Just tested FEAR and NOLF on my Win XPSP3 Machine w/ GTX780Ti, SB X-fi Titanium, Xeon 5690 CPU and everything runs fine. I'm running the Director's Cut DVD version of FEAR and the standard CD-ROM release of NOLF. Are you running disc versions or downloaded distributions like steam or gog? Are you using ISO images stored on your machine? Anything not vanilla about your setup?

EDIT: Oops you said NOLF 2, checking...
NOLF 2 works fine too.

It's very peculiar - I removed the Xonar D2X card and NOLF2 immediately started working. I also ran into trouble with Indiana Jones Emperor's Tomb - same issue, clicking does nothing - but the moment I removed the card, it started working. I think the Xonar D2X is not a very good XP card.

I've never had much luck with non Creative cards though I've owned a few, I always go for real Creative cards now. I had a Xonar DG card which gave me trouble on multiple games though usually with sounds or crashing I don't remember not launching but I could have forgotten.

Shagittarius wrote on 2020-09-12, 20:51:

I've never had much luck with non Creative cards though I've owned a few, I always go for real Creative cards now. I had a Xonar DG card which gave me trouble on multiple games though usually with sounds or crashing I don't remember not launching but I could have forgotten.

Yeah it's a shame because the PCI port on the motherboard doesn't work (or I'd use my X-Fi or Audigy 2) so I only have PCI-E to work with and I only have two Xonar cards. I doubt Windows XP had USB based sound cards so I'm kind of stuck.

Maybe I should find a different motherboard - this one has all sorts of faulty stuff - one of the SATA controllers doesn't work so I only have 2 SATA ports - and the USB 3 ports stopped working as well.

EDIT: well well well I found out that the sound card is not the reason after all. When I unplugged the PC to remove the card, I also unplugged all USB devices and I believe one of them was causing interference. Now all games work - FEAR, NOLF2, Splinter Cell, Emperor's Tomb - they all refused to start and all start fine now.

Great!

red_avatar wrote on 2020-09-12, 21:08:

Yeah it's a shame because the PCI port on the motherboard doesn't work (or I'd use my X-Fi or Audigy 2) so I only have PCI-E to […]
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Shagittarius wrote on 2020-09-12, 20:51:

I've never had much luck with non Creative cards though I've owned a few, I always go for real Creative cards now. I had a Xonar DG card which gave me trouble on multiple games though usually with sounds or crashing I don't remember not launching but I could have forgotten.

Yeah it's a shame because the PCI port on the motherboard doesn't work (or I'd use my X-Fi or Audigy 2) so I only have PCI-E to work with and I only have two Xonar cards. I doubt Windows XP had USB based sound cards so I'm kind of stuck.

Maybe I should find a different motherboard - this one has all sorts of faulty stuff - one of the SATA controllers doesn't work so I only have 2 SATA ports - and the USB 3 ports stopped working as well.

EDIT: well well well I found out that the sound card is not the reason after all. When I unplugged the PC to remove the card, I also unplugged all USB devices and I believe one of them was causing interference. Now all games work - FEAR, NOLF2, Splinter Cell, Emperor's Tomb - they all refused to start and all start fine now.

Did you get any random slowdown? I experience a problem that the game drops from the normal framerate and caps to 16fps, until the game is restarted. It happens on XP SP3

Discrete_BOB_058 wrote on 2020-09-13, 10:07:

Did you get any random slowdown? I experience a problem that the game drops from the normal framerate and caps to 16fps, until the game is restarted. It happens on XP SP3

I honestly only tested each game for 20 minutes each. F.E.A.R. has zero slow downs - I get a meaty 120fps at high detail. NOLF2 I didn't test that long because it had too many keys I needed to reconfigure and I wanted to leave that to another day.

I've tested some 15 more games and all the problems seem to be gone now - the GTX 750 Ti is a very good card for Windows XP and I haven't seen any graphical problems except for older games from the Win 9X era (late 90's) and for those I have a different system anyway.

red_avatar wrote on 2020-09-14, 09:03:

Discrete_BOB_058 wrote on 2020-09-13, 10:07:

Did you get any random slowdown? I experience a problem that the game drops from the normal framerate and caps to 16fps, until the game is restarted. It happens on XP SP3

I honestly only tested each game for 20 minutes each. F.E.A.R. has zero slow downs - I get a meaty 120fps at high detail. NOLF2 I didn't test that long because it had too many keys I needed to reconfigure and I wanted to leave that to another day.

I've tested some 15 more games and all the problems seem to be gone now - the GTX 750 Ti is a very good card for Windows XP and I haven't seen any graphical problems except for older games from the Win 9X era (late 90's) and for those I have a different system anyway.

What resolution do you use? I play at 1280*960. During benchmark it works fine for few secs then fps drops