nvida cards and blank screen

[TuJ]

It appears that all my systems can't play spwaw because of an irratating problem where the screen goes blank after a few seconds and my mouse begins to paint it back. WinXP, Dual cores, dual graphics, giga memory, terabytes of disk, etc. can't not run one of my most favorite and simple games. Especially after a hard day at work. Matrix games need to cleanup the video and graphics of these games. It can't be that hard for these older games.

So here is how I fixed it. I went to Microsoft and got their Virtual PC software. I went to my basement and found my Windows 98 installation with boot disk. So I loaded it all on my system. I then installed spwaw in the virtual pc. I spawn Win98 and run spwaw. It works like a champ when I started the app direct. No more graphics issues. I am happy again. I even loaded dos 6.22 for practice and nostalgia. Sound works as well.

[Alby]

yep it seems the newer systems have problems with the ole gal.

[azraelck]

It worries me about Vista. Microsoft is good at making buggy pieces of crap that don't work with their own older software; much less anyone else's. I fully expect SPWaW to not work in Vista at all. 

[Twotribes]

I have a 5000 ( cant remember which) series of Nivida card and have no problem with SPWAW. There is a momentary black screen between the last load screen and the final screen to let you choose what to do, but all I had to do was hit space bar again.

[Alby]

ORIGINAL: azraelck

It worries me about Vista. Microsoft is good at making buggy pieces of crap that don't work with their own older software; much less anyone else's. I fully expect SPWaW to not work in Vista at all.

Someone I saw at a forum somewhere...maybe here.... has already tried it with vista and it works...I think mostly what type of video card you have mostly effects the game.

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: TuJ
It appears that all my systems can't play spwaw because of an irratating problem where the screen goes blank after a few seconds

I have the same problem with my NVIDIA 7800 GS card. It doesn't happen all the time but usually the screen blanks out once or twice every half hour or so. If I'm in the game screen I can push my mouse to a screen edge and the screen re-paints as the map scrolls, but it's a real mess if I'm in a fixed screen like scenario selection or preferences. I have to click a button to get the screen to re-paint and not being able to see a dang thing makes clicking said button a new kind of strategy game all by itself.

This problem alone definitely keeps me from paying for the Generals edition which I would otherwise buy.

Jim

[azraelck]

I have a Nvidia 7800GT, which has no issues with blanked out screens.

I have had problems with some background programs running; but not when they are off. The same isues popped up with an ATI Radeon 9250 on another computer. Again, it was background programs running that caused it. So that may be your real issue, not your card. I shut down a number of programs prior to playing SPWaW.