What should I do?

[Akineikae]

Hello there everyone, I have a problem which I cannot solve.

Recently I downloaded the game, and signed up for an account. Unfortunetly I'm having some issues. Everything seemed well at first, but after awhile of playing, an error box appeared saying: "The game must now close due to an unexpected error, you will be informed with an error report of what caused this next time you log in." Or something along those lines.

So, I clicked okay. When it went to the desktop, the resolution was set to 640 x 480 pixels, along with an 8-bit colour quality (The selected Display was, if I remember correctly: 2. Default Monitor on NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT).

I had no idea what to do, so I tried to change back to my default Display (2. Plug and Play Monitor on NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT) with 32-bit colour quality and 1024 x 768.

As usual, the monitor dimmed out and went black to change the settings, but it never came back on. Instead, the blue power light went brown (Aka Stand-By Mode). There was nothing I could do for it except shut it off at the button, after that I tried turning back on. It went through the start-up process but eventually the monitor's power light once again went brown before it even opened to the desktop.

I sent my computer to be repaired, the man told me that the program wasn't compatible with my hardware. He managed to get it open, perhapes in safe-mode and installed drivers. When I went to pick it up, he told me I should be able to play this game with ease now, but I'm unsure.

My default mode (Plug and Play) was selected the first time I played it, which doesn't support 8-bit, nor does my monitor, to me it seems that the game requires the monitor to be set on 8-bit.

I'm totally lost, all I can think of is that the game tried to access a monitor which supported 8-bit that wasn't connected. So it used the default monitor instead. Is there any way to resolve this issue? Thanks in advance, Akineikae.

EDIT: So I suppose what I'm asking is, is it now safe to run the game on this computer which wasn't compatible with my drivers. He reinstalled the drivers with the game already installed. If it isn't safe, what actions would need to be taken to resolve this matter?

[Akineikae]

Any ideas or suggestions, guys? Heh, sorry about the long question. :smile:

[Froste]

This sounds a little odd, first of all which operating system are you using?

[Akineikae]

I'll read what it says on the 'My Computer' properties.

Microsoft Windows XP - Home Edition.
Version 2002, Service Pack 1.
Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.80 GHz
2.80 GHz
768 MB of RAM (Soon I'll have around, 1768).

[Froste]

Well it's odd because a game shouldn't affect hardware like that, regnum isn't played in 8bit colour, either 16 or 32

The guy who said this: "the program wasn't compatible with my hardware" is a complete liar

I don't run windows myself so take this with a grain of salt, but it sounds to me like you had some underlying problem with the computer, or rather just a silly mistake, sounds like you picked a setting whose clockrange was outside the scope of what the monitor could handle, and instead of aborting it you hit the power reset, maybe that setting got activated as the default one, you could have tried to boot up in what's it called, safemode or something, and select the proper settings for your monitor then

Regnum does crash on occasion, and (at least in linux, which is what I run), you get bumped back with the resolution on the workspace which you ran regnum in, but for my part I just hit ctrl-alt-plus to bring it back to normal... clearly that won't work for you, but you could go into display properties and change the res to 1024x768, then change it back to your normal res, that should take care of the problem... and if your monitor hits out of range signal again try starting your windows in safemode (I think that's like a 640x480 resolution, so the monitor can't possibly get out of range with that)

Other than that, I think it was just a freak occurrence, and you will prolly not have any more problems like this... but shit does happen (:

[Mikan]

Akineikae,

Sorry but you've been gimped. :) Sadly, it is common for repairsmen to lie about the real cause in order to get more money out of you, be it with computers, cars, or anything that can be repaired for a fee.

The real cause was probably the settings changes using a refresh rate that your monitor didn't support. If the monitor ever goes into standby mode or displays an error message, this is the most likely cause.

A simple solution would've been to press F8 when Windows first begins starting up (just before the boot logo appears), and select "Enable VGA mode" from the menu, which resets your graphics settings, allowing you to boot properly and fix the issue yourself.

As for the refresh rate issue itself, Windows should automatically lock out any refresh rates which your monitor doesn't support, but if your monitor is too old (or a big bulky CRT, which sometimes lack Plug-n-Play), it may not provide that information to the system, and you have to find a way to do it manually.

But that's beyond the scope of this thread.

Finally, the reason you were dumped back in 640x480 is because you were probably using that resolution to play Regnum, and when programs - especially games - crash, this is what happens. The OS is not able to correct the desktop resolution and color depth because the part of it that was hooked into the program died unexpectedly.

Another simple solution is to get a utility that sits in your system tray (near the clock) that you can right-click on to change resolutions, color depths or refresh rates at any time.

If you're using NVIDIA graphics hardware, they already provide one such utility with their drivers. :)

And if changing these settings ever fails (monitor goes black), pressing ESC usually undoes the changes, or sometimes they will undo themselves after about 15 seconds if you don't confirm them in some box that pops up.

Regards.

[Akineikae]

Ah, I see. I'm not sure what the refresh rate does, however, it's currently set on 60 Hertz (Lowest refresh rate). I'm using an LCD monitor, HP vs17e.

So adjusting the Hertz should eventually fix the problem, I just need to find one which suits my monitor correctly?

Thanks for your help guys, all that's left now is to try Regnum and, hopefully, it'll turn out well. :thumb: :eguitar:

[Mikan]

Ah, I see. I'm not sure what the refresh rate does, however, it's currently set on 60 Hertz (Lowest refresh rate). I'm using an LCD monitor, HP vs17e.
Akineikae,

For LCDs it doesn't matter much since they have high frequency backlights - just leave it at the lowest setting.
(The only case where you'd want to increase it is to reduce ghosting, but that's another topic.)

But on standard CRT monitors higher refresh rates help prevent flicker and thus lessen headaches and other issues caused by staring at bright colors (such as white) on the flickering screen for extended periods of time.

As a rule of thumb, you need to use a minimum refresh rate setting of 70Hz on CRTs for comfortable viewing.

Regards.