Win 2000 blues!

[Pinky]

I upgraded from Windows 98 to Windows 2000 and have had many Toontown problems. All seem to be timing related issues...

I sometimes fall aslep even just after speaking or turning.

HQ officers sometimes cut me off right away.

In Trolley games, I am lucky to be able to finish. In the maze, at best, without being hit, I get about 140 and the game freezes until it would have ended normally.

If it freezes in Tug-of-War, I get knocked out of the game.

Sometimes in the Maze, all of the cogs run in place in their starting positions - again, I'm lucky if I finish.

In the cannon game, sometimes it shows the starting bonus at about 25, though it does count it properly at the end.

Sometimes the countdown on the buildings shows a large negative number (around -11,000), but it acts properly as if I'm just seeing it wrong.

Sometimes on the streets, the street cogs disappear and will not interact with me. Only new cogs appearing from the buildings are seen by me.

Inside of the buildings is where it gets even more interesting...

If I am solo, the timer sometimes hits zero right away and I miss a round of battle.

With others, on the top floor, while I should be dancing, I sometimes break free and can walk around the top floor, behind the walls and behind the elevators if I want to. The other toons see me as running in place, jumping or sleeping.

With others, sometimes, right when the toon attack begins, I see the end of battle and then have to wait until the others finish seeing all the animations of the attacks. What I mean by seeing the end of battle is I see it as if the cogs had just hit everyone at once. What I see is the cumulative damage done to each toon. Again, I see this just as the toon attack starts, which gives an indication of when the calculations occur.

That last one is the coolest effect by far, but overall it stinks really bad. I will have to fresh install Win 2000 or revert back to Win 98.

I remembered one last thing. While hitting the F6 for latency information, usually my latency is around 200. However, the adjustment placed me normally is .1 ms but sometimes goes to -100 to -111 or so seconds. This adjustment must be the root of the problem, caused by either Win 2000 and/or some device incompatability.

[Growlur]

*salute*

When requesting general technical support (larger than just specific, in-game issues) it's always a good thing to throw in as much information about your system as you can muster.

For example, if you're running Windows 2000 on a machine with 64 megs of RAM, you've already got problems just with the kernel.

Vid card information, connection speed, etc would all be helpful.

[Spunky]

[Pinky]

My recollections of my (aging) system:

Athlon 700 MHz
512 MB RAM
Creative Labs Annihilator Pro (GeForce 256)
Toshiba PCX 1100 Cable Modem
Sound Blaster Live! Value
CTX VL9600 19" Flat Screen (CRT)
20 Gig HD
Creative Encore PC/DVD

[Growlur]

Some basic things I would recommend to initially try, and would recommend to anyone:

1. Run Ad-aware (www.download.com, search for it), this will clear out many programs that are running on your machine for someone else's benefit.

2. Run Disk Cleanup on the partition (C/D/E) that contains your operating system.

3. Defragment regularly. My tool of preference for this is Diskeeper, it takes about 1/10th the time of Microsoft's hack.

4. IF YOU ARE COMFORTABLE DOING THIS: Set your Virtual Memory settings in Windows 2000 to 256 initially, and 768 maximum with 512 megs of RAM. (Or, 1/2 your RAM up to 1 1/2 times your RAM)

5. Visit http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com regularly, and install everything it has for you except Internet Explorer 6 (for now, might need 6 later)

6. Visit http://www.microsoft.com/directx and get DirectX 9. Even running DirectX 9 under DirectX 8 mode should greatly improve rendering accuracy.


If those suggestions don't help you with your Toontown problem (although I'm sure they'll make your system in general much happier), I would save the jpgs in your Toontown folder and zap it, then run from the play button. If that STILL doesn't help, try running in OpenGL rather than DirectX (Use the Toontown OGL shortcut in TTwindow.zip).

Without having my hands on the system, that'd be about all I would suggest. Unless you want to start digging in the registry

In all seriousness, do your best to stick with Windows 2000. It is the best operating system out right now. 2000 has all the reliability you could ask for, permissions, and a lot less bloatware than XP. Gaming friends don't let gaming friends run 95/98/ME.

[Pinky]

Why not anything over IE 6? I had gone to the windows update site and updated EVERYTHING for Win 2000.

Thank you for your help!

[Flippen MacG]

Hello,
I work in an IT shop and the prevailing thought for going from Win98 -> Win2K was to reinstall Win2K fresh, not to do the upgrade. The upgrade seems to drag along a lot of the registry entries & DLLs from Win98 & they are a drag on the upgraded O/S. Don't know the tech details, not a PC tech guy. Jes my 2 cents.

Potentially, you could try upgrading the drivers for the ethernet NIC card if thats where the specific slowness is.

[Sniffy]

make sure u got win2k Service Pack 3.

[BGFP]

Is windows 2k and UPGRADE from 98 or a downgrade .. THAT is the question!

[Aristocrat]

Is windows 2k and UPGRADE from 98 or a downgrade .. THAT is the question!

Actually, technically, it is an upgrade from windows NT... Win 2k is based on Windows "new technology" architecture. Although I think most people agree NT was better. I am a staunch Win98se user myself. Burn your XP discs and return to BSOD nirvana!

[Pinky]

I went to win XP Pro and my Toontown problems are no more.

[CurlySnorkelsnout]

I still want to know what I have to do to win these 2000 blues

[Pinky]

You find the "Toon Contest" I made in the playground forum and forget this thread ever existed.

[lost_packet]

I upgraded from Windows 98 to Windows 2000

like others have said, this is a huge no no. Win2k is NOT an upgrade to 95/98/ME. You can try to fix the issues, but if they are numerous and tedious it's best to backup data/format/re-install.

Nice suggestions Growler, I disagree with some of your comments on XP and IE 6, but that's another issue. I wish more peole knew about Ad-aware, thanks for bringing up.

One thing I would suggest is running regclean. M$ doesn't have it on their sire anymore but you can get it here. Many of your problems might be registry based, this can clean things up, but it's no miracle worker.

what version of IE do you have? Go to help about IE and look for the vesion and cipher strength. If you are running 5.5 make sure it's sp2 version. I have only seen issues with IE 6 on default XP installs, other than that it's better than 5.5. Make sure both have 128 bit cipher strength, if not upgrade or remove, re-install.

I disagree on upgrading to DX9, yes it's technically superior to 8, but it has issues on some machines.

In all seriousness, do your best to stick with Windows 2000. It is the best operating system out right now. 2000 has all the reliability you could ask for, permissions, and a lot less bloatware than XP. Gaming friends don't let gaming friends run 95/98/ME.

No way. many things were improved in XP over 2k. My XP box is far more stable and quicker than any other win2k box I've ever built. Yes 95, ME is nasty for gaming, but 98 is still regarded by some as the 'best os for gaming.'

If all else fails you might want to consider formatting and re-installing from scratch as you could be chasing numerous issues for some time.