So, the good news is I've had a my new PC up and running fairly smoothly for about a week now. Major Yayness. It's name is Hal if you really want to go into that much detail. The case design just reminded me too much of Hal after I saw it in person.

On to the issues.

Right now, I'm still installing stuff, mocing files over, and cleaning up after myself. I don't really expect to have a finalized list of problems until maybe the end of the week. But some of this stuff can be taken care of now, or we can at least start discussing what I might have set wrong.

I suppose you'll want the specs...

AMD Athlon XO 2500+
Sound Blaster Audigy ES
ATi Radeon 9600XT
Corsair PC 3200 513 Mb

I think that's the basics of what you'd need right?

First issue is my keyboard. I got a Logitech Elite keyboard. Nice keyboard, great product, but the multimedia keys and their software flat out suck in my opinion. Especially this stupid "F-Lock" crap. Someone posted a link to a piece of software awhile back that would let you bind functions to keys. I need something like that. In a perfect world, all the functions of the keyboard would work like they should, and the keys would be binded to whatever I wanted and if nothing was bound to them they'd act normal. I'll settle for less.

I have much love for my 9600XT. I don't think I've noticed ANY major problems with it. But Halo does have a few funky things going on with it, the biggiest issue here would be scopes on weapons. When I had Halo running on the old 900Mhz PC with my Radeon 7500LE, the scopes worked beautifully. It was very easy to see things. Your view of an area was zoomed in but stayed crisp. This is exactly how it is on the XBox as well. With the 9600XT, however, everything is zoomed like it should be, but the image is VERY grainy and pixelated and it appears as though the Zoom Filter in Photoshop was applied to the image. In other words, unless I know exactly what I'm looking at, it's almost impossible to see squat. I've been through the options in game and come up with nothing. A video card setting perhaps? I don't know nearly enough about it. A basic explanation of the settings and what everything does would be GREATLY appreciated. I'm going to try and grab a screenshot later so you can see what I'm talking about. A comparison shot might not be possible (I've had issues with the old PC. Windows basically went and farked itself. That's another story though.). I'll get you an image sometime in the near future though.

Finally (for right now at least) my Audio problems. Quite honestly, after I installed the Audigy, I didn't notice an immediate difference. After awhile though, I have noticed that the sound comming out of my Logitech Z-640's is ALOT more crisp and clean sounding. In addition, I also have TRUE 5.1 audio now. I had a really LAME setup before. It worked, but it didn't come close to matching true 5.1. Those are the pluses. Again, I'm confuddled with all of the options and settings presented to me. Explainations are appreciated. Also, is it just me, or is this EAX thing REALLY crappy? I'm suspecting I have it setup wrong, because I actually can't hear certain sounds in games. Most notably would be when I'm driving the Worthog in Halo. I don't hear the car AT ALL. I have EAX turned off too, but as I found out with Hitman earlier tonight, it might be "hardwired" on in a config file somewhere in the game directory even though I have it set to off. In Hitman, as I just mentioned, the gunfire from the enemies was not audible. In JA, some of the saber effects as I fought would start and then abruptly fade out. Same for the dialouge of enemies.

I think that about wraps up my beginning list of issues I have. I seriously think I just have something set wrong for those last two problems. What's happening just doesn't seem right. Especially for something like EAX, which I've heard is supposed to be quite good.

Many thanks ahead of time for any help you can provide. I'll probably have more little problems for you to solve in the near future.

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Put me in the hospital for nerves and then they had to commit me,
You told them all I was crazy,
They cut off my legs now I'm an amputee, God damn you.
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Frogblast the Vent-Core!

Umm....I have that Logitech Keybourd, DO NOT use the I-Touch software. Windows will automatically recognize the multimedia keys. I don't know what to do about the f-lock though, I hate it.

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"Bantha's are filthy animals.......I don't eat filthy animals."

"Laugh it up Fuzzball!"
-Han Solo

Yeah, I noticed that windows picked up some of them, but I don't think it grabbed ALL of them. I want to be able to rebind those keys if I want to. I don't need an email key that goes to outlook, but one that loads up Firefox and takes me the the Netscape Mail login page WOULD be useful.

F-Lock is seriously stupid. It works exactly OPPOSITE of the way you'd think it should.

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Put me in the hospital for nerves and then they had to commit me,
You told them all I was crazy,
They cut off my legs now I'm an amputee, God damn you.
============
Frogblast the Vent-Core!

Sounds weird, I would say spend 30 bucks on a Turtle Beach sound card (beautiful cards for very cheap) but you've spent enough money on the computer I suspect.

As for the Halo-ness--make sure your settings are at "Quality" and not "Performance" or "High Performance" in your video card settings. Could make all the difference.

As for the keys--that's what Winamp Global Keys are for. Look through the winamp settings, and you'll see that option--lets you play, pause, skip through music, turn down/up volume, and other such stuff at will. VERY good stuff.

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There is no signature

About the Halo problem: Did you install the latest ATI drivers? I have not had any problems with the latest 4.9 Beta drivers and gained a nice performance boost in some games, as much as 30% (in KOTOR). The download is here:
http://www.ati.com/support/infobase/4547.html

Gah. I want my X800. I want to be able to play KotOR at 1024x768 with AA, not one or the other. It burnses.

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There is no signature

You can do that with the iTouch software - just give it the URL.



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When guitars are outlawed, only outlaws will have guitars.

For your F-Lock issues...

Basically it's just some simple registry key changes, but those should do it all for you. That's one reason I stay away from those types of keyboards.

Gah... updated drivers is on my list of things to do. I'd actually forgotten about it until you mentioned it.

The settings are at Quality... It could be something else though too. I went and poked around in the settings turning things on and off. I thought I was improving things, maybe I screwed something up?

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Put me in the hospital for nerves and then they had to commit me,
You told them all I was crazy,
They cut off my legs now I'm an amputee, God damn you.
============
Frogblast the Vent-Core!

Love my Logitech Elite keyboard, the multimedia controls are fantastic, and the wheel on the left is handy too.

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The Massassi-Map
There is no spoon.

I got that keyboard. Install the I-Touch software, then customise it all. Ive done that. Ive bound all the f-keys to "open menu" when f-lock is off.

Ie, they do nothing.
The rest ive changed too.

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Founder of the Massassi Brute Squad (MBS)

B'tduz: A popular dwarfish game which consists of standing a few feet apart and throwing large rocks at one another's head.

"Yes, it's a bloody flying alligator setting fire to my city!" - His Grace His Excellency the Duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes.

Morituri Nolumus Mori

I thought that graininess was normal. Hmm.

I'm on a 9600 and I'm set to performance, rather than quality, although my drivers aren't the latest.

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Wise men say that fools rush in where angels fear to tread, so look before you leap, so to speak, because the grass is not always greener on the other side of the hill.

Get the offical Cat 4.8s set not the dumb 4.9 beta.

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[="Rememeber that history isn't how the corporate controlled media made it look like. Read between the lines and free your mind. Evolution is the birth of equality and the anti-thesis to opression." - Immortal Technique=]

Massassian since: March 12, 2001

Yeah, I saw the unsupported stuff and went looking for a different version.

So I have 4.8 running. Halo looked marginally better.

I have a new problem for you guys to ponder over.

I have a 5.1 system. Everything is plugged into the SoundBlaster Audigy correctly, yet I NEVER get ANY sound at all out of my center channel. I can enable 5.1 support on like, a DVD or something, and I don't get any audio out of there, no audio from games that supposedly have 5.1 support. It's a tad annoying and I can't seem to figure it out. The ONLY way I get audio out of that speaker, is to use Logitech's "Matrix" function, which basically combines the left and right channels into one stream. It's supposed to simulate a center channel if you don't have one. I SHOULD have one, why don't I get anything out of it?

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Put me in the hospital for nerves and then they had to commit me,
You told them all I was crazy,
They cut off my legs now I'm an amputee, God damn you.
============
Frogblast the Vent-Core!

For the sound problem, go to:
Control Panel > Sounds and Audio Devices > Speaker Settings Advanced > Performancew Tab

Turn down (don't turn it off) hardware acceleration. Some games (like the Max Payne games) have sound where if hardware acceleration is on you can't hear them well. Keep sliding the bar a notch back until you can hear the sounds well enough again.

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Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side

I'm not sure WHAT I did, but I played with the settings you said too, then reset them, and played with something in PowerDVD, and now I appear to have full use of the center channel in DVD Playback. Halo appears to be playing all sounds just like it should, but I have no center channel there. I need sleep, so I can't report on other games right now.

I hate it when things start working and I don't know why...

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Put me in the hospital for nerves and then they had to commit me,
You told them all I was crazy,
They cut off my legs now I'm an amputee, God damn you.
============
Frogblast the Vent-Core!