DirectX 7.0a preinstalled - but I have had some problems with the game Grim Fandango. I read what there is written on this site and having followed the instructions - I got it working to a certain point - but as written here, it keeps crashing back to the desktop. As far as I know, there is no way to fix this but if you have any ideas or methods in getting around this problem I would be interested to find out. Perhaps DirectX 8 will fix this? When is that out by the way?
 
[o] And finally, a query on my MS Sidewinder Gamepad. It refuses to detect it - nor any software install - I downloaded the 3.0 software from the sidewinder website, but it refuses to install. Having spent quite a bit of money on this device, I would be interested in getting it working in the environment that is Windows 2000.
 
Thanks for any replies!
 
 
Alex Christopher
aka Kooler
kooler@quake99.freeserve.co.uk
ICQ#: 13999992
 
P3 600 (non coppermine)
128MB PC100 RAM
Chaintech 6TATA-2 Motherboard
Creative 3D Blaster TNT2 Ultra
10GB UDMA/33 Maxtor HDD
Sound Blaster Live! value