Help as to why I am unable to play CIV after notebook repair?

[morpheous]

New to this forum so hello to everyone.

I was able to play CIV IV prior to my dated HP Pavilion zx5040us notebook being sent back to HP for repair....had parts of the motherboard repaired as well as a new hardrive.

I therefore have a fresh copy of windows installed together with service pack 2, critical upgrades and upgraded the ATI drivers for Radeon 9200 64Mb graphics card (I am aware the graphics card is below spec...but I had the game working before, albeit only on standard maps).

Installed CIV IV this morning together with the 1.52 patch. I was able to see the opening movie (still stuttered as before), but on trying to load a new custom game my notebook would freeze on a black screen with no mouse icon present.

I therefore uninstalled CIV IV and re-installed without the 1.52 patch...the same scenario as above happened.

If anyone could shed some light as to why I had this game working previously and not now, it would be gratefully appreciated.

regards
morpheous

 

[MrCynical]

Did you have service pack 2 installed before you sent it in to be repaired? That seems the most likely thing that Civ 4 would object to.

 

[morpheous]

Thank you for your reply MrCynical.

Yes, I had service pack 2 installed prior to repair. The only changes are as follows:

1. new 80gb hard drive
2. har parts of the motherboard repaired...something to do with the Keyboard controller
3. had the ram upgraded from 512 to 768Mb
4. upgraded the ATI drivers to the latest version this morning prior to game install.

A little more detail as to what happens on loading a new custom game....

1. Set up game options and hit load
2. Leonard Nimoy does his bit
3. I can see the white text in the left corner of the black screen as my options load, behind the Leonard Nimoy scenario, and then the option to press "play game" becomes available.
4. I click "play game" from which the Leonard Nimoy scenario disappears, my Leaders music plays, I can see the warrior icon with an arrow, 4000bc in the top right corner...nothing else....and then...the music stops and the mouse icons disappears and the screen is frozen in this state.

Hope this additional information will give someone a little more insight to assist me.

regards
morpheous

 

[Zanmato]

The driver date show May 2004. Surely there must be later update somewhere you get hold of somehow. Try installing the drivers again because I have seen ATI drivers dated 2006 so maybe they don't install correctly.

 

[morpheous]

Thank you for the reply and your help Zanmato.

I downloaded and installed by automatic install direct from Hewlett Packard website:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...=384591&lang=en&cc=us&softwareitem=ob-32593-1

This should install ATI M9/M10/RC300M VGA driver for windows 2000/XP

It is dated 2005/07/04 and is version 8.003.3 C

On checking in - start/ control panel/ display/ settings/ advanced/adapter/properties/drivers - I have noticed that states that the current driver is only 6.14.10.6436 and is dated 2004/05/15.

Thinking that the drivers did not install properly I re-downloaded the .exe file and manually installed it myself. It appears that the install wizard will only allow me to install the following:

1. AGP Gart Support
2. ATI Control Panel
3. South Bridge/IXP Drivers

The fourth option - ATI Display Driver is greyed out and is not available to me.

I am not that computer literate, but I assume that it is the fourth option I required to upgrade my ATI 9200 Radeon drivers.

Any suggestions as to why this is and/or, is there any other website that I can obtain up to date drivers for my graphics card.

best regards
morpheous

 

[auldian]

In some cases I have read of more notebook success using the "after market" Omega driver version 4.12. They should be found here http://www.driverheavendownloads.net/omegadrive.htm

There are more modern drivers at www.ati.com that will also be compatible with your 9200 display adapter. There are some guides there for updating drivers as well.

 

[morpheous]

Thank you for your reply auldian.

I have looked through the ATI website and from my research it appears that they do not support older graphic cards and recommend that I look under the laptop's manufacturers website to update the driver (which I have done). If however know exactly where to look on their site to obtain my drivers, kindly let me know.

With regard to your suggestion of the omega driver 4.12 - subsequent to my posts yesterday I was reading through the posts under the heading "ATI Drivers". They are highly recommended by members here for older below spec graphics card and it appears that there have been more up-to-date releases since 4.12 that will work with the older graphics card. Still researching this.

Thank you once again for everyones help; it is much appreciated and if you think of anything else to try, please post.

regards
morpheous

 

[morpheous]

This is just an update and thank you for all that helped me.

Yesterday, I uninstalled ATI control panel and installed Radeon Omega Catalyst 4.12 drivers.

I am happy to advise that that I am able to play CIV again - med resolution, full screen, single characters on standard map. Have not tried a large map yet but will post my results when I do.

Thank you once again to all that helped.

regards
morpheous