Porsche Unleashed Broken

[Skyfrog]

At first I thought the Catalyst 4.7 drivers were to blame, but going back to the drivers that shipped with XP did not help. I upgraded to the Catalyst 4.8 drivers today and still no change at all. The only other change I can think of is that I've upgraded to XP service pack 2 (clean install, slipstreamed). Anyway here is the problem; when I run the game and try to select from the drop down menus (game difficulty, choosing car or track, etc) an empty drop down box appears. I can still select stuff but I just can't see what I'm selecting. Then when I try to play it loads the track and then crashes back to the desktop. I've reinstalled the game, made sure it's patched, nothing helps. It worked fine before SP2 so I'm thinking that must be the cause. Has anyone tried this game with SP2, or know of any way to fix the above problem?

Thanks in advance

ATI Radeon 8500

Catalyst 4.8 Drivers

Windows XP Home SP2

Edited August 17, 2004 by Skyfrog

[nekrosoft13]

that game never worked for me in xp

[Skyfrog]

If you mean it hangs at the loading screen and fills up your entire hard drive with a swap file that can be fixed by deleting the file gimme.dll (appropriate name) in the main game directory. The game will load up and work fine after that. Now if I could just figure out what is causing the menu problem and crashing. I thought it might be the updated firewall so I temporarily disabled all of the security stuff to check; unfortunately it didn't change anything. The only other thing I can think of is that maybe DirectX 9.0c is causing the trouble. I don't know why it would but I'm going to try it on a different machine later with and without the new DirectX version.

Electronic Arts really do a great job supporting their games by the way. Thanks a lot EA! :crazy:

[boomn]

In terms of getting it running with XP, i found these instructions a few years back:

1) Download the Microsoft Application Compatibility Tool. Go to http://www.microsoft.com/compatibility or directy to the link:

ACT

2) Install ACT.

3) Load up the Compatibility Administration Tool from the Programs menu.

4) Click the "Fix" icon to create a new compatibility fix.

5) Type in a description (anything you want), and then point the program to the "Porsche.exe" file. Click "Next".

6) Under "Operating System Modes", select "Windows 2000". "Win98/Me" might also work, but I haven't needed to try it. Click "Next".

7) Out of the 130-or-so compatibility options, enable "EmulateHeap" and "HeapPadAllocation". Click "Next".

8) This should bring you to the end of the wizard. Click "Finish".

9) Now you'll have an application compatibility patch. However, ACT will discard your new patch unless you install it into the system registry. To do this, go to the "File" menu and click "Install".

10) Every time you run Porsche.exe, it should now manage memory correctly. You will now also be able to download the 3.5 patch from within the game itself, and have full multiplayer capabilities. Enjoy!

I have never had a problem since then! :D

As for the Catalyst issue, I have no idea since i dont use them

[Skyfrog]

I have an offline version of the 3.5 patch so that has never been a problem, but maybe this will solve the other issues I'm having. If nothing else not having to delete gimme.dll anymore would be nice. Thanks! :)

[Dio]

Uh, Skyfrog, if you're using WinXP then...

Go to google and search for the NFS Porsche Unleashed XP patch. Just a quick install with many cool features (you can turn them off if you like) which allows PU to run under XP really, really good.

EDIT: http://www.nd4spdworld.com/?section=util&v=5&s=info&id=221 is where you wanna get that 3.5 enhanced patch which has 2000/XP enhancements and compatibility.

[fuel925]

Electronic Arts really do a great job supporting their games by the way. Thanks a lot EA! :crazy:

errr that game is ****ing ancient, you think EA and other companies will just keep supporting these games forever?? :rolleyes:

[nekrosoft13]

its not ancient, and they should just release a fix

to be honest i got it working once or twice

i have p4 2.8ghz @ 3.4 ghz (right now)

1024mb corsair ram

x800 now (9800 pro then)

and audigy 2

and i was getting about 2-8fps in nfs pu

when all other games are 100% normal

so what could be causing that?

[qdave]

weird, i have Amd 64 3200+, 512 ram, radeon 9800pro, audigy 2zs, and win xp sp2, and it works just fine

[nekrosoft13]

i know its weird is totally unplayable, and this is the best need for speed ever made so far

[Skyfrog]

The game isn't that old, and besides that the problems first started showing up at least 2 years ago. Should they have not fixed it then at least? What about Need For Speed III and IV? When newer video cards came out and the 3DSetup program didn't recognize them, you had to use hacks and workarounds to get them to work properly in D3D mode. I don't think supporting a game a year or two after it's release counts as "forever". They could at least make an effort.

Dio, thanks but that didn't work either. It loads up fine but the menus are still missing. Remember this problem is not the same one people have been having running it in XP all this time. I already found a fix for that a long time ago and have been playing it all this time in XP with no trouble at all. It was not until I installed SP2 that my drop down menus became blank and the game crashed to the desktop when loading a track. I blamed ATI and their new drivers at first but after trying some older drivers I found they weren't causing it. Maybe it's not SP2 either if QDave is running it with no problems. I also found an old post about blank menus on Google Groups from a year ago but there was no solution posted. N@t5, I tried the application compatibility toolkit but so far it hasn't helped (though I was able to use it to fix the free disk space problem in High Stakes). I'll keep playing around with it though and trying different options. Thanks again for all the suggestions.

Edit: I just installed the game on a friend's computer which also has XP SP2 installed. The game ran perfectly on it, no patches or tweaks required. This computer is very similar to mine except it has a Kyro II video card. So I guess SP2 is not to blame; looks like it's an issue with my Radeon. It always worked fine with it before though; I'm just stumped.

Edited August 18, 2004 by Skyfrog

[fuel925]

I don't think supporting a game a year or two after it's release counts as "forever".

It was released in 2000, by my calculations that equals almost 4 years, not "a year or two". Unless the game is still massively popular, like counter-strike or half-life, then theres no need for the company to be wasting their time supporting that game any longer. You'd rather they keep tweaking old games instead of working on new, better releases??

[nekrosoft13]

It was released in 2000, by my calculations that equals almost 4 years, not "a year or two". Unless the game is still massively popular, like counter-strike or half-life, then theres no need for the company to be wasting their time supporting that game any longer. You'd rather they keep tweaking old games instead of working on new, better releases??

and windows xp came out 2 years ago

so whats your point

[Skyfrog]

You'd rather they keep tweaking old games instead of working on new, better releases??

Actually I'd rather they take a day off from working on their "new better releases" to fix major problems in games that I have already spent my hard earned money on. Keep in mind I'm talking about from the time XP was released, so the game was only two years old at the time. It wouldn't have killed them to release a patch for it; having the source code and the original programmers I'm sure it wouldn't have taken very long. They could probably fix it during their coffee break. It's not like I am asking them to update The Seven Cities of Gold from 1984 to run on XP. I also couldn't help but notice how well they supported Motor City Online, which if you bought it is basically a nice coaster now. Some companies actually support their games for many years, even if they aren't extremely popular. Those are the ones that I'll happily continue doing business with.

Was Half-Life supported for so long because it was popular, or was Half-Life popular for so long because it was well supported? :)

[fuel925]

and windows xp came out 2 years ago

so whats your point

that makes the game 2 years old at the release of xp, which is a LONG time in the computing world, even you should know that :rolleyes:

[fuel925]

Was Half-Life supported for so long because it was popular, or was Half-Life popular for so long because it was well supported? :)

Considering that the game received over 50 GOTY awards upon its release, ill vote for the former...