Why are games not booting?

keogh · 15 Oct 2008 at 11:22

Howdy all,

Ok this is getting frustrating now. I built my new system last week (specs below) and the first thing I did was install and play Crysis. This works fine, and I have been playing that quite a lot.

Well at the weekend I decided to install BioShock again, after installing it @ v1.0 it worked (booted) so I exited and installed patch 1.1. At this point the game would no longer boot, and I would just get a "BioShock.exe is not responding" message. I posted a thread on here about this (http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17930116), but could not come to a solution to the problem... so it still don't work.

Anyway, I just decided to install S.T.A.L.K.E.R (the original, not clear sky) and after installing I just went straight to installing all the patches to get it to 1.0006 which all went well.

Well would you believe it, this game is now doing the same thing:

What is causing this? Could it be the ATi drivers? Vista x64 (I'm sure I ran these games on x64 on my last system, so can't be that)?

I tried the no-cd cracks and that doesn't help, it just does the same thing.

Anyone have ANY clues at what could be causing this? Cos its somewhat annoying? And also strange that Crysis works fine?

ta

LeJosh · 15 Oct 2008 at 11:27

C:\Program Files\THQ\S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Shadow of Chernobyl1\bin\XR_3DA.exe -noprefetch

try that with the file it's .exe(space)(dash)noprefetch if it doesn't work err...

Dark_Angel · 15 Oct 2008 at 11:35

It is obviously a gremlin.

Or a more sensible note, is anything overclocked? I would recommend the newest drivers for everything, and perhaps the newest DX version too - has it just started to do it? What about 3d mark does that run ok endlessly?

keogh · 15 Oct 2008 at 11:45

Found the fix, I was looking at logs and on STALKER it crashed after the sound card was being initialised. I then realised that I never installed drivers for the supremeFX II soundcard that I use that come with my mobo, as windows was doing it fine.

However, it would appear that Windows was using a generic HD driver, and games didn;t like this. So I installed the SOundMAX driver from the ASUS website, and voila, STALKER boots! I assume Bioshock will aswell, but haven;t tried that yet!

Sorry for wasting your time

LeJosh · 15 Oct 2008 at 11:47

do what I said to do anyways it may improve performance

And you didn't, we're always glad to help!

keogh · 15 Oct 2008 at 12:17

Cheers LeJosh, I did add -noprefetch after you wrote that anyway, I always use to run that when I played this game.

I just tried BioShock and it works like a dream, and runs beautifully all maxed at 2560x1600... I forgot how much I loved this game (even though I completed so many times)

ta