pirates wont run....

[america person]

hey, i installed it and it seemed ok, but when i try to play it it just goes to a black screen with the spinning wheel. It works fine on my sister's computer-which is older then mine? i got mine ~2 years ago. anyone know how to fix it?

[DeerHunter UK]

I had exactly the same problem, the game would only load as far as the spinning wheel. I fixed this by changing my soundcard settings in dxdiag (the acceleration settings) to standard acceleration (it was previously set to off).
Hope this helps.

[america person]

ill try it? how do i get to that menu?

[DeerHunter UK]

Click on the start menu and then click on run, when the small menu pops up type in dxdiag in the open box and click ok. The menu you're looking for should be under the sound tab.
A word of warning though, be extremely careful when altering things in dxdiag, it is very easy to mess up your settings and this is done entirely at your own risk.
A quick way to check if it is your soundcard settings that are causing any problems would be to disable your soundcard temporarily and then try to run the game. If it works you know for sure it's the soundcard.

[america person]

i tried moving it to standard acceleration, and i still got the screen? how do i disable my sound card? and then reenable it?

[DeerHunter UK]

The only way that I know to disable a soundcard (I'm using Win XP). Is to click on Start and then select Control Panel. From there scroll down the list and click on System, then select the Hardware tab and click on Device Manager. Select Sound, video and game controllers, right click on your soundcard (in my case it's Creative SB Live! series and select disable. You will see that it now has a red x next to the name to tell you that it is disabled. You can now run Pirates to see if you can get past the spinning wheel screen. If you can, you know for sure it's either your soundcard settings or your drivers for your soundcard need updating. When you're ready to re-enable your soundcard return to the Device Manager screen, right click on your soundcard and select enable. Your soundcard should now be functioning fine.
As with DXDiag, this does carry some risk (as does nearly every Windows operation) so this is done entirely at your own risk.
If the game still doesn't work, I suggest trying the Atari Help Forums (and make a search for spinning) and hopefully someone can help you there. You can find the forums here; http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums/index.php?
Good Luck.

[america person]

ok, i disabled my sound card and it worked..is there anyway i can change my sound card to get the sound to work?

[DeerHunter UK]

It's either your soundcard drivers are out of date or it's the hardware acceleration. If I were you I would either update your soundcard drivers or try a different hardware acceleration setting in DXDiag (I think there's 4 settings altogether). The main thing is that we've narrowed down the cause of the game not working, so it might also be worth getting in touch with Atari's tech support and see what they can come up with.

[america person]

cool, thnaks man appericate the help :up:

[DeerHunter UK]

No worries, sorry I couldn't be any more help. Hope it works out for you.

[FAdmiral]

You never said exactly what sound card you were using or is it
onboard sound? A non-std. or older sound card could give you funny problems with future games too. Maybe a sound card
change would eliminate these types of problems later on....


JIM