CS and XP - The How To Thread

gregb7

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Divided Ground wont load

to clarify, when i try to start either a campaign or a scenario,
the screen briefly says "loading main program", then sends
me back to windows. not getting anywhere here and it's driving
me berserk since i'm sure i've played this before grrrrrrrrrrr.
 

Jason Petho

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gregb7 said:
to clarify, when i try to start either a campaign or a scenario,
the screen briefly says "loading main program", then sends
me back to windows. not getting anywhere here and it's driving
me berserk since i'm sure i've played this before grrrrrrrrrrr.
Which version are you running of which game? Did you patch it?

Take care and good luck
Jason Petho
 

gregb7

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hi jason,
yep, installed from the CD and patched to 1.02.
got Rising Sun to work......no luck at all with
Divided Ground. :dead:
 
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Still sounds like a video (or maybe sound) driver issue. See if all your drivers are up to date. This place will give you a free scan: http://www.drivershq.com/. If you need a driver, but aren't sure what to do next, lemme know and I'll try to help. You can also do a quick test of your system's Direct X which is currently v9.0c. Go to your Start menu then "Run" and type dxdiag. That will walk you through a series of tests including video.

I'm not sure if the game will play in safe mode, but try it. If it works then you'll know it's a driver issue for sure.

Make sure your display color depth is set at 16 bit, not 32. You can also try setting it at a lower resolution like 800x600 instead of 1024x768.

I don't have Divided Ground, so unfortunately I have to assume your problems don't have anything to do with that particular version. Any other games giving you problems, ie Age of Empires? Weird that Rising Sun works.

Anyway, hope something here helps and good luck.
 

gregb7

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Hey General,

I have a subscription to driverguide.com, which scanned and updated all my drivers. Also reinstalled and tested directx.....no dice :(

very curious that rising sun works.....basically the same game.

no problems elsewhere either. this is beginning to stress me out. :crosseye:
 
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I know how you feel. I once updated a video card driver that broke a game. The next time I updated the driver, the game started working again. It's possibe that will happen to you. If you want to go really crazy, see if you can install an older driver.

The card manufacturer's site might help shed some light, also microsoft's site, believe it or not.

Divided Ground might have had known issues with certain cards; see if the CD has a "Read Me" on it. If so, let people know here in the forum.

One last thing. Open the game and let it crap out. Then go to start-control panels-administrative tools-event viewer. Click on "applications" (the application event log) first and see if there are any events flagged with a red circle. If so, click on that event and see what it says. Since it will have just happened, it should be the first one. Do the same thing for the system log. One or both may give you a clue or even a link to microsoft for a possible solution (don't be surprised if it's an unknown driver issue).

Did you try seeing if it would work in safe mode?

Some stupid things to try: uninstall the game and look for any folders the uninstall didn't take care of and delete them. If you have a registry cleaner, reboot and use it. Or if you're comfortable messing with the registry look through it for any references to talonsoft divided ground and delete it (back-up the registry first). Then defrag your drive and reinstall and patch the game.

Try lower your monitor's refresh rate. Below 60 hz the screen flicker will get pretty bad, so remember to put it back.

Good luck and I'll keep thinking. By the way, what video card do you have and how much RAM does your computer have?
 

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Thanks Gen.....I'll get more specific then.
My system is a Pent 4, 3000 MHz with 1024 RAM,
using Windows XP Home, SP1 (not 2).
Direct X 9.0c (verified), All in Wonder 9600
Series, 1024x768, 32 bit (changed it to 16 bit
for Divided Ground, no effect) 75Hz.

Can't think of anything else. Running in safe mode
didn't help. I can pick scenarios, campaigns etc.....
seems to crash when the map should appear.

Rolled the video card drivers back a few....no change.
Have reinstalled more times than I want to think about.

I'm trying a couple of more things that you mentioned....
checked the readme too.....nothing in there that I haven't
tried.

Thanks for the help.....almost ready too see how far I can
throw the CD!!
 
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Nice system, but you should seriously move to SP2 for a ton of reasons. SP1 is exploitable, for one, but I doubt it has anything to do with your present problem, so . . .

I'm still 99% sure it has something to do with your video card. I did a quick search on google and found this:

http://nwn.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=448886&forum=49

Scroll down to the 6th entry and try what that guy did. He got it to work (different game of course), Maybe it will help and his fixes seem easy to reverse if it doesn't.

ATI's site has a bunch of known issues with games (check out the second one, about default monitor):
https://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894

Finally, assume it is your video card and start doing some google searchs. I started with "Wonder 9600 game exits" (not in quotes). Instead of game exits try game crash, freeze, returns to windows, etc.

Last, did you ever check the logs for error messages?

Lemme know and good luck.
 

gregb7

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Hey Gen,
Tried the fix from the ATI boards.....no luck. I'll look some more.

Can't for some reason check the event log.....I get the error
message that the operation can't be performed because the
interface is unknown (!) :eek:

I am getting rather curious as to what color flames the CD
will give me when I set it ablaze.

gb
 
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Well Greg, I'm stumped. Could be Divided Ground is just too damn old. Since Matrix Games has the rights now, maybe email your problem to them. They're going to have to deal with all the video card problems eventually anyway (if that's what it is), maybe they'll start with yours. Wouldn't hurt to try anyway.

Here's one last long shot that you may have already tried, but it's never worked for me. Control Panels>display>settings>advanced>troubleshoot> and then try lowering the hardware acceleration. (The route I've given may be different on your machine so if you don't get there just look around in the display settings area and you'll find it).

Instead of burning the CD, why not go on ebay and pick up and old P2 for next to nothing just to use for old games? Network it into your new system. You can share the monitor. That's what I'd do, but then, I'm nuts.

Sorry I couldn't be of more help.
 

gregb7

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Thanks for all your help General.
Maybe I'll try it again when I'm
not so stresssssed out.
 

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Hi all,

Been doing some work on trying to get "Divided Ground" to work on my XP.

Turns out that if you extract all the files within the dgv102.exe patch except dg.exe, the game works fine ! Stops working if you then just extract the dg.exe file, so that must be the culprit !

On checking all the websites with this patch, some have 43 files within the .exe, some have 44.

Could it be that the error message asking you to insert the correct CD is because the dg.exe file is actually from a different Campaign Series game ?

Just a thought.
 

vince

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East Front 2 vs. Windows XP Professional SP2

Can anybody help with this ... I have not been able to get Talonsoft's East Front 2 to run on Win XP ... gets thru "Smack Play", "Main Menu", "Play Scenario" ... then, after selecting a scenario and saying "OK" to start a new game, get Microsoft (i.e. Debug", "Send Error Report", "Don't Send", etc) error message which reads -

"EF.ICD has encountered a problem and needs to close"

I have gone thru the Microsoft "Compatibility" wizard feature in trying to get this to work i.e. have set EF2 at Win 95 and 98 settings (where it used to run fine on my old system, but to no avail ...

anybody have any suggestions ? would greatly appreciate
 
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Hi Vince,

Go back to the beginning of the thread and read all the install instructions. You didn't say what version of EFII, but make sure you have the right patches for it and that they're installed. Probably best to uninstall the whole thing and start from scratch. If you have the correct patches and everything is installed properly, then start looking into XP drivers, sound card, video card, etc. This thread has covered just about every issue, including a ton of troubleshooting tips. All I can tell you is that EFII does work on XP. Let me know how it goes, I'll help if I can, but just about every idea I'll have has already been mentioned.
 

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thanks Gnrl - maybe I didn't do the v102 patch correctly?

Gnrl Confusion said:
Hi Vince,

Go back to the beginning of the thread and read all the install instructions. You didn't say what version of EFII, but make sure you have the right patches for it and that they're installed. Probably best to uninstall the whole thing and start from scratch. If you have the correct patches and everything is installed properly, then start looking into XP drivers, sound card, video card, etc. This thread has covered just about every issue, including a ton of troubleshooting tips. All I can tell you is that EFII does work on XP. Let me know how it goes, I'll help if I can, but just about every idea I'll have has already been mentioned.
thanks for the reply Gnrl ... have read all posts up to this one - will investigate driver updates next ... have version EF-US-v102 installed i.e. at least I think I installed it correctly ... what I did was to first install my original game CD, then I copied and pasted the download patch for v102 into the main file, and then double-clicked onto the patch which opened Winzip, and then I told Winzip to unzip and had the unzipped files placed directly in the EF folder where the other game files were(which, I thought, would then be overwritten by the unzipped files, yes ?) ...

the install wizard never came up and said you have successfully updated/patched whatever which is what I thought Talonsoft used to tell us (but it's been so long I just don't remember), so I guess I'm not sure if the patch even took since I have no way of checking it .... do you know what "EF.ICD" is, :) anyway
 
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Hi Vince,

I emailed Jason Petho for you. He knows the ins and outs of patching the different versions. Hopefully he can help. I think you either installed the patch incorrectly, or you got the wrong one. He should know, though.

Dave
 

Jason Petho

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vince said:
thanks for the reply Gnrl ... have read all posts up to this one - will investigate driver updates next ... have version EF-US-v102 installed i.e. at least I think I installed it correctly ... what I did was to first install my original game CD, then I copied and pasted the download patch for v102 into the main file, and then double-clicked onto the patch which opened Winzip, and then I told Winzip to unzip and had the unzipped files placed directly in the EF folder where the other game files were(which, I thought, would then be overwritten by the unzipped files, yes ?) ...

the install wizard never came up and said you have successfully updated/patched whatever which is what I thought Talonsoft used to tell us (but it's been so long I just don't remember), so I guess I'm not sure if the patch even took since I have no way of checking it .... do you know what "EF.ICD" is, :) anyway
Hi Vince

The .ICD file will only exist if you start playing a game.

In regards to your problem. I'd suggest unzipping the file in a temp folder, then copying and pasting the files into your EF2 directory. Overwrite all files and you should be good to go.

Hope that helps
Take care and good luck
Jason Petho
 

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(Sorry if I've totally missed a response to this question, skimmed the topic from page 1-8 but but didn't read too in depth besides the first post)

I have the World at War Collection (EF2 Gold, RS Gold, WF Gold), and when running them on WinXP (on an Athlon 64 3500, 1GB Ram, ATI Radeon x800 256mb vid card, Soundblaster Gamer), the games like to work for about 10-15minutes, then either the sound starts looping and the game freezes, or the game just freezes out of nowhere. If I get lucky I can alt-tab out, open the task manager, end the game, and then cannot get it to start again until restarting the computer. If unlucky, it freezes the pc entirely and I have to pull out the power cord to fix it. No idea what to try here, but it should show how much I love these old games that I keep trying to play them regardless!
 
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MC82 said:
I have the World at War Collection (EF2 Gold, RS Gold, WF Gold), and when running them on WinXP (on an Athlon 64 3500, 1GB Ram, ATI Radeon x800 256mb vid card, Soundblaster Gamer), the games like to work for about 10-15minutes, then either the sound starts looping and the game freezes, or the game just freezes out of nowhere. If I get lucky I can alt-tab out, open the task manager, end the game, and then cannot get it to start again until restarting the computer. If unlucky, it freezes the pc entirely and I have to pull out the power cord to fix it. No idea what to try here, but it should show how much I love these old games that I keep trying to play them regardless!
Hi MC,

The sound loop problem has been discussed before and is inherent in the game. The consensus was Microsoft's Direct X upgrades after Talonsoft stopped patching the game. Someone (I don't recall who) experimented with rolling back their version of Direct X and it seemed to resolve their problem. I've never heard of it causing any other problems other than sound looping though.

As for the game freezes, first make sure you have the current patches installed. Jason Petho has tons of instructions regarding this all over the forum. Second, consider uninstalling and reinstalling the game, in case of a corruption of some kind. Third, make sure your graphic card driver is current (if it is, consider rolling back to an earlier driver as an experiment, sometimes it helps). Same for your sound card driver.

It's really hard to diagnose this stuff, but reread all the suggestions in this post and try some out. I know the game works on XP systems and doubt it has anything to do with the Athlon chip, although...(I just thought of this) computer freezes can also be caused by overheating. Open the case and vacuum out the inside, making sure all the vents are unblocked. Make sure all the fans are running. Did you purchase the computer or build it yourself? If you bought it from a reputable manufacturer, nevermind, if you built it consider a better heat sink. If your computer freezes ONLY when playing the game, then I doubt this is the case.

Any other problems with devices, especially USB? If you have a ton of USB devices connected and turned on, try turning them off when you play, like printers, scanners.

Any errors (check the event log)? Any other computer problems you've been having that you haven't mentioned 'cause you didn't think it related? Check for spyware? Viruses? Do you have any kind of system mechanic installed? Something that can check for registry errors? (There are free ones out there that you can try). How full is your harddrive? Did your computer come with the 1 gig RAM, or did you upgrade yourself. If so, double check you got the right kind of RAM and that it's seated correctly [long shot]. also, it's possible you have a bad RAM chip. There are free testers out there. Go on google and do a search.

This is a good place to start when troubleshooting: http://www.pcpitstop.com/

Hope something in here helps.

Good luck,
Dave
 

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to clarify, when i try to start either a campaign or a scenario,
the screen briefly says "loading main program", then sends
me back to windows. not getting anywhere here and it's driving
me berserk since i'm sure i've played this before grrrrrrrrrrr.
A very late reply to this (I found this thread when trying to get DG to run, myself).

I had exactly this problem and after trying just about everything here and elsewhere I discovered what caused it - or at least my manifestation of it.
Believe it or not, it was bloody Starforce (aka 'Frontline Pro') in the form of whichever version gets installed with GT Legends. I noticed that the CD drive revs up at that point, speculated there might be some sort of conflict and removed the most likely suspect. Bingo, game now runs.

Worth a try if you are still around, and have any Starfarce protected game installed.
 
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