C&C generals video tech support

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Help!

I am playing C&C generals and am getting this problem: Whenever I start the game up, it goes to the main screen as normal and then crashes eabout 10 seconds later. It gives me some vertical columns, which appear to be based on the background colors in the main screen. I can’t avoid this crash, though I can delay it by selecting a game-type option, like “Single player”.

This happened with

I am running an Athlon 1.4 Ghz/ Win XP/ 512 MB/ Direct X 9.0/ Radeon 8500 64 MP with latest drivers.

I’ve tried using the last two driver sets, to no avail. I’ve also had this error before, when I got Simcity, bu then it worked with the newest drivers.

2

There’s people on the SCMB reporting that they needed the newest drivers to run Sim City but other games wouldn’t work anymore. Your XP OS might be a contributing factor, I’ve heard of too many games not working properly with it that I’m not going to bother upgrading my 98SE until absolutely necessary.

3

Drat.

4

I know Generals just came out, but does it really require DX 9 ?

you might try jumping back to 8.1

5

Since it did the same thing on 8.1, I’ll not try that. Doesn’t seem to matter.

Apparently, the designers didn’t bother to test much on ATI cards. You’d think it might actually matter, since these wankers, you know, promised they’d work. Many ATI users got burned by this.

Oh, but they could spare time for the GeForce lines. Bastards.

6

I heard that the vertical lines may be caused by an inadequate power source. You could also try downclocking the card; these are two solutions that I’ve read about from perusing the Rage3d boards.

By the way, I also have a Radeon8500, and I also get vertical lines for any 3d game if I use any driver set higher than Catalyst 2.3.

And about XP compatibility; that’s what dual-booting is for. :wink:

7

I’m running C & C: Generals under WinXP SP1 without any problems (so far). My system is an Athlon XP 2200+ with a GeForce Ti4400 card and DX8.1

Not much help, but I doubt that WinXP is the problem. May be an ATI issue.

8

I’m running it on XP SP1 with an ATI All-in-Wonder 9700 Pro, no problems here. DirectX 9 as well. Latest Cat drivers. So not sure it’s an ATI problem.

9

XP Pro on Athalon 1400, 512MB RAM, and ATI Radeon 7500 AIW here. Game would run but guys were floating in thin air (ie: no background graphics) until I updated the drivers for the Radeon.

Your card is AGP right? It says it won’t support PCI cards even with the proper chipsets.

MC$E

10

AGP card, yes. I don’t think the 8500 comes in PCI.

The 9700’s seem to be doing th best of any ATI card, but somethign is still rotten in the state of Denmark.

I don’t think so. I just put a new power supply in. Should be good to go.

[qupote]By the way, I also have a Radeon8500, and I also get vertical lines for any 3d game if I use any driver set higher than Catalyst 2.3.
[/quote]

I’ll try them. Again. Thanks, though.

11

The 9700 is really the first impressive ATI card, and it’s also the first that apparently has decent drivers. ATI has a rather lengthy history of having poor quality drivers.

Chances are, Westwood simply didn’t do extensive testing with ATI cards/drivers. Issues like this will typically be fixed in later patches, as Westwood’s quality control has gotten worse with pretty much every game they make. I guess that’s why Westwood is going under.

12

By inadequate power source, I mean it’s not supplying enough voltage across your AGP port. Underclocking might lower the power requirements of the card a bit.

13

Westwood already did go under.

14

I am running it on an ATI 8500LE 128. Appart form teh fact that my CPU is only 600MHz, it runs fine.

(But I haven’t installed the ATI drivers from Feb 11th. Only the drivers released before that.)