Inspiron 9300 - Does not run

[dsmith]

Does anyone have this working on a Dell Inspiron (more particularly the later models)?

Pre-patch & post-patch I get the same thing.

I will start the program and it will show the splash screen that has "loading" written in several languages and hang for about 5 minutes. Then it will give me the O/S error: "There was a problem..." (I send a report to MS everytime ).

Anyway, it appears to me that it is struggling getting the CD copy protection. I have a Toshiba Samsung DVD+/-RW (TSSTcorp DVD+-RW TS-L532B). I feel that this is the problem, but I am just trying to verify it. Unfortunately, I can not find driver updates anywhere for this model. (More unfortunate, my desktop has an Nvidia 6800 card, which seems to have major issues with this game as well. )

Anyone else having similar problems?

 

[Landmonitor]

I've got an Inspiron 9300 2GHz 1 GB Ram (533) and the vanilla Go 6800 (with the same drivers it came with), and apart from intro and wonder movies, which are jerky, the game (1.52) runes fine at 1920 x 1200, so there's something weird going on with your computer. I don't think the 6800 (at least not the laptop one) has issues with the game. It runs fine.

 

[dsmith]

Hey Landmoniter thanks for the reply.

That is good news. Do you know what Removable storage drive you have? Your setup sounds pretty similar to mine.

The 6800 problem is with my desktop, which is why I am trying to run it on my laptop. I too have the Nvidia GO 6800 in the laptop, but I can't even get to the point of entering the game currently and I am afraid it is because of my optical device. Do you mind telling me which CD/DVD drive you have?

Thanks!

 

[Landmonitor]

I have a "Sony DVD +-RW DW-Q58A" That's what it says when I go into the hardware tab on properties for that drive.

Good luck!

 

[dsmith]

Thanks again Landmonitor.

Since you posted that you had a different Media drive, I searched the Dell forums and found that there is aparantly an issue using the Safedisk 4 copy protection with this particular drive.

I have provided a link to a somewhat disgruntled Dell owner here.

So it seems that the game is currenlty unplayable with the TSST TS-L532B DVD drive.

This is pretty frustrating as this is the second computer that I have that will not play this game. Does anyone have any work arounds?

Thanks.

 

[gfreit]

So, I noticed in the link above for the dell forum that someone asks if they turned off Sonic DLA? How would someone disable this? So of course, I get the Dell 1705 with a good graphics card and the combo DVD and spend extra for it and now find out that I cannot play games? Dell just went from great to goat!

Greg.

 

[casey1966]

So, I noticed in the link above for the dell forum that someone asks if they turned off Sonic DLA? How would someone disable this? So of course, I get the Dell 1705 with a good graphics card and the combo DVD and spend extra for it and now find out that I cannot play games? Dell just went from great to goat!

Greg.

You can remove Sonic DLA in the add remove programs list, I believe. I'm not sure about disabling. I guess you can get a program off the internet to safely disable all start-up programs you don't use...

You can try virtual-cd-hide to hide any virtual drives on your computer...

 

[jonah353]

Please check out my post on the bottom of this link: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=168684

The problem seems to be with those Samsung drives--just switched mine out and the game works perfect (so far!).