Raymond Luxury Yacht on 2/10/2010 at 05:37
That is what comes up on my screen when i try to run Total Overdose.
I have played the game before on this computer, so I know it has worked. What i cannot figure out is, what changed? I would have to assume it's the computer - perhaps the video card? - since i can't imagine the program in the discs changed.:confused:
Any ideas on what to look for? Thanks.
For the record, my specs are:
P4 3.0 Ghz, with hyperthreading
XP
1 GB of RAM
Nvidia GForce 6600 (driver 94.92; also tried 77.72)
I don't know if more is required to help
Renzatic on 2/10/2010 at 18:51
Could be a refresh rate issue. The game might be defaulting to something too high, and your monitor can't handle it. Does the game have an external setup dealie you can use to tweak the settings?
Raymond Luxury Yacht on 3/10/2010 at 02:06
I looked for one, but wasn't able to find it. I was thinking it was resolution or refresh rate, but couldn't figure out how to change it.
The only other thing I can think of is, maybe I used my older video card, an Nvidia GeForce FX5900XT. Might that solve the issue?
Raymond Luxury Yacht on 3/10/2010 at 04:19
Well, I am one step closer, I think; maybe it's one step back....
When I adjusted the refresh rate on the monitor, 75Hertz was as high as I could go. The next increment was to 85 Hertz, which produced the black screen with 'Cannot Display This Video Mode'. I still don't understand why I get that message with a game i have run on this system before. The last thing I could think to do was try the other video card, since I am pretty sure that was the one I had at the time, but I got the same message on black screen. So if it's the refresh rate, why is it so high in the game, and why did it change? And how can I change it in the game files?
Also, something interesting - when I insert the disc, and the autorun comes up, the icon at the bottom had a white background, but when I launch the game and get the message the background is blue. It makes me wonder if that's significant.
The Eidos Support was no help, since both times I tried to send a contact email at technical support, I got a message that the email failed to send. I wonder if they would know about the blue/white difference
Zerker on 3/10/2010 at 14:39
Can you find a config file in the game's directory? Often times you can change the video settings by manually editing the file to get it to something saner (that actually displays).
Of course, if they aren't stored as plain text, then it doesn't help much.
Raymond Luxury Yacht on 3/10/2010 at 16:18
All I could find were NAZ files. The one config file was dpconfig, a DPC file. When I opened it with notepad it was for headphone volume. There were 2 .dll files, and the TOD launcher.
The NAZ files had what looked like notepads next to them, leading me to believe that they were editable, but notepad never opened. I think I have WordPerfect, which I could try, but I don't think I have a decent program for writing
Renzatic on 3/10/2010 at 18:45
Since you're using older drivers, I believe there's a way to override refreshs rate on specific resolutions in the Nvidia control panel if you install coolbits. You can grab it (
http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=815) here.
It's been a long time since I've messed with the old Nvidia drivers, so I can't tell you exactly where to find the refresh rate stuff. Just search around a bit. You'll come across it sooner or later.
Alternately, you could try to upgrade your drivers to the (
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp-258.96-whql-driver.html) most recent version that has support for your card, and see if that fixes the problem.
Zerker on 3/10/2010 at 19:41
Quote Posted by Raymond Luxury Yacht
I don't think I have a decent program for writing
(
http://notepad-plus-plus.org/)
Raymond Luxury Yacht on 5/10/2010 at 06:03
So far, no go. The drivers are updated and I played with the video cards agai, as well.
The coolbits thing seemed like a useful tweak, but Norton went bananas on the site so I got too nervous to download it (I've had this system, virus-free, since April 2004. I don't want to wreck it now!).
This happened one other time, with a different game, but the same scenario - installed the game, played/completed it, uninstalled it (my hard drive isn't very large, so I wanted to be sure there was room for other stuff), and when I tried to install it again later, I got this same message. So I did what I think I'll end up doing this time - installing it on my wife's laptop.
Incidentally, the refresh rate on that monitor is at 60 hertz, and the video card isn't exactly meant for gaming, but the other game ran fine, as long as I closed out everything else. So it makes me wonder if there's something that the game puts in my hard drive that makes it hard to install once it's been in there...
I almost want to get a new hard drive, just to test my theory.
Almost.
Renzatic on 5/10/2010 at 07:54
Quote Posted by Yacht
Incidentally, the refresh rate on that monitor is at 60 hertz, and the video card isn't exactly meant for gaming, but the other game ran fine, as long as I closed out everything else.
One thing you have to keep in mind about refresh rates is that it isn't a universally specific thing. Like your windows desktop might be running at 1024x768 60Hz, but the game might want to run at 1024x768 120Hz for some reason. If that 120Hz is out of your monitors range, which might have a max refresh of 100Hz, it'll give you a black screen and say it can't display that video mode. I remember having trouble with this very same thing way back when I had a CRT monitor. Sometimes I'd run across a game that'd want to default to some ass stupid high refresh, and I couldn't run it at the resolution I wanted to without doing some pointless tweaking.
That's the reason why I suggested coolbits, because (if I remember right) it has an option to force a single refresh rate.
Quote:
So it makes me wonder if there's something that the game puts in my hard drive that makes it hard to install once it's been in there...
I almost want to get a new hard drive, just to test my theory.
This is kind of unlikely here, but it's possible your game might've had one of those funky old DRM schemes that used to raise havok with peoples computers. Like Starforce or whatever else they had that melted CD drives and gave away naked pictures of your mom. Might be a good idea to check into what copy protection, if any, it runs, and if you have to do a force uninstall of it with some special program.
Unfortunately if this is the case, you're kinda on your own here. That's mostly out of my area of expertise.
