Black screen - won't startup

[Reginald Fairfield]

Hi all,

I hope you can help me here. When I click "Launch Game" for S&M 102 and 103 I see the screen resize and quickly go black as expected, but that's where it ultimately hangs. The hard drive continues reading in a natural flickery fashion, but 5+ minutes later there is still no splash screen or apparent progress. The computer is impervious to alt-tab, ctrl-alt-del, etc., and must be restarted.

TOMI 1 and S&M 101 always worked first try - instant splash screen after launching the game. TOMI 2 did this locking deal the first few times, then I once resized to 1024x768 beforehand, and it has worked fine since. S&M 103 worked fine the first 2 times, now locks up. But as for 102, I've tried playing it dozens of times, I've reinstalled it, tried resizing to 1024x768 before the game, but it has never worked for me. There is no logic to this behavior. I am frustrated.

Halp plz?

[DjNDB]

What is the exact model name of your "HP TouchSmart tx2"?

I would try updating the Audio and Graphics drivers. You can download them from HP's Support site.

Card name: ATI Radeon HD 3200 Graphics
Driver Date/Size: 12/10/2008 12:55:10, 2340352 bytes

Description: Speakers (High Definition Audio Device)
Date and Size: 11/2/2006 01:28:10, 273920 bytes

[Reginald Fairfield]

Thanks for the help DjNDB. I updated every imaginable driver, flashed the bios, installed the new vista service pack... but the games still locked up.

However this is what ultimately solved the issue: setting the screen resolution to 800x600 before starting up! That's it. That easy. I've finally been able to touch S&M 102 and see 103 again. Now I can go back to being distracted from my work. Yay!

[DjNDB]

Originally Posted by Reginald Fairfield

However this is what ultimately solved the issue: setting the screen resolution to 800x600 before starting up! That's it. That easy. I've finally been able to touch S&M 102 and see 103 again. Now I can go back to being distracted from my work. Yay!

That's strange, but I'm glad you got it working.

What happens if you switch to a higher resolution while the game is running?

[zackrob]

Black screen for me too, on ToMI ep 1 that is. It won't start game after I press New Game >> Yes. Tried all imaginable settings, as well as windowed; total mess. Getting the latest graphic drivers didn't work either.

ToMI 2 on the other hand starts up, the cut-scene with the voodoo lady appears just fine, then I get the ship scene without any ship being shown
(just the characters and usable entities being somewhere lost above the water), only with the background sky. For instance the cable I should hang on too with the hook is non-existent. Tried all graphic options again, windowed and full screen, reinstalled game (all of this with newest drivers)...nothing.

Hardware:

Pentium D (935 I think) 3 GHz (2 CPUs)
4 GB Ram
NVIDIA 9800 GT with 512Ram
Windows XP Professional SP3

Really was looking forward to playing this all fine :/

[DjNDB]

Originally Posted by zackrob

Hardware:

Pentium D (935 I think) 3 GHz (2 CPUs)
4 GB Ram
NVIDIA 9800 GT with 512Ram
Windows XP Professional SP3

Let's see what we can do. Could you please give us some more information?

Please start dxdiag:
Windows XP: Go to your start menu and click on run. Type in "dxdiag" and hit enter
Windows Vista / 7: Press the windows key on your keyboard or click on the start menu. Type in "dxdiag" and hit enter.

Now click on the button that says "save all information".
It will prompt you to save a file. Save it where you can find it.


Then e.g. zip the file and attach it to a message.

[Cobra951]

I now have this problem after I attempted to change the resolution from 1024x768 to 1280x720. My 23" Samsung LCD HDTV (hooked up through VGA) says the mode is not supported. My 22" Acer LCD WXGA monitor (hooked up through DVI) is also black, though it doesn't complain about the resolution. The process is running, and I can Alt-Tab out of it, seeing that happen only on the Acer. The Samsung remains unhappy until after I terminate the process in task manager.

Is there a safe launch for the game, or a way to manually reset the res in a config file or the registry? Or do I need to uninstall and reinstall? Thanks.

Edit: I'm sorry, I should have said this is the Tales of Monkey Island freebie episode you released today. Video quality is 3. Anything higher lags on my 128MB Geforce FX5900. Thanks again.

[DjNDB]

Originally Posted by Cobra951

Is there a safe launch for the game, or a way to manually reset the res in a config file or the registry? Or do I need to uninstall and reinstall? Thanks.

You can try deleting the file prefs.prop in the games folder in your documents folder.

You can also replace it with the one I attached in this post.

[hansschmucker]

Simply go to your My Documents folder. You'll find a Telltale folder in there containing savegames and configuration data. Open the folder for the game that you want to reset and delete the prefs file.

Edit: Oops. Forgot to refresh: sorry.

[Cobra951]

Ah. MyDocuments. I tried the %appdata% folder earlier, and of course found nothing. Thanks. I tried futzing with a registry field under Software/Telltale, but that ended up making things worse (crashing). I had just started the game anyway, so I ended up uninstalling and reinstalling. It runs very well at 1024x768 with aspect set to 4:3 on the Samsung; but since the game is letterboxed within that res (why?) I was hoping to use a 16:9 mode. 1360x768 a possibility, maybe?

[zackrob]

Here ya go, thanks for quick help and doing it unemployed :P Danke

[DjNDB]

Originally Posted by zackrob

ToMI 2 on the other hand starts up, the cut-scene with the voodoo lady appears just fine, then I get the ship scene without any ship being shown
(just the characters and usable entities being somewhere lost above the water), only with the background sky.

I don't see any obvious reason, but i can give you some things to try.

First of all let's check your ToMI installers for errors.
MD5 Check
Please download and install Hashcheck.
Then Download this MD5 File into the folder that contains the ToMI installers you downloaded from Telltale.

Finally just double click on the .md5 file for verification and tell us the results.




Something looks strange with your DirectX:

DirectX Files Tab: The file directx.cpl is a debug version, which will run slower than the retail version.

Do you have the DirectX SDK installed, not just the runtime?

DxDiag Previously: Crashed in DirectShow (stage 1)

This also sounds suspicious.

If you need it for development, install the most recent DirectX SDK.

Otherwise install the latest DirectX runtime.


Try if that changes anything in the game.




Besides that and probably unrelated there are some old drivers on your system. I'll link you some updates for the sound drivers.

Description: SB Audigy 2 Audio [D000]
Default Sound Playback: Yes
Default Voice Playback: No			
Date and Size: 4/29/2004 05:01:00, 374000 bytes

Audigy 2 Drivers - Release date : 13 Jul 09

Description: Realtek HD Audio output
Default Sound Playback: No
Default Voice Playback: Yes
Date and Size: 2/14/2008 11:04:06, 4676096 bytes

Realtek HDA Drivers - Date: 2009-09-14


If you're done and it still doesn't work you could make a new dxdiag.

[zackrob]

Updated the directX, still DirectDraw fail, no idea what that is, never used it from what I know. On the other hand, thumbs up for install files, both were mismatches, getting them again as we speak. What are these .md5 files anyway?

Hope this makes it work, I'll post as soon as I get it, hopefully, working

EDIT: Thank you thank you thank you!!! Happy monkey player over here!

[DjNDB]

Originally Posted by zackrob

Updated the directX, still DirectDraw fail, no idea what that is, never used it from what I know. On the other hand, thumbs up for install files, both were mismatches, getting them again as we speak. What are these .md5 files anyway?

Hope this makes it work, I'll post as soon as I get it, hopefully, working

EDIT: Thank you thank you thank you!!! Happy monkey player over here!

Wonderful that it works now and that it was just a simple data transfer error.
It could have been hard to track down otherwise.

If it was my system i would investigate the DirectDraw failure. At some point it might cause trouble. I don't know how i could help you there though.

The MD5 file contains Hashes of the correct install files. Hashcheck calculates the Hashes for your files and compares them to the correct ones.
If a file has been modified it has a different hash value and you get notified of that by Hashcheck.