q3 + NIC weird problem

[Yakumo]

for the last month or 2 i've not been playing much, but when i have i've been getting this really annoying problem i can't suss, so i thoghut i'd start asking

fairly often, instead of connecting smoothly, q3 is sticking at 'awaiting snapshot, for absolutely yonks, and more often than not, is at this point causing my NIC to drop ALL connections, so i get bumped off IRC, the lot.

nothing strange happening according to my firewall logs, i can't see anything odd happening with a packet tracer, i've tried reseating the NIC (though *nothing* else causes problems) and several different driver versions for it.

Intel 10/100+ management adapter
asus p4t-e (i850 mobo)
winXP pro SP1 + all current win update .com updates
rwin MTU etc etc all default XP
recently reinstalled q3 and windows and it's still happening.


anyone experiencing anything similar even if u can't suggest any help?

 

[ln-jinx]

Hmz the fact that it only happens with quake might be due to the fact that quake uses more network resources than anything else you do on your comp, unless you of course play other online games as well To me it sounds like a fooked network card tho or if you're really unlucky a shitty cable/adsl modem (like i had @home) but in your case i'd try swapping me nic first and see what happens then.
If quake would really be the cause of it it can only be caused by some you have in some config (like you said you already reinstalled it) so deleting all your configs + all q3config.cfg files and tryin' if the problem occurs then as well might give you that answer. Although i hardly doubt that.

 

[Yakumo]

erm, lol, q3 peaks at what about o, 10kps absolute max?
i'd hardly call it network intensive, lol
NIC's fine it's something q3 or pb have done i'm sure.
and i have tried with 2 diff firewalls & no firewall at all.

atm i can only think it's sometihng punkbuster have done with one of their recent (ish) updates, a few people have mentioned it locks at awaiting snapshot for ages, jstu no-one else i've heard from yet mentions it disconnecting anything.

 

[tnxeh]

Might be an irq sharing (vid/sound/nic) or pci slot related problem. Have you tried plugging the nic into another pci slot? Also, install the latest Intel drivers for this card if you haven't done so already.

 

[BootLace]

The pb lock I think you maybe referring to is down to it not being able to connect to the pb server (doesn't actually crash, but apparently takes several minutes for it to timeout). To find out if it's related to PunkBuster, the quickest test is to make sure cl_PunkBuster is set to 0 in all your q3config.cfg files (one per mod folder, eg. baseq3, osp, cpma). Then just join a pb disabled server, and if it still has the problem, it's almost certainly not pb's fault.

(To re-enable pb, simply make sure cl_punkbuster is set to 1, or type "\pb_cl_enable" in the console whilst trying to connect to a server).

If it is pb, then you may want to try using \pb_system 0 or 1 (apparently changes the way it scans memory, which may have an effect on hardware - oh, you'll have to quit and restart q3 for it to take effect, possibly need to do a pb_writecfg as well). Also, worth running Q3 in Win98 compatibility mode if you're using XP. These two changes are the only ones I've come across that seem to ever cure any PB issues (apart from the autoupdating - use pbweb.exe).

Probably also worth checking for h/w conflicts (seem to remember shared IRQs can cause issues, but...)

Well, sorry if that doesn't help at all. Good luck.

 

[ln-jinx]

Originally posted by Yakumo
atm i can only think it's sometihng punkbuster have done with one of their recent (ish) updates, a few people have mentioned it locks at awaiting snapshot for ages, jstu no-one else i've heard from yet mentions it disconnecting anything.

heheh lol back okies I gues I dind't discribe that very well Lemme rephrase what I was tryin' to say is that imo it sounds like a hardware prob, either the nic i said (but you said the nic's okies) or a irq-sharing prob like mentionened above. I don't think that PB probs can completely lock up your network connection; worse case scenario there can be like pb timeouts / disconnects and stuff. Imo

 

[raw]

Try setting the speed of the card, i quite often seen that people for some reason have had bizare problems fixed in q3 because the cards speed was set to auto, try setting it to 10/100 full or half duplex and rebooting.

Then of course try again.

Out of curiosity have you tried a second Nic?

 

[Yakumo]

problem seems to have dissapeared at some point, nothings changed bar the latest windows updates, not that any seem to be a applicable.

weird....

just thoguht i'd let you know, dont pop in here much