CFS1 will not load, HELP, Please..

[andrw59]

CFS1 simply will not load.... I have no idea what has gone wrong. I have used the game for years on many upgrades and reincarnations of my system, without problem, then suddenly.....nothing!

This is what happens: Double click icon, Screen goes black, reverts to 640x480 and shows cursor..... then nothing, cursor can still move but ctl+alt+del will not work so I have to press reset and reboot system.

This is what I have tried: Uninstall and reinstall game, this has left it as above but now showing intro video prior to blanking.... Reinstalled video card, no change...
Altered screen res and colour before trying to start game, no change... tried to run from CD, no change...

My system is: Win 98 SE, Athlon 2400+, 512Mb DDR, Inno G-Force 4 MX 440 128Mb AGP 8x....

All and any suggestions would be greatly appreciated,
It's the only game I use, consequently I am in abject misery without it...
Yours pleadingly, Andrw59

[Hagar]

Andrew. Check your Desktop color display settings. As I recall CFS1 doesn't like anything over High Color [16 bit].

[Dan]

I used to run mine on True colour on a slower system than that.
Dan

[andrw59]

Hagar, Dan,
Thank you for your replies,

Hagar - I already tried going back to 640 x 480 & 256 colours before trying to load game....

Dan - So did I, thats why I can't understand whats going on...

Since my first question there has been worse to follow. I loaded the, in my opinion inferior, CFS3. Guess what, exactly the same..... Loads to blank screen.
I talked to nvidia, they gave me: 61.76_win9x_international, apparently some brand new super driver compatible with everything, has it made any difference? has it ****!
( Obvious sign of someone on the edge )

Any other suggestions would be gratefully received... Andrw59

[Dan]

Hmmm. Does your PC have a CD writer or other big capacity backup drive or any important dtat? It sounds to me that its not just you thats on the edge, but your machine as well. Can I sugeest a re-format? Do you have aby other nagging problems with it?
Dan

[andrw59]

Dan.... No, there are no problems... Speaking as a computer maintainer, I find one uses re-format as a euphamism for 'no idea'....

However, the panic is over, I have fixed it!

I found out, from some different game forums, that the geforce-4 has an issue with open GL games.... The solution was simply reduce the refresh rate to 60Hz!
( This also made CFS3 load and run OK )

Final outcome then, is: Flying again at 1024 x 768 res 32bit colour... The next problem is mastering flying the Flettner helicopter.... I think, perhaps, I need one that still has stabilisers... Like the bike I had 50 odd years ago....

[Dan]

one uses re-format as a euphamism for 'no idea'....

It does thta, but my PC was going for about 6 months, BIOS beeps the lot, re-formatted it and it all went back to normal with better performance.
Good luck with the heli,
Dan