Re: [OT] GRAAAAAAAAAHHHH! HULK SMASH STUPID COMPUTER!! >_<#


"Lord Craxton" <lord_craxton@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:11qv0crqj5ebka4@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Okay, so for Christmas this year I decided to get back into gaming. I
> considered getting an XBox 360, but decided that could wait until next
> year
> when it has a lower price, a bigger game selection and less hardware bugs.
> Instead, I asked for a better video card for my computer and a pair of
> games
> I've been wanting to play- Fable The Lost Chapters and The Bard's Tale. I
> got all three. Merry Christmas to me, right? Wrong.
>
> The video card installation (a Radeon 9200) goes off without a hitch,
> which
> is good because that's what I was most worried about- can't very well play
> games when you've accidentally busted your motherboard, right? But no such
> problems. Encouraged, I install Fable.
>
> It doesn't work.
>
> First it tells me my drivers are out of date. Okay, that's annoying, but
> no
> big deal. I get the latest drivers, and that's that. Only, it still
> doesn't
> work. Whenever I try to start it up, it crashes. It's not even an
> interesting crash that you could take to a message board and describe to
> find a solution to, just the standard "Fable the Lost Chapters has to be
> shut down. Report this error?", and asking for details gets you 100 pages
> of
> technobabble. But, okay, no really big deal either. It's new and a console
> port, so some bugs are to be expected. I figure wait for the patch and go
> to
> The Bard's Tale for now. So, I install that.
>
> It doesn't work either.
>
> What's worse, I haven't a single solitary clue WHY it doesn't work. It
> says
> that Direct3D isn't working, and the readme says that basically means it
> needs DirectX9.0c. This makes me grimace badly. See, I have a Dell
> Dimension
> 4400. I got it a while back- a few years ago, I think. It came with
> WindowsXP installed, and they scrimped on the shipping by not sending the
> OS
> disc. This is a problem because, some time after I bought the machine,
> Microsoft went and decided that all copies of Windows XP had to be
> "genuine", whatever that means, and refuses to update or support any
> copies
> that are not "genuine". The OS pre-installed on my machine is, you guessed
> it, not "genuine". Which means that any attempt to keep any
> Microsoft-manufactured software on my machine updated requires a lot of
> Googling and frustrated hair-pulling and, ultimately, hanging around warez
> sites.
>
> This turns out to not be an issue, though. The real problem is even more
> infuriating. See, I DO have DirectX9.0c on my machine, at least as far as
> I
> can tell. I've checked the version numbers on the files, even ran dxdiag,
> and everything appears to be ship-shape. Yet I can't play the frickin'
> game
> because it keeps insisting it can't work with the version of Direct3D I
> have. Heaven forbid it actually TRY to play the game instead of giving me
> some patent pending excuse and kicking me out.
>
> grrrrrrrr...
>
> Crap like this is the reason why players and developers alike have more or
> less abandoned the PC as a gaming platform. When was the last time a
> reasonable game came out that wasn't some EverCrack wannabe or a buggy
> console port? I should have just taken my chances with the 360. At least
> in
> that case, when I put in the disc, I can be resonably sure I'll be able to
> PLAY THE FRICKIN GAME!!!!!
>

Somewhat annoyingly, just about 5 minutes after posting this I managed to
get it working. I have no clue how. I was able to download Service Pack 2
(something I've never been able to do before now, due to that "genuine"
crap), installed and everything's just fine. I don't understand it, but I'm
at the point where I raise my arms, stammer a bit, then just shrug and say
"Yeah, sure, okay, whatever you say." The only explanation I can come up
with is that the divine forces that control the universe wanted me to kick
off a discussion about PC hardware here, and thus I was manipulated into
doing so by whatever daemon administers computer fuckups.

Sheesh...

Anyway, I haven't tried out Fable yet, but I have been playing The Bard's
Tale, and under the circumstances, I've never been more happy to have the
option to insult NPCs.

-Lord Craxton


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