Sierra Game won't run on Boss's Dell Dimmension XPS, help

[techwanabe]

Howdy,

I work in the MIS dept at a bank and the Bank President came to me with his problem. He has the following system with items listed on his spec sheet:

Dell Dimension XPS
PentiumIII 600mhz
128 mb RAM
Turtle Beach Montego II A3D sound card
Nvidia Geforce 32mb vidia card
10.4 gig Ultra ATA 7200 rpm hard drive
Win 98 OS

Don't know what mother board or drivers, but I'd assume he had whatever drivers were being used last spring when the PC was purchased.

He has 3 video games which ran on his previous Gateway PC, I think they are all car racing games. The one he is trying to use now is Sierra's Nascar Racing 1999 Edition on his newer Dell PC. Apparently it loaded fine and then he runs the game and at the point the race starts is stops working. That is the basic description I got. This is a bank president near retirement and not a computer ace. I'd like to help him out and get him up and running.

I've checked Sierra's website and there doesn't seem to be any patches listed which fit the description...

I would have to guess this could be related to a driver issue with the video card, sound card, or possible the driving wheel he is using. The game itself recommends a 3DFX card and Sound Blaster card, both of which he does not have.

Would you recommend downloading the latest drivers for his Geforce card and Turtle Beach sound card?

Has anyone with these components experienced game stopping issues with any Sierra games? Esp the Nascar Racing ones?

Thanx

 

[SuperFreaky]

does he actually get any 3D graphics to appear on the screen?

or does he hear any sounds before it crashes?

 

[Vrangel]

Go into game setup and disable video acceleration.It should run.
(in software mode)
I dont know for sure but it might be Glide only game
in which case you need 3dfx videocard.
Check video options in game.

 

[techwanabe]

He loaded Sierra Nascar 1999 on his PC at the office, and I looked at it briefly. I didn't see any configuration screen where you could disable 3D acceleration. I looked at the readme file and there was an appaling lack of technical issue information which I am used to seeing. I'm not sure if this is a Glide only game, but my Boss said he actually does start to drive for maybe 5 seconds or longer before the game crashes. So it sounds like it IS displaying the 3D part of the game.

Frankly, it doesn't look that great, and I have a Viper Racing demo which looks much better. He is going to look at the store for a latest and greatest Nascar Game, and I imagine it will work and look better if it was developed when the Geforce was out. Well see, thanks.

 

[vi edit]

My guess is that it came in a game pack that was designed and bundled with a 3dfx VooDoo3 card, and will only run with a 3dfx card. It's probably written only to enable glide. Look on the CD and see if it says anything about "only to be used on 3dfx cards" or something along those lines.

Nab a V3-3k for about $90 and swap out the Ge-Force for it...then pocket the Ge-Force 🙂

 

[vi edit]

Hehe, just saw your sig...take your video card into the office and stick it in his pc and see if the game works.

 

[Midnight Rambler]

Nascar 3 is optimized for Glide, but I'm pretty certain it supports D3D as well. There may even be a D3D patch if needed (for example, Sierra released a D3D patch for their Grand Prix Legends sim, which was also Glide only).

What I would do is make sure you have the most up-to-date STABLE drivers for the nVidia card installed, then un-install and re-install Nascar 3. It asks for primary display driver to be used during its install routine, and if this was incorrectly chosen on the initial install, that would be a problem.

Finally, make sure you also have the latest patches for Nascar 3 applied. If all this fails, go to Usenet group rec.autos.simulators and somebody there will definitely be able to help you further.

 

[Cosmic_Horror]

do you know if he can run any other games on his system?

if it didn't run at all, then maybe it is only a glide game, however if he can get it to run for a little while it suggests it could be a driver problem.

try the Nvidia reference drivers and see how that goes. 🙂

let us know how it goes.. 🙂

 

[techwanabe]

Vi_edit,

Swapping cards with him would be a good idea, cept his puter is at his home and not the office. I expect the Geforce he has would be a little better than my Voodoo 3 3000.

The game is a commerical boxed game, not a bundled CD. He gave me the box and everything and it does state that it is optimized for 3DFX cards, hence glide, but it will also run on D3D. I check Sierra for patches but nothing listed for D3D or problems relating to what I've been described. The game does run but crashes soon after the race starts so it sounds like a driver problem.

I think getting the latest reference driver from Nvidia would be the best thing...

I'll give it a try.