[Mad Bomber]

Okay, I need help. HFH is on indefinite hiatus until I can fix this problem.

FS isn't crashing or anything like that -- it's clearly working -- but I can't see any of it. Black screen. (There's stuff going on, it just won't display at all.)

The same problem also happens with Freelancer and Mechwarrior3, but not Mech4 or Tribes 2. This leads me to believe it's either a DirectX or video driver problem, but I reinstalled my vidcard drivers and the problem persists. (I haven't tried the newest DirectX yet -- advice on that score would be helpful also.)

And it all started about the time I started having problems with Diablo II. I ran the video setup on it again and messed with my monitor settings, so that D2 runs on the integrated monitor port instead of off my vidcard.

Since then, FS hasn't displayed a single pixel, in Open or Retail, or FS1. (FRED works fine in all its incarnations, though.)

I've checked the integrated port and FS isn't displaying on that one either. So I'm stumped.

[Taristin]

Umm. If you have two monitor ports, have you checked to make sure that FS is indeed using the port that the monitor is attached to?

I know for my 9600, I have two monitors attached to it. And I can select which output I want FSO to display to.

Try that.

Edit: I mean, make sure that the engine isn't looking to use that port. (Should have been clearer, methinks)

Also, are they two seperate video cards? Are they conflicting?

[Mad Bomber]

I've already checked that. None of the aforementioned non-working games display on either port.

Tho i guess it would help to say that my card is a Radeon 7500 PCI, and I reinstalled its drivers to no avail. (The other video port is from a vid-chip integrated onto the mobo -- this is a cheap hunka junk comp that cost me $300 total about 2 years ago. There shouldn't be any conflict of that sort; the integrated chip is supposed to be subordinate to the card, and it worked just fine for years.)

However, the card has been acting up lately. A while back it gave me some seriously weird rendering errors in Tribes2. (When looking in certain directions, part of the pack I was wearing became a HIDEOUS MORPHING POLY MONSTER! But a reinstall solved that.)

For a while, when the comp started up, it would crash and then restart fine, and then say the Radeon's drivers were to blame.

I'm beginning to think I should get a new vidcard altogether.

[Taristin]

Or a new PC

[mitac]

What's the version of your Radeon drivers? Did you try a new install of DirectX? If you did, then

• for a new vidcard. Radeon 7500 PCI(!) just doesn't do the trick anymore.

But you may want to check if your MoBo got an AGP port.

[Mad Bomber]

It doesn't have an AGP port at all. That's the whole reason I ended up getting this Radeon instead of a GF4 (which I had to return to the store upon finding out that unpleasant fact).

Blah, I say. Blah.

[mitac]

I'm with Raa then. There's practically no even semi-modern graphics card available for PCI. New Mobo, graphics card, probably PSU, CPU and memory. Ergo new PC.

[Cobra]

actually, it's just a video card problem. i had this exact same problem with FS on my old Win98. When I got my *ugh* Intel Celeron. My screen didn't keep blinking black and crap. you just need a new vid.

[mitac]

Read again, Cobra. What video card is he supposed to get for his PCI-only system? There are none with performance that's anywhere near acceptable.

But, of course, this decision is for Mad Bomber to make.

[WMCoolmon]

I've actually seen some pretty high-powered cards for PCI (GF4TI4200 level). I've definitely seen GF4MX4000s for PCI.

But really, a new mobo is the way to go. It's also most likely to help solve the problem...permanently. Something with an nForce2 chipset might even have better graphics acceleration than the 7500 PCI.

[Cobra]

i have a GeForce MX4000 and it works fine.

[mitac]

While a GF4 may work fine, it definetely does not qualify as "high-powered" from an objective point of view. It's rather entry-level, though it offers a lot of bang for the buck. But the technology is just outdated and doesn't get faster or better with the PCI bus.

Just one example : while the GF4ti supports Directx 8.1 and offers reasonable performance, the GF4MX is based on the GF2ti and won't support Directx 8. SCP HT&L, anyone?

[WMCoolmon]

Untrue. I had a GF4MX440, and it fully supported the SCP. The only problem was that it just couldn't keep up.

[mitac]

Granted, I misread something there. I thought HT&L had been introduced with Directx 8, whereas it's been around since 7.

[IceFire]

Originally posted by WMCoolmon
I've actually seen some pretty high-powered cards for PCI (GF4TI4200 level). I've definitely seen GF4MX4000s for PCI.

But really, a new mobo is the way to go. It's also most likely to help solve the problem...permanently. Something with an nForce2 chipset might even have better graphics acceleration than the 7500 PCI.

To my knowledge...the nForce 2 chipset has no provisions for a video card integrated.  But they do have really great performance and I swear by my Asus A7N8X nForce 2 board.

[Mad Bomber]

Well, it seems I did figure out what the problem was.

Apparently, my video card has been crazy, and has somehow forgotten how to switch resolutions. It just didn't want to display anything at any resolution apart from 1280x1024.

I found this out when I played FS Open at this resolution successfully (if a little buggishly), but couldn't get any other res to work.

More to the point, I found it out when I experimented and switched the overall resolution to 1024x768 on the desktop. Now I can't switch it back, because nothing is displaying on the screen and I can't see what I'm doing to switch it back. That res stuck when I restarted, too. I'm typing this message on a computer at work. :x

This effectively puts both HFH and my SideProject (TM) on hold for a while. Fortunately, that shouldn't be _too_ long, since I got a hand-me-down compy with acceptable specs from a family friend. (It was buggy and she got a new one anyhow, so, free compy! yay!)

Now I just need to get it set up, get a decent vid card for it, and find a decent way to copy a large number of files. (FS2 is safely on F-drive, which can be physically moved between compies, but there are plenty of things on C-drive that I want to save. Probably have to do the same, but with messing with jumpers in the process. Blah.)

[karajorma]

What happens when you start in safe mode? You should be able to uninstall your drivers and then reinstall them that way.

[Mad Bomber]

Okay. Seems the system doesn't mind as much as I thought it would when I yanked the vidcard outta there. But that card is dead.

Looks like I can use the comp again, tho I'ma need to find myself another PCI vidcard soon. Thanks for the help all