rlh1138

Wow, this brings up bad memorys. Thanks for the recent posts and good tips. I'm going back and retry this one - I've been avoiding it, I think for years.

Just responding to one of the questions here about real life tactics, (as opposed to what may/may not work in CMBB). I've been reading 'Panzer Aces', lots of stories from Eastern front tank fighting. Seems a lot of the German TC favored the rush, at least I'm reading a lot of stories about, '...coming up on a Russian village we encountered an AT screen of guns. We moved forward at high speed, pausing to fire'. I have no idea how this book is regarded, but it seems pretty factual to me. And of course, it's only the recollections/history of 6 or so of the more famous German TC. FWIW rlh138

Just for FWIW, I also use Spybot regularly (and recommend it - wait till the 'Xjupiter toolbar' takes over your IE someday), and it does not affect my ability to log on to this, or other, forums. There were some settings involved with it, which I don't have in front of me, but look thru the Spybot menu and see if you can adjust it's level of killing things off.

Thanks Matt, By coincidence, I'd just tried that very thing before checking back here. Unfortunately, it didn't work. However,I now have the 41.09 drivers and the newer 45.23 in folders, so I'm loading the 41.09 to play CM, then loading the 45.23s to use Photoshop Elemments. Since those are about the only two things I do on the computer, I do a lot of switching back and forth that I'd like to stop. I think I'm just stuck however, until one of the NVidia upgrades no longer messes up CM. (Or play in 640X480, which I don't think I'll be doing) I'll keep trying the new ones as they come out. On another note - you may have been hearing this from others - what's with the very long load times these days for the home page and subsequent changes? ie. going to Forums. Are you guys on the East Coast? I was thinking maybe the power blackout was affecting things. What's been a usual 2-3 second load (DSL) is now about 25 -30 sec. Don't know if it's happening for others or not - most of the rest of the Net, I least where I go - seems normal. Thanks again for the advice - if you think of anything else I could try, I'd be willing. rlh1138

I've posted on this before, some months back. Got a suggestion or two, but nothing that solved my problem. This all started when I upgraded my NVidia driver, and at the same time upgraded to Direct X 9. Upon staring CMBO (and BB) I get the 'set graphics' screen you get when you've deleted your .pref file. It's suggesting 640X480, and in fact CMBO will run at that. (But who wants to). Choosing any other setting gets you the error msg. above, and no CMBO. Today I upgraded to the 45.23 that Matt posts about above, but still the same problem. Any advice, suggestions? Windows 98 SE, Athlon XP 2000+, Ti4200. Thanks for any help Ray PS. Thinking about moving to Windows XP, think that might help this problem??

I'm one of those who are claiming, (or at least feeling in my heart), that DirectX 9 - in conjunction with the NVidia driver upgrade, messed up my CMBO/BB. My symptoms were not being able to run the program(s), and getting an error msg. about 3D, or maybe 3D Direct, (poor memory, not at home machine), not being implemented. I needed the new drivers in order to use some features of PhotoShop Elements. Showing my priorities, I went back to the earlier drivers (couldn't go back to DirectX8), and both games now run fine, as they did before the upgrades. I'm living without levels and curves in PE. FWIW, I don't believe the current drivers and DirectX 9 are compatable in all machines - as far as CMBO goes. But what it is exactly about my machine, (AMD 2000+, Ti4200), that doesn't work, when most people are OK - I don't know. I noticed just today that Matt has posted a test for some new NVidia drivers (45.23), guess I'll test them out tonight - Caveat Emptor I guess

Wouldn't mind playing and being a tester, responding, etc. - but can't face yet another sign up, get a password, no, that one doesn't work, yadda, yadda. Any chance you'd post this or email it somewhere that doesn't require me to register?? rlh1138 res6vm8a@verizon.net

Slappy, OK, I can read so I know I'm not going to get these for awhile, if at all - so you don't have to answer. But, they sound like the kind of thing I'd like - so if/when you want some more testers, (and someone who PROMISES to play them and email you), my address is: (my profile is wrong) res6vm8a@verizon.net Thx rlh1138

They are on the Nvidia web site. But, watch out. I tried to use them after upgrading to DirectX 9, and was never able to play CMBO after that. I finally gave up and reinstalled the 4109s.

Drifting from the topic only a bit... I recently had a HD reformat that led to my installing DirectX 9 as part of the rebuild. I'd been on DirectX 8xx. I then put the latest NVIDIA driver back on as well. (For my GeoF Ti4200). Lo and behold, CMBO would now not 'take' any graphics setting (during first startup), and got me into a problem described on another thread awhile back, of whether 3D Direct, or something like that, was being recognized. In spite of trying various suggestions, I was eventually forced to go back a model # in NVIDIA drivers in order to keep playing CMBO(. So... my point.. as near as I can tell, it was the combo of DirectX and the video drivers that messed up, cause I was using that video driver with DirectX 8 with no problem before the reinstall. Since I can't go back in DirectX versions, (afaik) I'm stuck with the older video drivers, which don't happen to work with a PhotoShop plugin I want/need to use. Rats!! I'm waiting for NVIDIA to release a newer driver and try my luck with that.

FWIW - I couldn't get CMBO to run after installing the 44.03 drivers over DirectX 9. Had to finally go back to the drivers before. Had a black screen, got ask about what screen res I wanted, and that's all the further it would go. Finally gave up, after trying some fixes listed here, and went back one generation of drivers.

Yep, I had a Direct X problem. I'd forgotten that during the reinstall of everything I'd also upgraded to Direct X 9. Evidently DirectX 9 and the new NVIDIA drivers didn't get along, or, something went wrong during the install. At any rate, I reinstalled the earlier NVIDIA drivers, and now I can play again. I'll take some time later to carefully try the 44.03 drivers again and see if I can get them and DirectX to get along. Thanks to all for the help. Ray

After my first virus in 14 yrs. of computing, I've just scrubbed my Hard Drives to the bare metal, reformated, and am having the experience of realizing just how much stuff I had on there. Anyway, I've put CMBO back on and am getting the above msg. upon startup, after I try and select a screen configuration. To be exact, if I chose to 'skip' the first one, I get the msg. If I just wait I get the msg. If I pick the 640 X 480 first choice, the game loads, but runs badly. FWIW, everything ran fine before. I have however, changed to the new NVIDIA drivers during my reinstalling Windows, etc. I had read good things about the 44.03s here, and figured to put them on now. I have an AMD, Athon 2000+, GeoForce 4 Ti4200, 512 MEG ram. Any thoughts, suggestions?? Thanks Ray Hudson

JasonC, Very helpful (as your comments have been in the past). I'd just moved up to higher point fights, using battalions for the first time, and had been dealing with exactly that question. 'How do I get this Heavy Wpns. group into the fight'. This will help alot thanks again. rlh1138

My PBEM partner and I are looking for a new battle, contact me @ res1ejgn@verizon.net - we'll get back to you with feedback. Ray