Blue Screen of Death in W&G

[serfmonkey]

Yikes. Downloaded W&G yesterday and tried to play the game. It unlocked OK, and I got to the Play menu, but when I click New Game or Tutorial, I get the BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH.

I did get into the Settings menu and changed the screen resolution, but that had no effect. Then I updated my DirectX ... still nothing.

I must warn that I have very few computer skills; I'm the kind of guy who just expects to click on his game and play.

Any ideas what's causing this? Is it possible that it was a download gone hideously wrong?

[[TTG] Yare]

The BSoD is almost exclusively caused by a driver or hardware failure. What is the message you get on the BSoD? There's usually some driver DLL that exploded.

[serfmonkey]

Here's the disturbing part -- no message at all, just a blue, blue screen. After I reboot, my helpful computer warns that it has recovered from a "serious system error" or something like that.

[ZiglioNZ]

I get the blue screen too, occasionally

[Will]

Ok, do you know what type of video card you have? If not, we can try to look it up.

[serfmonkey]

I am checking with a fellow who helped me purchase my machine; it's a Dell Dimension 9100, if that helps. I should know what video card is installed by tomorrow.

All I know is that EVERY time I try to open the game I end up looking at the blue screen. Very frustrating.

[serfmonkey]

The video card is a Radeon X600 with 256 MB of HyperMemory.

[Quanta]

Go to this site:
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx

There you choose your operating system (if you aren't sure which one you have, go 'Control Panel' -> 'System' and look it up there) and your graphics card. It will navigate you to the right driver package ("Catalyst Software Suite").

For detailed instructions how do deinstall the old driver and install the new one look here:
http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/737-20870HowtoInstallYourATIProduct.aspx

[serfmonkey]

Just out of curiosity, I have played every single episode of Sam & Max on this system with no problems. Is Wallace & Gromit so different that I would require a new driver for my video card? I don't get it.

[Quanta]

Games always expect you to have the most recent drivers for all the relevant hardware (graphics chip, sound chip, motherboard/north bridge, directx etc.) to be installed. Most hardware related issues occur because drivers of at least one necessary device is not up-to-date (or at least not as new as the game).

In short: If hardware related issues occur, update your drivers first!

PS: Telltale already stated that the graphics renderer for Wallace & Gromit differs quite much from the one used for the Sam & Max series.

[serfmonkey]

Ha ha! As I stated above, I am not much of a nuts and bolts computer guy. I load a game and expect to be able to play it. It is this overly optimistic attitude that has disappointed me many, many times. : )

I downloaded and installed the latest driver for my Radeon video card. Now I have good news and bad news:

GOOD NEWS: The game actually started up when I clicked "New Game"! Woo-hoo!

BAD NEWS: The graphics are all wonky, with black rectangles and a weird purple bee flying around with no detail. Clearly something is quite wrong. Is this a new problem, or an extension of the old one?

[serfmonkey]

OK, one of the reasons I DON'T mess around with my computer is because I don't have a clue what I'm doing. I have now -- theoretically -- downloaded and installed the driver for my graphics card. The game now runs. Sort of.

HOWEVER ... There are black rectangles and arrows/triangles all over the screen.

My screen settings have changed. And now my Device Manager says that I have a Radeon X300/X550/X1050 card instead of the Radeon X600 that it said I had before I updated the driver.

Can anyone explain what's going on here?

[Leak]

My screen settings have changed. And now my Device Manager says that I have a Radeon X300/X550/X1050 card instead of the Radeon X600 that it said I had before I updated the driver.

Can anyone explain what's going on here?
Well, it's all based on the same "Radeon R300" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon_R300) chipset, so that's to be expected. Because your graphics chipset has been on the legacy chipset list for a long time I wouldn't be surprised for the driver to list it under some generic moniker.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure you'll have to lower the graphics quality setting in the game's settings, as that clunker of a video card you have (seriously, it only has a miniscule amount of video memory and takes a hefty bite out of your RAM instead (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypermemory) making it slow as molasses) might not be able to handle the setting the game might have set automatically. That card is basically only there for office work and to check "3D" on some marketing checklist - don't expect it to be able to play any newer games at less than very low settings.

np: Lisa Miskovsky - Still Alive (Arman Van Helden Mix) (Still Alive (The Remix EP))

[Will]

Like Leak said, try turning your graphics quality to the lowest setting. That should hopefully solve the problem.

[serfmonkey]

Sorry to have sounded like an alarmist boob -- it turns out that the main problem was simply the graphics quality setting. Although I had turned down the screen resolution, I somehow didn't realize that the quality could be turned down using the buttons at the bottom of the menu. Now Gromit is reluctantly preparing breakfast for Wallace and all is right with the world.

Thanks for the assistance, Will, and everyone else who chimed in.

[Will]

Anytime!