PeeperStorm on 22/1/2012 at 21:16
I recently dug out my
MW4 games, and had various problems running them on my dual processor XP machine. Since
Mercenaries is the most worthwhile of the bunch, I figured I'd share some potentially useful tips for it.
1) Forget using your old game disk or buying a copy from Amazon. Microsoft cut a deal with Mektek to allow them to re-release the game
for free with a bunch of bugfixes, tweaks and improvements, including additional equipment and mechs. Get it, if only for the fact that it has hi-res/HD settings. (
http://www.mektek.net/index.php/home/articles/mechwarrior4-mercenaries-downloads-r1204) Link here. I had no luck with their custom download/installer program, so I went with the option of downloading the files via torrent and then using the MTX Extract and Patch Utility.
2) Crashing problems? All of my problems ("pure virtual function call" errors mostly) magically went away by preventing movie clips from playing. Something involving the resolution switching, I think. To do this, append the following to the target of the game's shortcut:
/gosnovideo
Yes, that's a slash, not a dash. This will make a couple of the menu screens look a little odd and prevent the intro and postscript movies from playing, but you can just click on those files to watch them any time that you want.
3) If the game keeps launching the video configuration utility every time you run it, append the following to the target:
-noautoconfig
This does work with the "/gosnovideo" switch. The two of them together look like this in the target:
"(path to game)" /gosnovideo -noautoconfig
4) On a dual processor rig you may be able to resolve other crashing problems by setting the affinity to one or the other of your processors. Run the Windows Task Manager, go to the Processes tab, right click on MW4Mercs.exe, and select "set affinity".
5) You may or may not need to run the program in Compatibility Mode for Windows 2000. It seems to depend on the individual PC.
