Half-Life 2 and Windows Vista RC1

I couple of weeks ago I decided to invest in a new graphics card (AGP GeForce
7800 GS 256MB). The day before I got my new graphics card my copy of Windows
Vista RC1 (build 5600) was delivered through the post. I upgraded XP to RC1
and was impressed from the start.

When I opened Half-Life 2 only the background was displayed and I got a dark
outline of any buildings which should be their and I kept getting a driver
error message every time I ran HL2. This was very annoying to say the least
and it was made even worse when my new graphics card was delivered the next
day. I removed the old card and drivers and installed the new card. I
turned on my PC and inserted the driver CD into the CD/DVD and got an error
message saying Vista couldn’t read the CD.

Feeling like smashing my computer with a crowbar then dropping a nuke on it
I then tried downloading the drivers from the NVIDIA website. I selected the
Vista drivers then pressed the ‘Go!’ button to download the drivers and then
IE decided to crash. I tried downloading the drivers 5 times and every time
I pressed ‘Go!’ IE would crash.

I’ve now reinstalled XP and am enjoying HL2 in all its HDR glory. What
really annoys me the most is that HL2 is supposed to work on RC1 (be it with
some performance problems) but I just couldn’t get it to work.

Did I do something or didn’t something I was supposed to? Any help would be
greatly appreciated as I would love to have both HL2 and Vista.

In article <29633894-B348-4467-906D-6ECD15D798D6@microsoft.com>,
AJGIBB@discussions.microsoft.com says...
>
> Did I do something or didn?t something I was supposed to? Any help wouldbe
> greatly appreciated as I would love to have both HL2 and Vista.
>
You're having too many problems. The cause may be the upgrade install of
Vista over XP. Try wiping the partition and doing a clean install of Vista
by booting from the DVD. Then install HL 2. Before updating the video
drivers try using the ones installed by RC1. They worked fine for me in
games (although I haven't tried them with HL 2). And if you do update the
drivers make sure you get the right version. The latest drivers on the
Nvidia site are for RC2 (build 5744 and above) only.

All my installs of Vista have been clean installs. For many people,
including myself, I think that had eliminated a lot of potential problems.

Try it, and see what happens.

nVidia's drivers still need a lot of maturing, their whole performance over
the course of the beta has meant they're on my avoid list in the future.

From crappy performance, to screen corruption to stopping the machine waking
from sleep. Yet with my ATI machine no issues what-so-ever.

--
Paul Smith,
Yeovil, UK.
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User.
http://www.windowsresource.net/

*Remove nospam. to reply by e-mail*


"AJGIBB" <AJGIBB@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:29633894-B348-4467-906D-6ECD15D798D6@microsoft.com...
>I couple of weeks ago I decided to invest in a new graphics card (AGP
>GeForce
> 7800 GS 256MB). The day before I got my new graphics card my copy of
> Windows
> Vista RC1 (build 5600) was delivered through the post. I upgraded XP to
> RC1
> and was impressed from the start.
>
> When I opened Half-Life 2 only the background was displayed and I got a
> dark
> outline of any buildings which should be their and I kept getting a driver
> error message every time I ran HL2. This was very annoying to say the
> least
> and it was made even worse when my new graphics card was delivered the
> next
> day. I removed the old card and drivers and installed the new card. I
> turned on my PC and inserted the driver CD into the CD/DVD and got an
> error
> message saying Vista couldn’t read the CD.
>
> Feeling like smashing my computer with a crowbar then dropping a nuke on
> it
> I then tried downloading the drivers from the NVIDIA website. I selected
> the
> Vista drivers then pressed the ‘Go!’ button to download the drivers and
> then
> IE decided to crash. I tried downloading the drivers 5 times and every
> time
> I pressed ‘Go!’ IE would crash.
>
> I’ve now reinstalled XP and am enjoying HL2 in all its HDR glory. What
> really annoys me the most is that HL2 is supposed to work on RC1 (be it
> with
> some performance problems) but I just couldn’t get it to work.
>
> Did I do something or didn’t something I was supposed to? Any help would
> be
> greatly appreciated as I would love to have both HL2 and Vista.

I would definitely try to do a fresh install of Vista. You don't even have
to reformat, assuming you have enough disk space. You can just install on
the already occupied partition and it will dump all old contents of the
drive in Windows.old. It's a very nice feature of Vista.

AJGIBB wrote:
>I couple of weeks ago I decided to invest in a new graphics card (AGP GeForce
>7800 GS 256MB). The day before I got my new graphics card my copy of Windows
>Vista RC1 (build 5600) was delivered through the post. I upgraded XP to RC1
>and was impressed from the start.
>
>When I opened Half-Life 2 only the background was displayed and I got a dark
>outline of any buildings which should be their and I kept getting a driver
>error message every time I ran HL2. This was very annoying to say the least
>and it was made even worse when my new graphics card was delivered the next
>day. I removed the old card and drivers and installed the new card. I
>turned on my PC and inserted the driver CD into the CD/DVD and got an error
>message saying Vista couldn’t read the CD.
>
>Feeling like smashing my computer with a crowbar then dropping a nuke on it
>I then tried downloading the drivers from the NVIDIA website. I selected the
>Vista drivers then pressed the ‘Go!’ button to download the drivers and then
>IE decided to crash. I tried downloading the drivers 5 times and every time
>I pressed ‘Go!’ IE would crash.
>
>I’ve now reinstalled XP and am enjoying HL2 in all its HDR glory. What
>really annoys me the most is that HL2 is supposed to work on RC1 (be it with
>some performance problems) but I just couldn’t get it to work.
>
>Did I do something or didn’t something I was supposed to? Any help would be
>greatly appreciated as I would love to have both HL2 and Vista.

i found that with my drivers i had to load them in safe mode i had the same
problem. also i had a problem with punkbuster, it kept kicking me because
for some reason even though i was admin on my computer it wasnt recognizing
me as one. looking through vista's files there is more options to play with
than xp

Paul, I agree with you that the drivers do need some work. However, if you
are running the RC2 release have you tried the RC2 release drivers yet from
the NVIDIA website?

regards
Robert
"Paul Smith" <Paul@nospam.windowsresource.net> wrote in message
news:CF3FA4DB-4E46-410F-B75D-205ED5B7A940@microsoft.com...
> nVidia's drivers still need a lot of maturing, their whole performance
> over the course of the beta has meant they're on my avoid list in the
> future.
>
> From crappy performance, to screen corruption to stopping the machine
> waking from sleep. Yet with my ATI machine no issues what-so-ever.
>
> --
> Paul Smith,
> Yeovil, UK.
> Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User.
> http://www.windowsresource.net/
>
> *Remove nospam. to reply by e-mail*
>
>
> "AJGIBB" <AJGIBB@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:29633894-B348-4467-906D-6ECD15D798D6@microsoft.com...
>>I couple of weeks ago I decided to invest in a new graphics card (AGP
>>GeForce
>> 7800 GS 256MB). The day before I got my new graphics card my copy of
>> Windows
>> Vista RC1 (build 5600) was delivered through the post. I upgraded XP to
>> RC1
>> and was impressed from the start.
>>
>> When I opened Half-Life 2 only the background was displayed and I got a
>> dark
>> outline of any buildings which should be their and I kept getting a
>> driver
>> error message every time I ran HL2. This was very annoying to say the
>> least
>> and it was made even worse when my new graphics card was delivered the
>> next
>> day. I removed the old card and drivers and installed the new card. I
>> turned on my PC and inserted the driver CD into the CD/DVD and got an
>> error
>> message saying Vista couldn’t read the CD.
>>
>> Feeling like smashing my computer with a crowbar then dropping a nuke on
>> it
>> I then tried downloading the drivers from the NVIDIA website. I selected
>> the
>> Vista drivers then pressed the ‘Go!’ button to download the drivers and
>> then
>> IE decided to crash. I tried downloading the drivers 5 times and every
>> time
>> I pressed ‘Go!’ IE would crash.
>>
>> I’ve now reinstalled XP and am enjoying HL2 in all its HDR glory. What
>> really annoys me the most is that HL2 is supposed to work on RC1 (be it
>> with
>> some performance problems) but I just couldn’t get it to work.
>>
>> Did I do something or didn’t something I was supposed to? Any help would
>> be
>> greatly appreciated as I would love to have both HL2 and Vista.
>

Where can you get RC2 from? They got it off the site onl a few hours (I
think) after the initiation! This means that we would have to wait till the
full release version is available for good working nVidia drivers!?!?!

You can find it pretty trivially with any Internet search engine.

http://download.windowsvista.com/pre...n/download.htm

Note that Windows Vista RC2 was not as widely tested as RC1 and won't be as
supported for things like upgrades to RTM. It should work with your existing
Beta 2/RC1 license key.

--
Chuck Walbourn
SDE, Game Technology Group

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.