old games failing

TheCowOfNow

TheCowOfNow

Assault then RUN AWAY!
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Nov 12, 2002
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so i recently found an old stash of pc games this week in my parents basement. decided i'd take some time to play through most of them. So i start installing these games on my new desktop. I install dungeon siege and sim city 4. i update both with the latest avail patches. i try to start the game and all i get is a blank screen. i can hear the sound fine but no video at all for eith er of them.

simcity 2k and 3k run fine. several other older games are fine.

is it just that these two aren't compatible with my vid card? do i need new vid card drivers or something?

this is getting really frustrating.
 
It's usualy operating system compatability like newer versions of windows, try running the games in compatability mode for older windows versions. A newer video card certainly won't help.
 
different drivers many times does help, dungeon siege should work in xp im pretty sure thats what we were running it on when we played it on a lan. if a newer video driver still dont work, try looking for a older one. or looking for old forums of the game, you might find some troubleshooting help, but as its so long ago may not be feasible for the rig u have. good luck.
 
if you're using XP pro, you can give this a shot:
Virtual PC 2007

Just install an older O/S that the games were originally designed for (assuming you have one).
 
Even if your on XP you may still need to use compatibility mode for older games.
 
It could very well be a video card issue. I tried to play Jagged Alliance 2 with my 4870X2 and for some odd reason the game screen would take a few seconds to refresh (previous menus sticking around, etc). Turns out it didn't like Crossfire which is a little confusing because the game doesn't support 3D acceleration?
 
Depending on how old the game is running a modern PC often is the cause. The system is just so different from the best tech back then.

DOS Box and other emulators can help limit your PC to be more like what used to be around. I have to do this to play Full Throttle and other old games that I love. Without it the game runs with no audio, and about 2 fps.

Virtual BOX can help too if you have the space (not a lot is needed) and the install disks for the old OS's so that you can just play them through that.
 
When I bought dungeon siege I was running XP.. never had a problem with it.

What are your system specs?

What about updating DirectX?

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...38-db71-4c1b-bc6a-9b6652cd92a3&displayLang=en

You may also want to make sure that the games that aren't working didn't by default install some outdated directx files into the game directory.

If you do find some... like something that had d3d in the name.. or any other files that are made by Microsoft (right click on the files and select properties - one if the tabs will have extended information like publisher, version, etc.) I would move them to another folder on your desktop as a backup and try again.

I actually just ran into an issue with a game called Dark Star One where the joystick throttle axis was backwards. Found out that there was an old version of xinput.dll in the game directory... deleted it so it would use the newer one that is installed in Windows and it fixed my issue completely.
 
What are your specs?
I can't speak for Dungeon Siege, however IME Simcity 4 seems to have a beef when running on ATi chipsets going back to the X1xxx series. Google is your friend on this one; there are many workarounds.

Fake edit: After a brief moment of research, Simcity 4 seems to have just as many problems when running on more recent Nvidia hardware as well.
 
I got some old old old classics that run just fine in windows Vista X64 (you have to install DX 9.0c).

1. Jazz jackrabbit 2
2. Atomic Bomberman
3. Diablo
4. MDK
5. Hunter Hunted
6. A-10 Thunderbolt

Usually anything that uses Direct Draw works just fine. I have actually thought about running a virtual machine complete with SB16 support for older MS-Dos based stuff
 
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