Floppy Drive probs and Max Payne probs

[card_magic]

Okay, I just found two problems with my new computer today. I just finished building my system... here are the specs...

AMD Athlon 1.4Ghz 266FSB
Asus A7A266 mobo
512MB Crucial DDR PC2100 CL2.5
Aureal Vortex sound card
VisionTek GeForce3
Dual boot win2k pro/ win98.

I think thats all that is relevant to the problem... oh, yeah.. and some generic floppy drive. So here is the deal..

In windows 2k, if you read the floppy, take out the disk, then put another disk in, the contents displayed in the drive window wont update, unless I go into the floppy drive properties, and run a check on the drive. So I guess its just feeding me whatever it chached to the drive, contents-wise. Yet, in Win98, it doesn't have any problem.

The second problem is with Max Payne. I just bought it today. I can get through the tutorial and all just fine, but after the first animation sequence when you start a new game, it says "gotta go back 3 years," or whatever, then it tries to start to load the next level. As soon as the load screen appears, the game crashes. The only time I can get past that, is in Win98, and I've only done it with my res settings down to 640x480x16. Even then, I can't get past trashing the junkies before it crashes on me again. What is the deal? I flashed my bios, downloaded updated NVidia drivers, got the AMD AGP-mini-whatever... can't remember what its called... still, no-go. The only thing I can think of is the sound card. But I disabled it in device manager, and it still didn't work.

Any help would be great,
-Jim

[benchristian]

i don't recall floppies updating when you change disks without hitting F5 (refresh). As for max payne. I have the same mobo with the 5-3-01 dated bios (i think rev 1004)
i run win me, so it might be a win2k prob. did you get the max payne patch (http://www.fileplanet.com/index.asp?section=888&file=62986) ? I really don't think it's the ram cuz it's crucial. Since you disabled the sound card i guess that's ruled out. The video card isn't it UNLESS it's overheating. Test the vid card by removing your case and putting a little fan next to your box...you do have directx 8.0a with the directX certified drivers, right?

That's all I can really think of. I think your best shot is the video card overheating (unless you don't have the max payne patch).

[card_magic]

For the floppy drive: I don't mean refreshing without closing the window. If I hit refresh, it still doesn't read off the disk. You can't just close the floppy window, and then open it up again and get the files to refresh. You have to run a diagnostic on the drive to get it to refresh. I just don't get it.

Max Payne: No, I don't have the patch yet, because I don't have an internet connection on that computer. But I really think the problem is with the sound card. I was looking at the Max Payne help file, and it was saying that there are problems with Aureal 2 cards, especially in Win2k. It causes random crashes, and for it to sometimes lose overlayed sound. Well, I have an Aureal Vortex card, and this is exactly what happens to me. Since my first post, I've been able to get it working in win98, but I'm not sure if its real stable.

-Jim