[relayerman]

Anyone have any suggestions other than the one EA gives you for getting 007 Nightfire running on XP w/SP1 and all the updated drivers for Creative Audigy and ATI Radeon 8500DV? I'm bummed. I get the splash screen and then a black screen for a few seconds and BAM! back to the desktop.

[thatsteveguy]

If you are running the new 3.0 Catalyst driver (for your ATI card) that may be your problem.
I have trouble with a few games now that I have them installed.
Did you have any problems with the game when you ran the Catalyst 2.5?
If you didn't then you might want to go back to that driver set.
Try that and see if it helps.
S

[relayerman]

I was using Catalyst 2.5 at this point. I tried Omega's Radeon drivers that are tweaked for gaming and I still got the same results. Game won't start in WinXP. Period. Gotta be the video card or drivers. Posted email toe EA tech support. Maybe, just maybe, will get a response. Thanks.

sww

[ThC 129]

sounds like your direct X installation or something along those lines are broken. I had something like this happen to me, the only way to fix it was to format.

[relayerman]

Installed ATI Catalyst drivers 3.0 and upgraded Direct to 9. DxDiag posts no problems and all other games work fine (including Battlefield 1942, Mech 4). I even tried a NoCD hack to make sure it wasn't hitting a bad spot on the CD or something. Nothing works. Tried all kinds of AGP settings, Direct3D settings, sound card settings, video settings, refresh rates. Yu name it, I've tried it (I think I hit everything). I think its a Radeon A-I-W 8500DV problem with the game, but I could be wrong. Thanks for the reply.
sww

[ThC 129]

could very well be =/. I had the wierdest problem, my system would not accept any drivers but the 42.01 WDM drivers i think they were in order to get AGP acceleration and have D3d work. So i got sick of the crap and formatted. My vid card is a GeForce 4 Ti4200 and as you said you have a ATI.

Nightfire is built on the decrepit Half-Life engine as well so that is a problem in and of itself trying to run new hardware on an old engine. Why EA chose gearbox and that engine beats the hell out of me 8)

[relayerman]

They ahd me rename the MOVIES folder to MOVIES.OLD so that the game could not find them on the hard drive. The game therefore asked for the 2nd CD which is where the movies are located. These are just cut scenes and such and don't play as smooth (thy are AVI files) from the CD but the game plays! They said they are still looking into the root cause as to why they won't play from the hard drive.

SWW

[Mr.Guvernment]

try installing AVI codecs?


i put it in (the game) and ran fine - but i also watch AVi movies and so i have a few diff types of video codecs in my system.

[relayerman]

Well, the AVI codecs are standard with Microsloth's Media Player and that is installed (and upgraded) so that's not really the issue. Besides, I opened the MOVIES folder and watched several of them by running them. Its got something to do with the way they are loaded, or at least the opening sequence, because I noticed that there is no sound with the intro AVI. Only with the cut scenes. I also noticed that the they are using the ogg vorbis files for a lot of the sound. I'm no expert here, but its kinda fishy to me.

The games works, though, and I see/hear everything.

sww

[Bursar]

I'm sure there was a patch on Windows Update for games that suffer problems when trying to run movies clips. Have you got that particular update installed?

It might be worth having a look to see if it can be removed, and then reinstall that update.

[Mr.Guvernment]

Quote:

Well, the AVI codecs are standard with Microsloth's Media Player and that is installed (and upgraded) so that's not really the issue.

sww

Actually, the AVi's i get media player will not play until i put in other codecs.


but others wise, i am really not sure on this one. usually if there are no codecs it will only play sound and not video. weird, vewy vewy weird!

[Sattracer]

I am having exactly the same problem with Electonic Arts/Westwood's Earth and Beyond. I have ran it before on a "test" version of Windows XP Pro Corporate, no problems, but, I bought my own copy of XP Pro SP1, and now it won't even get to the EULA before it crashes to desktop. I am baffled and so is EA.

[DosFreak]

I don't have the game so I cannot help you except for these guidelines:

If you bought it then return it.
If you Warezed it then delete it.
If it's produced by EA then STAY AWAY FROM IT!



Obviously Gearbox didn't care about it, and EA doesn't so why should you?

[RedStar]

my friend had this problem.
One of the things i suggested was installing the indeo codec since win XP sp1 (a) does not come with it.

I also suggested a few other things i can't remember.

But the game worked after...

Video clips played...and the mouse cursor moved at a normal speed on the second menu