Matrix Games Forums

When I run maximum football the Game Menu comes up. If I choose play the intro for Winter Valley starts. After this finishes I see a black screen and can see the tool bar in the bottom of the screen. max FB is minimized. If I click on Max FB the main menu of the game appears but the mouse becomes inoperable. I had this happen once before and I had to to reinstall the game. I really don't want to do this on a regular basis as I have all patches installed and have downloaded stadiums, uniforms, plays, etc.

Any ideas why this is happening? I have not changed any settings. I am running Windows Vista and used the Vista install guide. Other than this I have no problems and have played many games. I have not had any other issues. My vidoe card info is:

Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator Driver Report


Report Date: 12/26/2008
Report Time[hr:mm:ss]: 10:46:01
Driver Version: 7.14.10.1409
Operating System: Windows Vista (TM) Home Premium* , Service Pack 1 (6.0.6001)
Default Language: English
DirectX* Version: 10.0
Physical Memory: 2036 MB
Minimum Graphics Memory: 8 MB
Maximum Graphics Memory: 286 MB
Graphics Memory in Use: 145 MB
Processor: x86 family 6 Model 15 Stepping 13
Processor Speed: 1795 MHZ
Vendor ID: 8086
Device ID: 29C2
Device Revision: 02


* Accelerator Information *

Accelerator in Use: Intel(R) G33/G31 Express Chipset Family
Video BIOS: 1471
Current Graphics Mode: 1440 by 900 True Color (60 Hz)



* Devices Connected to the Graphics Accelerator *


Active Monitors: 1


* Monitor *

Monitor Name: Generic PnP Monitor
Display Type: Analog
Gamma Value: 2.20
DDC2 Protocol: Supported
Maximum Image Size: Horizontal: 16.0 inches
Vertical: 10.0 inches
Monitor Supported Modes:
640 by 480 (60 Hz)
640 by 480 (67 Hz)
640 by 480 (72 Hz)
640 by 480 (75 Hz)
720 by 400 (70 Hz)
800 by 600 (56 Hz)
800 by 600 (60 Hz)
800 by 600 (72 Hz)
800 by 600 (75 Hz)
832 by 624 (75 Hz)
1024 by 768 (60 Hz)
1024 by 768 (70 Hz)
1024 by 768 (75 Hz)
1152 by 864 (75 Hz)
1152 by 870 (75 Hz)
1280 by 1024 (60 Hz)
1280 by 1024 (75 Hz)
1440 by 900 (60 Hz)
1440 by 1440 (60 Hz)
1440 by 1440 (75 Hz)
Display Power Management Support:
Standby Mode: Supported
Suspend Mode: Supported
Active Off Mode: Supported

May not be a problem after all. I found out my wife installed some Kodac Picture Frame thing. I think maybe it was running in the background. I have closed it and MAx FB seems to be running fine.

My wife thinks the computer needs to run something other than Max FB. I can see I am going to have to giver her a good listening to!

Probably the internal graphics card's shared memory was being eaten into by other programs running in the background.

Intel GMAs (graphics media accelerator) used to be pretty awful.  They're still not in the class of Nvidia or ATI chipsets but they are getting better.  I bought a laptop recently with a decent integrated Intel GMA and it is actually giving me better results than the previous ATI integrated chip I had.

Anyway, you may want to also install the latest drivers for the GMA set you have:  http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Product ... 2&lang=eng

Finally, should you have issues gaming on Vista in the future, check out the following Vista performance tweaking guide for additional info, there's some good information there:  http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=2238