Formatet HD, HoI now CTD's

[Lasse Nielsen]

I have a AMD 1800+ Athlon, 258mb ram, Geforce 440mmx, winXP newest drivers, onboard sound.

After formating the harddrive and installing all the components again Hoi and Eu2 suddenly CTD when i have choosen a country to play and loads. They both worked before, admittendly with earlier pathes of both games. The only way I can make them work is to either go on the lowest resolution or renaming the AVI folder to AVI_old, both options isn't satisfying when I have paid good money for the games. what should I do - I have searched the forum for similar cases but to no other help than the options I mentioned above.

- Thanks in advance

 

[Castellon]

The problem is with the bink player, not with the HOI code.
THe best solution is to disable the Bink player by renameing the AVI folder as you found.

The only thing this does is eliminate the into video. Once you have see it do you really want to see it every time?
If you do you could try starting the game, then Alt-Tab to desktop, and Ctrl-alt-del look for the Bink player loaded in memory, then manually shut the bink player down.

There is also a XP update that address the into video problem, you may want to make sure you have downloaded that and install it.

Hope that helps, we do want you to enjoy the game.

 

[Lasse Nielsen]

Thanks for the fast reply. I just wonder why it worked before and why it suddenly stops peforming when I update my PC.
It dosn't take anything from the superb gameplay of the two games, it's just a bit frustrating not knowing why? and if It will be the same problem with future games from this company (that would be sad cos I'm looking forward to CK ) but thanks anyway

 

[Castellon]

Could be lots of things.
When you reformat and reinstall, all your system settings are reset.

Make sure you update all your drivers.

 

[Lasse Nielsen]

have done, have got all the dorm "pc-wiz's" to look at it and they say that the drivers are all up to date.

 

[Castellon]

What is the driver version of your Video card?

 

[Lasse Nielsen]

driver version for my GeForce4 MX440 is: 4.3.4.5

 

[unmerged(6777)]

Originally posted by Lasse Nielsen
driver version for my GeForce4 MX440 is: 4.3.4.5

You may want to try unloading this driver and then reinstalling it...sometimes the nVidia drivers get into trouble during updates and leave little "pieces" of themselves behind. It's usually safer to kill them, then install the new one.

 

[Lasse Nielsen]

Did it. Didn't work, but thanks anyway.

 

[Castellon]

Why did you end up reformatting the hard drive?

 

[Lasse Nielsen]

to much clutter, wanted to make it a little bit faster by clearing all the muck. now one could kick oneself...

 

[unmerged(6777)]

IIRC there's actually a revision to the nVidia driver that was released this week. Maybe it will resolve the problem.

Also: have you downloaded and installed all of the relevent suggested updates in addition to the critical ones in Windows Update? There was an XP fix about 6 weeks ago that addressed an issue with certain graphics cards (IIRC the MX440 was one) that wasn't part of the critical updaates but was part of the suggested ones.

Even so, I still have 1 of my 3 computers which always CTD's unless I deactivate the Binkplayer and I still can't figure out why.

 

[unmerged(6777)]

Note also that the only thing the Binkplayer does is play the intro plashes (pseudo movie clips) which almost everyone gets tired of after a play or two and would far prefer to just have the game start to load immediately...

The other consideration is that Paradox simply doesn't have the budget or global sales volume to buy licences for the super fancy into clip players. It's all very well when you can release a new game and know that you can spread the licensing cost out over millions of units sold. It's another thing altogether when it has to be paid for with sales in the tens of thousands or a few hundred thousand instead. Much as it would be nice to have a splash player that worked 100% of the time without trouble for every system on the market, I'd personally prefer that they invest their resources in making the game itself as good as it possibly can be - rather than the 1 minute clip that I'll turn off almost as soon as I begin playing the game on a regular basis.

 

[Lasse Nielsen]

Thanks for the suggestions. And just for the record: I am not bitching! I'm just interested in why it didn't work after i formated. And because I would like to see the future intros in Paradox games...

 

[Castellon]

Well, as I said above, your reinstall reset all your drivers and settings. So now you have slightly different settings, or drivers.
Bink player obviously does not like this new set up like it did the original.

As for future games, shutting Bink off in this game will not effect other games.

 

[Lasse Nielsen]

ok. thanks

 

[Castellon]

No problem, Hopefully Bink player will improve with the next version.