MTW on compute is a dead horse - wont run :(

[Kiwidude78]

Hi there,

I recently brought Medieval Total War (asia/pacific version)- but it won't run.

I have a AMD 2500+ Xp, 512ram, G3 ti200 graphics card. I also had installed the MS Sp2, my other games run fine.

I also have the demo for Total War: Rome and that runs with no probs.

When I run MTW, I see it's small window with the MTW logo for several moments then the screen goes blank for a brief moment before going grey and jumping back to the desktop. I have done a search on the net for finding some advice or help on the matter to no avail.

So i thought to post here and see if anyone else has had this problem and was able to fix it. I also tried installing the patch. Then uninstalling and restalling, same problem remains.

If anyone can offer some advice it would be much appreciated ~:)
Cheers,

Kiwidude :charge:

[bretwalda]

Maybe DirectX problem? However unlikely since rtw runs fine... still, try to install latest directx... Sorry, I am not such a great computer magician :)

[Red Harvest]

Try various vid drivers. The GF3 Ti200 is pretty old so older drivers might work better. TW series games have had issues like this since STW--poor initialization. Sometimes you had to have certain drivers to get them to launch. I had this problem with a GF2, and saw it once with an 8500 (both in STW.) And sometimes it would run fine on system A that was nearly identical to system B, but B would fail to launch until you found the right combination.

You might also try upping your AGP aperture in the BIOS. Also, set refresh rates for various screen resolutions at reasonable values (particularly lower ones where Windows might default to something like 200 Hz.) I don't remember what resolution it normally comes up in for the MTW menu screen.

DX updates would be good as well. I would try DX9b rather than c if possible. EDIT: Never mind, I think SP2 comes with 9c.

[EatYerGreens]

Some games seem to be fussy when the desktop resolution and (particularly) the colour depth happen to be the same as the game settings. For instance, if I want 1024x768 with 32bit colour in the game, I set my desktop to 1024x768 x 16 bit colour and that helps.

Check to see that the XP SP2 installation process hasn't reset your desktop to 32 bit colour. Unlikely but still worth a check as it's not always easy to spot the difference by eye.

Also, with regard to fixing things by uninstall/reinstall procedures, it sometimes helps to uninstall any expansion packs and patches (assuming you even get such an option with the patch to MTW) prior to uninstalling the main program and then reinstalling them in their original order. A file which was modified by the patch and subsequently sufferred file corruption, for example, will not be restored to proper condition by reinstalling the game, as the game installer will encounter a more recent timestamp and is likely to skip overwriting the file which required repair. Re-applying the patch may even fail to re-overwrite the file because it sees the 'right' timestamp and also skips that bit. Uninstall all, in order to start from scratch and all should work correctly.

Make sure to use any uninstaller routines provided by the game/patch or use the Windows Add/Remove Programs tool rather than deleting files and directories as only a proper uninstall routine can tidy up Windows registry entries for you.