First post, by LOLZpersonok
- Rank
- Newbie
I pulled one of my older machines (a Dell Optiplex GX240, desktop profile) out of storage and started getting some of my older period-correct games from the late 90s and early 2000s installed. I discovered a problem though - many of them don't launch. Some do, namely older games like Zuma Deluxe, Driver, and Diablo, but newer games like Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2, Need for Speed: Underground, and Shrek 2 don't launch. They crash before anything can really happen. Splash screens may show up or the screen may briefly turn black, but then it immediately crashes to the desktop which may or may not be accompanied by an error sound, and is never accompanied by an error message.
I've already made sure that all drivers are up to date, and I ensured that I have a better video driver from ATI installed rather than the Microsoft-authored ATI driver. I thought it had something to do with DirectX not being new enough, so I installed DirectX 9c (regardless of whether or not my GPU actually supports it - I'm still not clear on that), but that hasn't changed anything. I've even installed the Unofficial Windows XP Service Pack 4, but that made no difference. DxDiag seems to have issues too - the Direct3D and DirectDraw tests worked fine, but DxDiag will crash if DirectInput is not bypassed.
I thought I'd check the Event Viewer to see if that would give me any information. The events for the DirectInput-related crash in DxDiag are pretty clear on what's going on:
Faulting application dxdiag.exe, version 5.3.2600.5512, faulting module dinput8.dll, version 5.3.2600.5512, fault address 0x00168be
I'm not totally sure which component it's from, but I suspect an issue with my DirectX installation. I need confirmation or clarification for this point.
The other errors for the game crashes are the same, regardless of game - and they're rather unclear:
The description for Event ID ( 0 ) in Source ( ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. You may be able to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description; see Help and Support for details. The following information is a part of the event: 6 (or 7).
I'm not sure what this means, but it seems to me that it might not even be able to show me any easy to understand description of the problem, which would force me to have to decipher the hex information to even attempt to figure out what's going on, and that's something I don't posses any amount of knowledge or skill for doing.
The only rhyme or reason I can see in this is that older games work fine, and newer ones don't. The system in question does have a fairly anemic graphics card, particularly for the newer games. It is an ATI Rage 128 Ultra with 16MB of video memory, but even still it does meet the minimum requirements for Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2, even if that doesn't result in a good experience. Even though some of the games obviously won't run well on that card, they should at least run to some degree, rather than crash before anything really even happens.
The full system specifications:
A Pentium 4 clocked at 1.7GHz and Socket 478 (unsure of exact model)
512MB of PC133 SDRAM
The aforementioned ATI Rage 128 Ultra with 16MB of video memory, AGP, with the ATI supplied driver
Intel 845 chipset
Windows XP Professional, Service Pack 3 + Unofficial Service Pack 4
I can't really understand what's going on and why these games don't launch. I do mean to install a better GPU at some point, and I suppose the current card could be the issue, but I'd like some input from the community first.
