Okay, I've read the stickies, I've tried a lot of options, and other than a brief mention of a similar problem (that was solved by not running XP), I've found nothing on this error. Perhaps I'm just not searching for the right term, but there's only one relevant post I've found on NMA (in the Toubleshooting FAQ, posted by jermandubber), and the solution was less a solution than a change in OS. Here's the story so far...
First, I'm running on a company PC. (Don't ask - suffice it to say I sit in a computer room at night and get bored.) That means no alternative OS. I *can* run on a different PC if I unplug it from the network, but then I run a higher chance of attracting unwanted attention. Blah blah blah. Let's just forget the other OS options for a bit, right?
I've got two PCs sitting at desks where I can easily access the game and play, should I so desire. One is a Dell GX270 and the other is a Dell GX150. I have never managed to make either game run on the GX270. Here are the system specs for both computers:
Dell GX270:
Pentium 4 2.80C (HyperThreading disabled)
512MB (2x256MB) DDR
Integrated Intel 865G graphics (Extreme Graphics 2)
40GB hard drive
Dell GX150:
Pentium 3 1.13 GHz
512MB (2x256MB) PC133 SDRAM
Integrated Intel 815G graphics (Extreme Graphics)
20GB hard drive
The game is installed fine: humongous install on either machine with the 1.02d patch (US). Upon loading either FO or FO2, I get a white image fading in/out where the loading screen should be. The movies then play properly, and after they finish, the menu screen appears. Except, it's not really the menu screen. Either the display has a large green box, or else it shows a totally garbled/unusable image. Here's a screen capture from FO2:
Beautiful, isn't it? (Fallout 1 has a similar problem, though the image is slightly different.) Further oddities: the display will fade out to black for the load menu (press "L"), as well as fading to white. After the fades, though, the image remains unchanged. The mouse cursor doesn't show up, actually loading a game doesn't change the display, etc. It seems that the game is somehow writing to a different screen buffer than what's being shown. Basically, though, you can't do anything with either game other than press ESC to exit.
Commence trouble shooting.... Here's what I've tried:
I think that about covers it, and needless to say the problem remains. Damn. Now, here's where things get interesting.
You might be inclined to simply blame the PC or drivers. Well, the GX150 actually worked last week. HQ pushed out some update to Windows this week, and suddenly this problem occurs on both the GX270 and GX150. So what did they change? Nothing that was fixed by reinstalling drivers, as far as I can tell, but what else is there that would have this effect? I was running the 6.13.01.3196 driver with DX9.0c without any problems last week - I'm sure of this, as I just completed Fallout and was ready to tackle Fallout 2. In fact, I even started playing through the temple of trials....
Things are even worse, though. Well, not really "worse" but "even more odd". On a virgin installation of our XP Corporate build, everything still works fine. I could always just wipe my PC and start over, and probably play okay... but then I have to back up a ton of files, still lose some settings and files that I probably will miss in the backup, etc.
Obviously, this isn't a high priority call for help. I'm quite capable of dealing with most technical problems, as that's what I do for a living, so I'm trying to figure out why this happened rather than just avoiding the problem. Besides, ideally I'd like to see if I can figure out the GX270 issue at the same time.
So, if anyone has some ideas on this matter, I'd be happy for some suggestions on something I might have overlooked. I'm looking for a solution running under XP, not a change in OS if that's still not clear. If you'd rather just tell me to bugger off... well, you can do that as well. I write for a website and get plenty of negative email, so it won't faze me to catch some from the NMA forums.
Besides, there may be some other poor sap out there with a similar problem.
First, I'm running on a company PC. (Don't ask - suffice it to say I sit in a computer room at night and get bored.) That means no alternative OS. I *can* run on a different PC if I unplug it from the network, but then I run a higher chance of attracting unwanted attention. Blah blah blah. Let's just forget the other OS options for a bit, right?
I've got two PCs sitting at desks where I can easily access the game and play, should I so desire. One is a Dell GX270 and the other is a Dell GX150. I have never managed to make either game run on the GX270. Here are the system specs for both computers:
Dell GX270:
Pentium 4 2.80C (HyperThreading disabled)
512MB (2x256MB) DDR
Integrated Intel 865G graphics (Extreme Graphics 2)
40GB hard drive
Dell GX150:
Pentium 3 1.13 GHz
512MB (2x256MB) PC133 SDRAM
Integrated Intel 815G graphics (Extreme Graphics)
20GB hard drive
The game is installed fine: humongous install on either machine with the 1.02d patch (US). Upon loading either FO or FO2, I get a white image fading in/out where the loading screen should be. The movies then play properly, and after they finish, the menu screen appears. Except, it's not really the menu screen. Either the display has a large green box, or else it shows a totally garbled/unusable image. Here's a screen capture from FO2:
Beautiful, isn't it? (Fallout 1 has a similar problem, though the image is slightly different.) Further oddities: the display will fade out to black for the load menu (press "L"), as well as fading to white. After the fades, though, the image remains unchanged. The mouse cursor doesn't show up, actually loading a game doesn't change the display, etc. It seems that the game is somehow writing to a different screen buffer than what's being shown. Basically, though, you can't do anything with either game other than press ESC to exit.
Commence trouble shooting.... Here's what I've tried:
- Reinstall DirectX9.0c
Reinstall Intel Graphics drivers (currently using the win2k_xpe67.exe file from Intel on the GX150 - version 6.13.01.3196)
Tried win2k_xpe66.exe drivers (6.13.01.3004)
Tried changing GPU acceleration from full to none and everything in between
Tried disabling write combining (which made XP performance suck, but that's beside the point)
Tried the above changes in several combinations - i.e. changing graphics acceleration with older drivers.
Copied the current hardware profile, booted into that option, disabled the display adapter, and rebooted. Standard VGA drivers, but FO/FO2 still wouldn't work. There was no "graphics acceleration" to change in this mode, obviously.
Tried combinations of all of the above with running the program in a Win95, 98, NT4, and 2000 environment
I think that about covers it, and needless to say the problem remains. Damn. Now, here's where things get interesting.
You might be inclined to simply blame the PC or drivers. Well, the GX150 actually worked last week. HQ pushed out some update to Windows this week, and suddenly this problem occurs on both the GX270 and GX150. So what did they change? Nothing that was fixed by reinstalling drivers, as far as I can tell, but what else is there that would have this effect? I was running the 6.13.01.3196 driver with DX9.0c without any problems last week - I'm sure of this, as I just completed Fallout and was ready to tackle Fallout 2. In fact, I even started playing through the temple of trials....
Things are even worse, though. Well, not really "worse" but "even more odd". On a virgin installation of our XP Corporate build, everything still works fine. I could always just wipe my PC and start over, and probably play okay... but then I have to back up a ton of files, still lose some settings and files that I probably will miss in the backup, etc.
Obviously, this isn't a high priority call for help. I'm quite capable of dealing with most technical problems, as that's what I do for a living, so I'm trying to figure out why this happened rather than just avoiding the problem. Besides, ideally I'd like to see if I can figure out the GX270 issue at the same time.
So, if anyone has some ideas on this matter, I'd be happy for some suggestions on something I might have overlooked. I'm looking for a solution running under XP, not a change in OS if that's still not clear. If you'd rather just tell me to bugger off... well, you can do that as well. I write for a website and get plenty of negative email, so it won't faze me to catch some from the NMA forums.
Besides, there may be some other poor sap out there with a similar problem.
