Stranglehold Demo / Retail not firing up

[bluetech]

I am running the following system:

CoolerMaster Ammo 533 Aluminum (No PSU) - Silver
Antec TruePower Trio 550W PSU
Gigabyte GA_965P_DS3 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
Intel Core 2 DUO E4300 "LGA775 Allendale" 1.80GHz (800FSB) - Retail
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 775)
GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400C5 800MHz Value DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400DC)
BFG GeForce 8800 GTS OC 320MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail
Western Digital Caviar RE 320GB 3200YS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM
Western Digital Caviar RE 320GB 3200YS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM
Western Digital Caviar RE 160GB 1600YS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM
Sony AW-G170AB2 18x DVD±RW x12 Ram Dual Layer DVD-Writer - (Black) OEM

With windows XP and c2d @ 3.0GHz.

The above game, when attempting to load the demo or retail version I get the bullets with orange background splash screen. Then I get a screen res change to what I can tell as 1024x768 I think as I can see some desktop icons as a black square hangs in the middle. And then you wait, and wait... no joy.


Has anyone else had this problem? I have updated to the latest NVIDIA drivers (163.71) also.

Thanks

 

[bluetech]

OK, it was a background task. I uninstalled logon xp, cursor xp, boot skin and logon studio. Just disabling them at startup via msconfig did not do the trick. Uninstalling them however has got the game working. Hope this helps for others with the same issue. Now I just have to get the game working at 1440 x 900. What is it that is so hard for game manufacturers to get games running at widescreen resolutions? Nearly everyone I know has a widescreen monitor now!

 

[bluetech]

There are some commandline switches that resolve this:

-ResX=1440 -ResY=900

Replace values with your screens res. Incase you dont know how to use, simply rightclick on the Stanglehold game shortcut, select properties and in target, go to the end of the text in this box, put a space, and enter the above with your res.

Again, hope this helps others who may have this issue.