:roll: why didn't you pick up ATI's own - and free! - removal tool? Available on their site, as well as part of your drivers installation...

As a cleaning tools, you may have wanted this: http://www.ccleaner.com/
Free too and a very smooth tool...

Sorry for being late! http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z...s/biggrin2.gif


When I upgraded to nVidea a couple of months ago, I had the same symptoms as you. Could run many things, but SH3/SH4 crashed as you described it.
Somewhere I read a guy having the same thing and he solved it by pressing the graphics card very firm into it's socket.
Use a hand on the back of your motherboard to press the two together, don't forget to turn of power and removing powercord first.

It did the trick for me. Has been running steady as a rock since.


Of course now my motherboard has been upgraded too and I noticed the PCIe-socket came with a much deeper socket? it clearly allows the gfx-card to be inserted deeper and the pressing procedure hasn't been necessary at all??

Your motherboard shouldn't by any chance be a MSI?

how did you uninstall your old ATI card? Add/remove programs for the drivers? It would be best to:
Uninstall the ATI software. Reboot the system letting it boot up with the default vga drivers (if it asks to automatically find and install drivers click cancel). Check ATI's website for a utility that cleans out all traces of their drivers and download and run it. Reboot.
uninstall the card using the device manager and clicking on display adaptors and then right clicking on the ATI card and selecting uninstall. Shutdown. Install new video card. Reboot to default vga driver. Finally install the latest nForce drivers (ensure that the driver version supports your card!). Should work. That's how I did it when I upgraded from the X800XL to the 8800GTX but I have XP Pro but that shouldn't make much of a difference :D

Hi Racerboy,

Thanks for the advice, I could not find an uninstall utility to remove all ATI programs from my Vista 32 bit package. Still, I have searched everywhere for ATI files and removed them. There is still no joy I am afraid. Any ideas?

Rgds

I would say that if you can open the museum & the academy missions the only thing missing is the cities & locations, the museum has the ships & U-boats, the academy has all except the cities, locations, traffic (scripts), I think the single player missions use the campaign files so I would start with checking the Lnd mis files & locations.:-?
Have you got a new installed 1.4b game or a rolled back version that could be corrupt.:doh:

Thanks very much for all of your advice Karleuns,

I tried the complete uninstall in the end and still no joy. I took my machine back to the shop where I bought the card from (Antech in St Ives, Cambs), they laboriously searched for the solution and found it.

Right click on SH3 icon on desktop - select Compatability tab - under Privilege Level heading, select 'Run this program as administrator'.

In the Compatability mode heading I currently have 'Windows XP (Service Pack 2)' also selected.

I now am able to access SH3 once more, unfortunately all of my career info is gone. I now have to start from scratch. But hey, that is a small sacrifice for being able to get back to my beloved U-83 :D.

Rgds to all

K guns if all else fails then you will have to format your hardrive and reinstall Vista.

Back up all your stuff and do this as a last resort. I know its a pain. But maybe the only way with a fresh OS install.

Even with Windows XP sometimes it only could handle so many hardware changes before it had some issues.


Vista might be worse? :hmm: