[unsubRedun]

I've been searching all over for days to try and find a solution to my problem, and registered here hoping that I could get a straight answer, or at least one I could use and was actually tailored to my problem.

So, my games aren't working.

So be more specific, any games that I'm installing will not launch properly. Whenever they do, they all have seem to have the same error, and it's that they all give a black screen, are windowed at 1024 x 768 (whether I have them set to full screen or not), and the first thing they do is go into "not responding" mode, and refuse to go to any sort of loading screen no matter how much time they're left alone.

The games I have experienced this problem with so far are Trackmania Nations Forever, Dungeons and Dragons Online, and Battlefield Heroes. Luckily all all of these games are free (DDO's Having a Free Service Beta), but I'm hoping to resolve the problem before I go out and actually purchase a game and not be able to play it.

If you'll notice, all of those games are Online Enables, and they are all started by Launchers, programs that check for the game's updates and news before actually initializing the game itself. Another game I play, World of Warcraft, is the same way, but it seems to work just fine. One more thing I should note is that Trackmania worked just fine twice, and now it's showing the same problems too.

As I mentioned above, I've been searching for a while, through a ton of forums, for the games themselves and for Vista in general, and I have no been able to pinpoint my problem. I've tried the following:

1. - Disabling UAC
2. - Marking the Launchers, and the games themselves, as "Always run as Admin" while UAC is on.
3. - Right Click > Run As Admin with UAC both on and off, in conjunction with the settings above.
4. - Running the games under XP Service Pack 2 Compatibility Mode in conjunction with the settings above.
5. - Adding the games and their launchers to the Firewall Exceptions, and even trying to disable the Firewall altogether.
6. - Disabling my Anti-Virus as well.
7. - Updating my drivers, all of them. (Note: WoW works regardless, so it is not my drivers.)
8. - Applying all of the Windows Updates as well.
9. - Updating DirectX, Java, Flash, etc.

Hopefully someone can help me out here. If you need any additional information, let me know.

[mark]

Welcome to the forums,

Have you done an extensive check for any virus/malware on your PC? malwarebytes is a good start
also what are your system specs, and are you running the games from an administrator account?

Mark

[unsubRedun]

Aye, I have done extensive checks for any malicious programs. I have AVG and Spybot running full system sweeps every morning.

And I am running from an admin account.

And another update. Now, my Oblivion will not work, so it's not just my Online-Enabled games.

As for my system specs:

Windows: Windows NT6.0 (Build 6001) Service Pack 1
Internet Explorer: 8.0.6001.18783
Memory (RAM): 2046 MB
CPU Info: Intel® Core™2 CPU 4300 @ 1.80GHz
CPU Speed: 1793.6 MHz
Display Adapters: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 LE | NVIDIA GeForce 7300 LE | RDPDD Chained DD | RDP
Screen Resolution: 1280 X 1024 - 32 bit
Manufacturer: Dell Inc.
Product Make: Dell DXP061
Motherboard: Dell Inc. 0CT017

Not impressive these days, but like I've said, a couple of these games worked just fine beforehand.

[unsubRedun]

Hate to bump, but I'd really love an answer to this.

[Jason04R]

Good suggestion is to update your Nvidia GFX Drivers,

www.Nvidia.com

Install that and restart your machine, Boot the games. IF the games are not working then i suggest doing this:

Run>msconfig>services click Hide Microsoft Services. Disable all the services in there and also stop everything starting on the startup tab. > Restart<

If you find your games are working then go back to MSCONFIG and enable each service once at a time ( long process ) until it stops.

If its still doesnt work , Restore or boot from your Vista disk and run a checkdisk . CMD> chkdsk /r

-Jay

[unsubRedun]

Alright, I read through that five or six times to make sure I had it right, and this is what I came up with.

Nvidia says my graphic drivers are up to date.

I restarted with all of my services disabled startup as well, to the point where my visual themes were disabled and there was nothing but Windows itself, the Windows Server, Task Manager, and Explorer.exe. No dice, several of my games were still failing to load up and going into "Not Responding" mode.

Checkdisk says everything's clean, as well.

[Jason04R]

Try this ,

Internet explorer > Tools > Internet Options > Advanced >Reset

Will restore defaults, I know Bf Heroes goes through the browser.

This is a jem > Download latest network drivers or Uninstall your current drivers and try 'n' play --- Let me know if that solves it.

I can also help you on remote assist - If its really needed.

-Jay

[unsubRedun]

The Internet Explorer deal didn't work. I don't really use it anyway, so I don't know if it would have mattered much.

As for my drivers, I'm unsure which ones exactly that you refer to, but I checked a bunch of them, and I'm pretty sure I'm up to date with all of them. I even uninstalled my Nvidia drivers and installed them again to see if there may have been a problem with my install (again), but I'm still having problems.

I hope we won't have to pull out remote assist, but I've tried everything so far and it's no dice.

[Jason04R]

Network Drivers - Ethernet

Go here: www.driveragent.com > it will scan your system for free- There you will see how many are out-dated.

-Jay

[unsubRedun]

Oh, in that case, yeah, my drivers for that are updated. I've been using RadarSync, and it pulled up the same things DriverAgent did, for the most part. I don't think my Ethernet drivers would effect my non-internet related games though, would it?

[Jason04R]

It can , I have a bad experience with D-link USB Ethernet adapter on Vista.

Everything i downloaded from the net would be corrupted , Programs would not install from CD, Hard drives etc.. " .... has stopped working"

I thought it would be very strange for it to ethernet related but it depends on motherboard/chipset etc.

Only thing i can suggest is to re-format.

-Jay

[unsubRedun]

I was afraid it would come to that.

I'd have downgraded to XP a long time ago, but I would rather not have my computer's warranty voided.

Well, thanks anyway.

[Jason04R]

You wont void your warranty by changing software..

[unsubRedun]

The place I bought it from said it would. I was inclined to believe them, due to reading several times about how Microsoft was trying their best to prevent people from switching back to XP from Vista now that windows 7 was out.

Either way, I really shouldn't have to worry about reformatting or "downgrading" at all. Hopefully this will bump this back up and someone'll have some kind of contrived or strange thing they could throw my way to maybe get this to work like we see so often, but I doubt it...

This post has been edited by unsubRedun: 09 July 2009 - 05:44 PM