My computer crashed terminally a week or so ago,

the bit with deleting the glidos file causing a problem seems odd ( unless some glidos process was still running..?).

Do you know why your computer crashed terminally initially ?

have you tried (as a diagnostic tool) running in windowed mode or setting the desktop resolution to the same resolution you are trying to run glidos TR with ?

If I had to pull a rabbit out of my hat ( and guess ) I would look for (incorrect/incompatible or older ) chipset or video card drivers or ( considering your earlier troubles ) an actual intermitent hardware flaw

That's so odd. The thing about using VDos32 is that it should isolate you to some degree from the specifics of graphics and audio drivers. As far as I am aware, there is no separate FMV player, it's just a library used within TR1. For some reason either VDos32 is returning an unusual result to TR1 or TR1 is configured strangely. Using the preconfigured archives to install TR1 should avoid any strangness in configuration, but its also difficult to think why Vdos32 might behave differently on one system to another.

I think I've seen this error at some time or another, while developing Vdos32, maybe while working on the SoundBlaster emulation. You could try using VDos32 to run SETUP.EXE from the TOMBRAID folder, and allow it to redetect audio settings.

Thanks for your replies.

z9d10 wrote:

the bit with deleting the glidos file causing a problem seems odd ( unless some glidos process was still running..?).

I actually think the fact that I was busy with Glidos when my computer crashed is pure coincidence and has nothing to do with my current problem: all relevant programs were on my system drive which I reformated before reinstalling Windows.
I had been spending the afternoon installing and uninstalling various TR games from different sources, including TR1 and TRUB, so it's just possible that the process was still running somehow (though I had shut Glidos down).

Do you know why your computer crashed terminally initially ?

I have no idea as to the root cause. In my opinion, though, Windows just did something wrong, as it will from time to time. I'd been using it since February 2007 without any problems whatsoever, and certainly not such a fatal one. (Remember, this is Vista, I imagine it's not as stable as XP -yet.)
Neither Windows Restore nor the boot DVD could remedy the problem. (If you want details, I could describe the symptoms and my attempts at fixing them for you.)

have you tried (as a diagnostic tool) running in windowed mode or setting the desktop resolution to the same resolution you are trying to run glidos TR with ?

Yep, I tried all available options, including same resolution and windowed mode.

If I had to pull a rabbit out of my hat ( and guess ) I would look for (incorrect/incompatible or older ) chipset or video card drivers or ( considering your earlier troubles ) an actual intermitent hardware flaw

The hardware is just over one year old, all drivers are up-to-date (I just checked), and anyway this is exactly the same configuration I was using before, when Glidos and VDOS32 worked just fine.
The first time the hardware flaw thesis crossed my mind was when I did a reboot with log: almost all error lines contained the terms "CPU" and "display driver". That scared me, all the more so as one of the first error messages I got when it initially started crashing said something about the a BIOS rate being invalid or something (unfortunately, I didn't write it down at the time and it never reappeared).
However, the computer booted, Windows did get to the desktop -although it was unusable because I kept getting a string of error messages (the "X stopped working and had to close" type), no programs started, and the desktop kept reloading-, and Safe Mode was a bit better (still showing symptoms, but to a lesser extent), and I didn't get any black screens or auto-reboots or other similar symptoms which I would expect in case of a harware malfunction, and I've never had anything like that before nor since. So my non-expert guess (hope?) would rather be that Windows got corrupted somehow.

Thanks for the suggestions anyway.

Glidos wrote:

As far as I am aware, there is no separate FMV player, it's just a library used within TR1.

That's what I thought. As I said, throughout all the testing we did last spring/summer, this error never happened once, which makes it all the more bewildering (not to mention frustrating), even more so as I should be running the program under exactly the same conditions as before.

Using the preconfigured archives to install TR1 should avoid any strangness in configuration, but its also difficult to think why Vdos32 might behave differently on one system to another.

I've installed the archive available on the Glidos Web site Audio Packs page, but I've also tried with both archives available on the VDOS32 Web site.

I think I've seen this error at some time or another, while developing Vdos32, maybe while working on the SoundBlaster emulation. You could try using VDos32 to run SETUP.EXE from the TOMBRAID folder, and allow it to redetect audio settings.

I did that, the auto-detected settings tested fine (I also tried a couple manual settings which tested positive), but it still won't work.
I wrote at some point last summer that I'd uninstalled VDMSound because apparently you'd said it wasn't used by VDOS32, but it is installed here: that can't be the problem, can it?

Cheers.

PROBLEM SOLVED!

Hum... How do I say that?

Well, it turns out that my TR CD-ROM was in the wrong drive, but I didn't realise that at the time because, one, they used to be the other way round (I must have reinitialised my BIOS or CMOS settings at some point), and two, as I had the TRUB CD-ROM in the other drive, it didn't ask me for the TR CD-ROM nor did it crash immediately.

Furthermore, I seem to remember Glidos asking me to put any CD-ROM in the empty drive (that's when I put the TRUB one in), so I never thought that might be the problem until I came upon a thread in the TR Forums warning to put the TR CD-ROM in the first drive.

TR1's running just fine with Glidos now, looking forward to (re)playing it.

Thanks for the help anyway and sorry for any wasted time. At least this might help somebody else sometime.

Happy Tomb Raiding!

😀

Oh right! Interesting. I never knew before what error was caused by having the CD in the wrong drive.

Glidos is supposed to warn you, and is supposed to be configured to do so as default. Maybe I've disabled the test when VDos32 is in use.