Help! Bernard's in my computer!

[Dan0859]

First, as a newbi, I want to say how helpful this forum as been for me, as far as learning and understanding the game. Now, for my problem. I bought SH3 about a month ago, as a download. I downloaded it, installed the patch, and everything was fine. Yesterday, when I tried to play, the game would load, but as soon as my mission started, it would freeze, and nothing would work. I've tried deleting it (including the file in My Doc's, and did a search to delete anything else labeled "sh3"). I reloaded the game, downloaded the patch again, but nothing helps. Both careers and single missions do the same thing. They load and start, but after 30 sec. to a minute, they freeze. I tried the delete-reinstall routine about 5 times, without any luck.
I even tried to go back to Direct2Drive, and buy another copy, figuring I'd delete the old ZIP file and start completely over. Well, I can't even do that. Their policy is that you can buy the game only once. That, I totally don't understand. Plus, they won't refund a purchase of a game. Any help would be appreciated!

[Deep-Six]

Bernard is not half of it. First and for most I need to have your syst specs.

Then we can go from there. NOTE: they need to be as specific as possible.

Your friendly neighborhood PC tech.

[Dan0859]

OK, I have an Averatec 6200 notebook. Yea, I know, but I'm overseas, and I couldn't bring a desktop unit with me. Specs are as follows:
AMD Athlon chip, 1.8 GHz
2 GB RAM
32 MG video card (hrdwired, can't be changed)
18 MG free on hard drive
Windows XP home
If I didn't list something you need, let me know. Thanks

[stabiz]

I really cant see the game working on a 32 meg graphics card.

[VIICDriver]

Did it ever work? Did it work well?

It has to be something with the video. Did you just install a mod or something before this happened, new vid drivers, new sound drivers?

Chuck

[Dan0859]

The game worked for about a month. Sometimes the colors were off, but it ran without a problem. I didn't do any mods or change anything, so that's why I don't understand what happened.

[Respenus]

Originally Posted by Dan0859

32 MG video card (hrdwired, can't be changed)
18 MG free on hard drive
Windows XP home

32Mb Video Card? I'm glad to hear that it ever worked. No offense, but that seems...low...

18Mb Free HD space? You can't run office, yet alone SH3 on such little space. SWAP memory, cache, temporary files, they all need space and 18Mb is far too little!

WinXP Home. Well it's Xp. I'm no expert, but I have heard that Home wan't really the best and that it has/had problems that Pro doesn't. Not really sure, but the game should work, just my observation.

[Kingcobra24]

Originally Posted by Respenus

32Mb Video Card? I'm glad to hear that it ever worked. No offense, but that seems...low...

18Mb Free HD space? You can't run office, yet alone SH3 on such little space. SWAP memory, cache, temporary files, they all need space and 18Mb is far too little!

WinXP Home. Well it's Xp. I'm no expert, but I have heard that Home wan't really the best and that it has/had problems that Pro doesn't. Not really sure, but the game should work, just my observation.

I agree with Respenus. A 32 MB vidcard is the next best thing to worthless. You should at LEAST have 128 MB on board. I don't know how large a download we're talking here, as far as the download version of SH3, but I have the boxed DVD version, and on my Tower with Windows XP Home with SP2, my program files are in 409 folders, and comprise 22,574 individual files for a total size on my hard-drive of 2.47 GB - that's GIGABYTES, not MEGABYTES. So, 18 MB of hard-drive availability seems to be extremely low as well. All I run is a basically vanilla SH3 with patch 1.4b. No supermods...merely torpedo texture, scenery texture, and sky & smoke add-ons. I don't even run custom skins! So, if SH3 even loads on your lapper, you're very lucky.