Why can't my computer handle WW?

Flashfire · #1 January 6th, 2006, 02:58 PM

Just had the same problem with my computer at work. Fixed it by going into DXDIAG and ENABLING Direct3D and DirectDraw in the display tab. Give it a shot.

blargue · #2 January 6th, 2006, 05:16 PM

Argh! I tried those suggestions and nothing seems to help here. I checked the processes running (ctl + alt + del) and nothing peculiar showing there either. I tried updating DirectX to the newest version available too. No dice.

Any other ideas?

Thanks for your help by the way.

Fingers · #3 January 6th, 2006, 05:28 PM

GF4 should be enough to run the game, so it's some kind of a configuration issue. ZoneAlarm is known to have memory problems (on my laptop its memory usage slowly creeps up until it uses 2GB of memory...) but this sounds too drastic.

Do you have recent drivers for your video card? Is your desktop set to 32-bit color? Have you tried running with the -nosound command line option? Have you tried both windowed and fullscreen modes?

Strider · #4 January 6th, 2006, 06:50 PM

You might try turning off System Restore, also.
Start | Settings | Control Panel | System
Put a check on turning off System Restore.

blargue · #5 January 6th, 2006, 07:41 PM

Alas, it's not looking like it's meant to be.

Shadowcat · #6 January 6th, 2006, 08:44 PM

If upgrading your video drivers doesn't help, you could try downgrading them. Unfortunately the standard advice to ensure you have the latest drivers simply doesn't always hold true with nVidia, as they have a single driver to cover all their video cards, and newer releases almost always just focus on newer hardware, sometimes to the detriment of older hardware.

I also have a GeForce 4 (Ti4200), and the last good video drivers for my card under Win98 (which I run) was 56.64. Newer drivers invariably make my machine quite unstable.

A quick look at the nVidia forums suggests:
"43.03 was the most stable driver of its era." (link)
"66.93 WHQL drivers ... or even the good old 56.72 WHQL drivers" (link)

The latter being in connection with a GF4MX rathger than a GF4, but I suspect the 56.72s are the XP equivalent of my 56.64s so they are probably worth a shot.

Brainiac4 · #7 January 7th, 2006, 04:20 PM

256MB of RAM is way low for running WindowsXP. Do you get reasonable performance in other games?