Captain Claw crashing to desktop in Windows 95 \ VOGONS

Captain Claw crashing to desktop in Windows 95

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First post, by Elia1995

Posted on 2017-04-13, 10:26

Elia1995 Offline

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Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 668
Joined: 2016-04-21, 12:45
Location: Italy

Since I switched from my S3 Virge to the more powerful, built-in nVidia Aladdin TNT2, Captain Claw crashes to desktop at various points of gameplay and mostly always in the same spots.
I even tried to reinstall it, it is a Windows 95 and 98 game from 1997 and it's the only 2D game that crashes that much on that PC, I can't find the source of the problem and Google is no use at all, since most threads are related to how to play it in modern PCs.

Currently assembled vintage computers I own: 11

Most important ones:
A "modded" Olivetti M4 434 S (currently broken).
An Epson El Plus 386DX running MS-DOS 6.22 (currently broken).
Celeron Coppermine 1.10GHz on an M754LMRTP motherboard

Reply 1 of 2, by Jorpho

Posted on 2017-04-13, 13:29

Jorpho Offline

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Joined: 2003-02-14, 19:50
Location: Canada

Do the video cutscenes play normally? Maybe it would be worth trying to install the last Win9x version of the RAD Game Tools (i.e. which includes the latest Bink and Smacker codecs), though I'm not sure what version that would be.

It might be worthwhile to try to track down a different version of the game for testing purposes; there was a DVD release with high-quality video.

Reply 2 of 2, by Elia1995

Posted on 2017-04-13, 16:50

Elia1995 Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 668
Joined: 2016-04-21, 12:45
Location: Italy

Yeah the cutscenes and everything is perfect, it just randomly crashed, but I managed to solve it.
Using clawadv.exe on the CD for advanced settings, I disabled direct video access and now it doesn't crash anymore.
Apparently this direct video access works with the S3 Virge because it didn't crash, but it must be disabled for the integrated nVidia Aladdin TNT2 graphic chipset or else it randomly crashes to desktop.
The interesting thing is that it always crashed at the SAME specific spots of the levels, it wasn't 100% random.

Currently assembled vintage computers I own: 11

Most important ones:
A "modded" Olivetti M4 434 S (currently broken).
An Epson El Plus 386DX running MS-DOS 6.22 (currently broken).
Celeron Coppermine 1.10GHz on an M754LMRTP motherboard

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