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First post, by ElementalChaos

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Help! I am absolutely at the end of my rope here, this issue is driving me insane.

I installed MechWarrior 3 on my Dell Dimension 4100 system last night, patched it, and had a blast playing the first few missions. I shut it down, went to sleep, came back, turned it on, and now I can no longer play. The specs of the machine are in my signature.

The problem I'm having is something to do with the physics engine being way out of wack. Everything in the game literally moves back and forth in time, from the mech spinning in the customization screen, to the clouds in the sky. Even the timer in the top right corner moves from 0:01 to 0:02 and the back, repeatedly. The game is unplayable. As soon as I make a single move the mech wobbles back and forth at an increasing pace until it either falls through the floor or into the sky and blows up.

Once the game is patched to version 1.2, the missions don't even start at all. The effect is different depending on what renderer I choose. Using DirectX, the game freezes on the first frame and the screen fades to black and then in again multiple times per second. Using the software renderer, the screen becomes a pulsating rainbow psychedelic mess.

I've already tried:
Running the game in Software mode
Running the game at low graphical settings
Downgrading to DirectX 7 (can't go any further)
Reinstalling the game 4 times, making sure everything MicroProse related in the registry was gone each time (it was)
Trying 5 different Nvidia card drivers
Installing the game in a different directory
Slowing down the CPU by disabling level 2 cache
Reinstalling sound card drivers
Uninstalling KernelEx
Turning off DirectSound acceleration
Using WinME system restore to go back to before I installed MW3 for the first time
I did a complete surface scan of the HDD in ScanDisk, no errors.

Seriously, what is there left to do? I'm basically ready to give up and just quit trying to play this game, which is a shame since it was so fun. Anyone have ANY ideas short of wiping the hard drive and doing everything over?

Last edited by ElementalChaos on 2016-06-13, 21:41. Edited 1 time in total.

Pluto, the maxed out Dell Dimension 4100: Pentium III 1400S | 256MB | GeForce4 Ti4200 + Voodoo4 4500 | SB Live! 5.1
Charon, the DOS and early Windows time machine: K6-III+ 600 | 256MB | TNT2 Ultra + Voodoo3 2000 | Audician 32 Plus

Reply 1 of 9, by archsan

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I don't think "Slowing down the CPU by disabling level 2 cache" will help much in this case. It's just like having a Covington Celeron running at 866MHz to paraphrase. If it's possible, try running your P3 at 66MHz bus (so it runs @433MHz). I say if possible, because I had trouble booting with my P3 800EB running half speed on a P3B-F, though I haven't figured out exactly why.

Or maybe try CPU Grabber as suggested in this thread: http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=25044.0

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."—Arthur C. Clarke
"No way. Installing the drivers on these things always gives me a headache."—Guybrush Threepwood (on cutting-edge voodoo technology)

Reply 2 of 9, by ElementalChaos

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archsan wrote:

I don't think "Slowing down the CPU by disabling level 2 cache" will help much in this case. It's just like having a Covington Celeron running at 866MHz to paraphrase. If it's possible, try running your P3 at 66MHz bus (so it runs @433MHz). I say if possible, because I had trouble booting with my P3 800EB running half speed on a P3B-F, though I haven't figured out exactly why.

Or maybe try CPU Grabber as suggested in this thread: http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=25044.0

CPU Grabber made everything noticeably slower but still didn't fix my issue.

My BIOS doesn't have the ability to limit the bus speed.

I don't think the issue is being caused by my CPU being too fast. Like I said, it worked great last night up until I shut it down and turned it back on this morning. Also, every other game installed on my machine works fine. It's just MechWarrior 3 giving me problems.

Pluto, the maxed out Dell Dimension 4100: Pentium III 1400S | 256MB | GeForce4 Ti4200 + Voodoo4 4500 | SB Live! 5.1
Charon, the DOS and early Windows time machine: K6-III+ 600 | 256MB | TNT2 Ultra + Voodoo3 2000 | Audician 32 Plus

Reply 3 of 9, by Jorpho

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Maybe it's just spontaneous hardware failure – though I would have thought running the program in software mode would have solved that problem. Were you regularly playing such demanding games on this computer before? Are other games still running correctly?

Reply 4 of 9, by ElementalChaos

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Jorpho wrote:

Maybe it's just spontaneous hardware failure – though I would have thought running the program in software mode would have solved that problem. Were you regularly playing such demanding games on this computer before? Are other games still running correctly?

I have been playing a lot of "demanding" games lately. But if there was something wrong with the hardware it would affect every DirectX game.

I've tested every other 3D accelerated game on my machine and they all work fine.

Pluto, the maxed out Dell Dimension 4100: Pentium III 1400S | 256MB | GeForce4 Ti4200 + Voodoo4 4500 | SB Live! 5.1
Charon, the DOS and early Windows time machine: K6-III+ 600 | 256MB | TNT2 Ultra + Voodoo3 2000 | Audician 32 Plus

Reply 5 of 9, by Jorpho

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Well, since you've tried everything else and are out of ideas, maybe swapping in another video card might be worth a try, assuming you happen to have one sitting around.

Reply 6 of 9, by archsan

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OK.. but the physics engine problem still looks like it's CPU-related though. Also from what I read many others have also had problems with this game (related to CPU speed), though others strangely don't.

If you could/would record and upload the rainbow psychedelia video to YT that might also be fun to watch. More interesting than YT videos of MW3 bouncing tanks. 😀

So... do you have spare parts (CPU, RAM, graphics) to test it on?

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."—Arthur C. Clarke
"No way. Installing the drivers on these things always gives me a headache."—Guybrush Threepwood (on cutting-edge voodoo technology)

Reply 7 of 9, by ElementalChaos

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I don't have any spare parts pertaining to this machine, and probably won't for the foreseeable future. I'd LOVE to get this game working again but it's just not looking likely at this point.

Pluto, the maxed out Dell Dimension 4100: Pentium III 1400S | 256MB | GeForce4 Ti4200 + Voodoo4 4500 | SB Live! 5.1
Charon, the DOS and early Windows time machine: K6-III+ 600 | 256MB | TNT2 Ultra + Voodoo3 2000 | Audician 32 Plus

Reply 8 of 9, by ElementalChaos

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I fixed it!

I tried Windows ME system restore once again, I went to an earlier date this time, and when it was finished the system was botched and giving me error messages due to mismatched drivers. It gave me an option to undo the restore, so I clicked that and it rolled everything back to how it was today. And now the game works again! I still don't know what was causing my issue, but I don't really care at this point.

Pluto, the maxed out Dell Dimension 4100: Pentium III 1400S | 256MB | GeForce4 Ti4200 + Voodoo4 4500 | SB Live! 5.1
Charon, the DOS and early Windows time machine: K6-III+ 600 | 256MB | TNT2 Ultra + Voodoo3 2000 | Audician 32 Plus

Reply 9 of 9, by archsan

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Great! Good to know it works well on Pentium III on Me. I wish it were available on digital/GOG already.

I have to say I can't fully trust System Restore at this point (speaking about my recent Win10 restore experience), as sometimes some files could be missing/corrupted even though the rest of the OS works just fine, leaving just some little obscure problem somewhere. That said, this feature would still be one major reason to choose Me over 98SE for everyday 9x gaming. 😀

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."—Arthur C. Clarke
"No way. Installing the drivers on these things always gives me a headache."—Guybrush Threepwood (on cutting-edge voodoo technology)