My game won't run either

[Rebus_Badger]

Well I've been posting about this before but on the end of Helldorado's thread: "Topic: Game won't start. CD is OK. Installation OK. (?)" Which wasn't fair to his trying to get his own problem resolved, so I thought I'd start my own.

Rather than repeat myself all over again, let me just say I have a full install (except this time I had a CRC error in 11003.bmp while unpacking, but normally it installs fine). I used to get a lockup immediately on startup nearly every time regardless of desktop settings or card settings (Geforce 2 with 30.82, no IRQ conflicts) but it would run occasionally and run well with no lockups. Now with a complete reinstall of the game and deleting video drivers and reinstalling DX8.1, my new problem is that I get the screen resolution check then when I hit accept it kicks back to desktop. This is an improvement on locking up, but not much use. DXdiag tells me I have no conflicts and the Direct3d test runs fine. No AAS settings checked at present, though I ran the game last night at 2X no problem.

I'm puzzled at the change in problems (though the result is the same). With the new problem I've not got a game to run, at least I occasionally could before. Is it a disc reading error? Does CM:BB check for the cd immediately on startup or after the resolution selection screen? I've not noticed the cd drive reading on startup even when the game ran fine. The fact I have run the game successfully at times makes me really puzzled why it didn't most of the time, and now doesn't at all.

Note: I just noticed this last time that my CM:BB disc doesn't "do" anything when put in the drive, even though auto-insert notification is on, and all other cds activate something. This one just spins briefly to get the cd name for explorer. Is that indicative of anything? I never usually bother with running games from the auto-insert splash screens so I never noticed there wasn't one (or just assumed there wasn't one).

[newly edited for atrocious spelling]

[ October 05, 2002, 03:27 PM: Message edited by: Rebus_Badger ]

[Schrullenhaft]

There is no 'autorun' code on the BFC distributed CMBB CD, just one large RAR archive. Hence all your drive should do is spin it up to get the volume name.

What resolutions are you offered and which one do you select ? If you're immediately kicked back to the desktop after selecting the resolution then it sounds like you still have a DirectX problem, you selected a 640x480 resolution or that the executable may be corrupt.

Download WinRAR and re-extract the CMBB executable. Was the CRC error in the 11003.bmp file the only CRC error you got ?

[Rebus_Badger]

Yes, the 11003.bmp was the only one. I've got the latest winrar300 so I'll try that. Should I install over existing, or delete and reinstall? I should add that there is nothing related to CMBB in win98SE's control panel's "add/remove programs", but it shows up fine in startup, so that may not mean anything.

I was using 800 before when the game ran fine, and ran a game once at 1024 with no problem. The last few times I've tried all resolutions from 800 down to 640 and they all fail. I should add that after failing there is no active program related to CMBB in the "close program" box when trying a ctrl-alt-del to see what's active. Running dxdiag shows no problems with directx and the direct 3d test runs fine in both dx7 and dx8 tests. I checked regedit and there doesn't appear to be any multiple installs of graphic drivers (I did a full reinstall of my Geforce 2 GTS with detonator 30.82. Should I try the new 40 series ones?

Thanks for trying to help!

[Rebus_Badger]

Well I've installed the new 40.71 detonators and no difference. I used winrar and unpacked the whole thing again and still no difference.

What next?

[Schrullenhaft]

So when you launch CMBB now you get absolutely nothing on the screen ? Does the screen go black and then immediately drop back to the desktop ? Do you see or hear anything before getting dropped back to the desktop (other than a possible 'error ding' sound) ?

Have you shut down every program that is running in the background (Ctrl-Alt-Del for the list) ? Which Windows version are you running ? There are some programs that could have code running in the background that won't show up in a Task Manager (Ctrl-Alt-Del) listing that could still be interfering with CMBB.

Have you installed chipset drivers for your motherboard ?

[Rebus_Badger]

Yes, there is nothing except Win stuff running (no antivirus, no MSN, etc), and I just flashed my BIOS from ASUS a month ago, and the latest VIA 4-in-1 drivers.

But - there is a new development!! For one more try I uninstalled CMBB again and reinstalled with winrar. This time I got no CRC error (only twice before did I get one) and lo and behold the game runs again!! The first time I ran it I got one of those "program error boxes" and the details box showed EAX errors, but when I clicked close the game still ran. I've started the game no problem no about 9 times since yesterday in different resolutions and with AAS and anisotropic on and its running fine. Bizarre. The wonders of Windows.

To answer your question, though, before the reinstall I would get the black resolution selection screen and could "accept" or select different res options, but no matter what I selected the screen would go black for a split second (like it does before the Battlefront splash) then back to desktop with no noises/sounds at all.

Now that it's running I guess I'll not investigate further in case I create more trouble! Thanks for the attention. Hopefully you won't hear from me again!