Help!!!!!!!!!!!!!Demo problems

[Tha_Field_Marshall]

OK, heres the skinny P4 1.7, Win XP, Ti 4200 128mb, running 52 16 drivers (was running 43 25's before problems) Also I have Anti Ailiasing turned off.

When starting game all I get is a black screen no music nothing. Looked at trouble shooting guide I may have missed something in there but does anyone have any ideas?

Anyone?

[ November 20, 2003, 09:08 AM: Message edited by: Tha_Field_Marshall ]

[Monty]

Hi

I assume you allready tried to alt/tab back to the desktop and back to the game ?

Have you installed this windows "update" ? : hotfix nr. 328310

Check at the Software/change-delete menu.

Monty

[Tha_Field_Marshall]

Alt-Tab doesn't work, There was no hotfix patch installed.

[Schrullenhaft]

If you're not getting music, then I assume that something else is wrong. The lack of music indicates that either your sound is also having a problem or that CM isn't loading up a lot of code (which should normally result in some sort of error dialog box).

You may want to delete the CMAK Demo installation and reinstall it. If that doesn't work, you may want to re-download the Demo. I suggest turning off any antivirus or other utilities running in the background while peforming the install.

[Tha_Field_Marshall]

I did delete the demo and reinstall it, I also re-downloaded it last night same problems I dont have anything running in the background. I am at this point very depressed, I wanna play damnit. :mad:

[Caid]

Hello. I had a similar problem in my computer. When I started the demo, all I can see is a black screen, no music, and my monitor turned off (the power yellow light turned to orange).

The problem was that the demo was trying to set a mode with a 85 Hz refresh rate, and that was above my maximum monitor rate. My monitor is a bit old.

The solution for me was to connect a modern monitor, start the demo, select a mode with a lower refresh rate (75 hz) and then connect my old monitor. Now the game is working fine.

Hope that helps.

[Madmatt]

Since I only ever see this problem on Nvidia cards I think it is related to refresh rates. A good utility to try out (even though the latest nvidia drivers allow you to configure refresh rates) is NVRefresh Tool which you can get from www.guru3d.com

What you should do is run that utility and set a safe (60hz) refresh rate for the resolution your desktop is set to at 16bits. Then launch the game. If it works, then delete the Prefs file and you can continue to raise the refresh rate a little at a time until you get your maximum accepted rate.

What I think is happening is that most people have their desktops set to 32bit color mode, but they have never configured their desktop for 16bit mode (which is what all CM's run in) so when they launch the game or demo, the desktop switches to 16bit color depth and the refresh rate, which was never set, jumps up to a level unsupported.

Some times this is caused by an old refresh rate bug in some Nvidia drivers. Other times its because windows is not properly ID'ing the monitor type and model and is thinking it can handle refresh levels that are beyond its capabilities. Whatever the root cause, forcing the refresh rates with a 3rd party utility is the next step to take in these situations.

Madmatt

[Madmatt]

I was just talking to Charles and he suggested something else to try. When you get that black screen, what is occuring, as I said above, is that the monitor is blanking itself because the DirectX test is trying to run in too high of a refresh rate. Now, that test will scroill through a variety of different resolutions and refresh rates, but it can take several minutes to go through them all.

The next time you launch the game and you get a black screen and dont hear the music (which is important as it indicates the game has not launched yet) try and just wait for a few minutes and listen if you can here the monitor *switch* modes. It should eventually get to a mode that will be displayed (probably 800x600@60hz). When you can see the screen, click the ACCEPT button which should launch the game.

If that works,I maybe able to hand edit your prefs file to allow you to run at a higher resolution and refresh rate but I want to see if just waiting to see if the screen modes changes works yet.

Please let me know what you find!

Madmatt

[Caid]

Well, now I am unable to repeat the bug.

First, I tried to move the file "Combat Mission AK Demo Prefs" to another directory. When I started the demo, the mode select window appear, and ask me for a 1024x7??x75 hz mode.

Second, I deleted the demo, and installed again. Same result.

I don't know what has changed. Yesterday, when I plugged the modern monitor, the game ask me for an 85 hz refresh mode. My monitor can't handle that, and that was the cause of my problem. Today, the game just ask me for a 75 hz refresh rate mode, which works fine. Maybe Windows detected the monitor change, and then adjusted the maximum frequency, but I can't be sure.

If I you want to run any other test, just let me know.

[Caid]

[Duplicate post deleted]

[ November 21, 2003, 08:16 AM: Message edited by: Caid ]

[Tha_Field_Marshall]

Madmatt - I have not yet had a chance to try any of your suggestions, Since I am on my way to Kentucky(f**king work :mad: ) it may be awhile before I get to look at it. But I will post here once I take a look see. Thanks for your help.

Brian

[Tha_Field_Marshall]

MadMatt- The NV Refresh tool worked to get the game running, but once I got it running I could not play any other games on my computer. So I tried to set the NV Refreshtool back to where my computer used to be and in the process screwed everything up. To male a long story short I did a system restore back to Friday when there was no NV Refresh tool installed, everything works fine now including CMAK??? Now I can start CMAK no problems except I have to ALt-tab out and Back into the game, just like I did in CMBB. Thanks for your help

Brian

PS. CMAK demo rocks

[Johnny Canuck]

I'll try setting my Geforce 2 GTS/Pro to 16 bits with a reasonable refresh rate and see what happens.

Alt Tabs, waiting for 20 minutes, patches, various drivers, etc do not seem to work with the black screen I've been having with Combat Mission these past months. It never did work for me with W2K or WXP on the same hardware.

It does work with the ATI 7000 I have at work though.

Oh well, at least VASL works.

[TufenHuden]

Set it to these settings,these where for a GF-4400

128mb-Gainward card-but I have a GF-5900FX-ultra

256mb with these settings on nvidia's 45.23's and works great on BO,BB,AK.

I don't now what I did,but I upgraded to nvidia

to 45.23's,know when I do this the problem seems to have that you boot the game,you hear the cmbo

/cmbb music but a black screen,then you hit alt+

tab and back that fix's it but you don't have to do that,1st you right click to properties/advanced

/GEFORCE4-TI-4400/performance&quality/image settings to-performance-AA to 4x-AF-2x-texture sharping checked-then go to open gl settings to

default color depth-set to-always use-16-bpp-

then to buffer flipping mode to-use block transfer

,then to vertical sync to-default,apply and click

ok,that might do the trick,my monitor adapter-refresh rate is a optimal,this is a p-111-1.2 gig

tualitin cpu/asus-tua-266-mobo/1-gig of ecc-pc-2100-low parity-not-registerd ram/GF-4-4400-TI-Gainward-golden sample/win-98-se-monitor-m-991-dell/sony flat-trinitron/these settings might not work with other rigs but I also did this with the

nvidias-44.03's and it worked,so I did have problems before,also not to forget in bios that

(vidoe cache) or vc mode not the USWC-(uncacheable,speculative write combining)seems

to mess things up or freeze cmbo/cmbb but other mobos can do it with the right mobo-dvrs/bois set

up .

This is for mine with Windows 98-se,but the 45.23's are working good/without the problems stated above,hope this helps out.