Lhademmor: Hi. So I just bought this, but can't play it.
Whenever I try to run the game, the screen turns black for a moment, and then I'm kicked back to the desktop. No error messages, no nothing.
Can anyone help? I'm running Windows 7, my graphics card is of the ATI Radeon 5700 series.
Hi, I don't have this game myself but have seen your other comments in another thread asking for help. Firstly, can you provide full hardware specs of your machine for us as it may help? Secondly, here are a few tips to try (you may have tried some, you may not have tried others, so hopefully one of the below, or a combination thereof, will assist you).
First off, try running with Run As Administrator and try using the different compatibility modes (XP, 98, etc). Also try the other options such as disabling visual themes.
Next up, install location. I'm guessing you may be using the default install location which installs into Program Files. This is fine on older operating systems such as XP, but on Vista and Win7 the Program Files are protected by DEP and UAC - the security measures that these put on the Program Files contents is to prevent any change to them after the software installation which can cause issues with older software and can result in save games and config files going into your Users folder. My own recommendation is to never install games into Program Files if you are using Vista or Win7 and to instead install into your own folder, such as C:\Games\ which won't have DEP and UAC preventing alterations.
If you can get the game running and can keep it running whilst getting the task manager up (e.g. alt-tab and then open task manager or similar) you can set the processor core affinity to just your primary core (only applicable if you have a multi-core CPU). This can help with performance with older games (usually speed issues with additional CPU speed making it too quick). If you can't get the game running then there are ways of creating shortcuts to launch the game with only your primary core. I can provide this information if you want it but I've not yet had to try it myself yet.
Look at any application conflict issues. You might have an anti-virus program which is running at the same time which has an incompatibility with the game. Try disabling it before starting the game.
Lastly, it could be a DirectX issue. Vista comes with DX9L and DX10. Older games will use the DX9 library but DX9L is incomplete. As such, download the full DX9 redistributable from the Microsoft download site (November 2008 and June 2010 are the latest ones they've released). Install the redistributable and try the game again.
Hopefully one of these methods will work for you.