Well, I wasted $50 on Empire Earth

[trmiv]

Damn, I wish I could return this game. The game seems like it is fun, if I could play it. It will not work in Windows XP, crashing every 5 minutes with a blue screen "DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL" error. I think this is a problem the game is having with my sound card drivers (Hercules Game Theater XP) because it says the error is from "cwcwdm.sys" which is a file from my sound card. But, this card has no problems with any other games, and I'm not buying a new sound car for this game.

I tried the game in Windows 98 and I can't enjoy it there, because my mouse jumps all around the screen, and I can barely control it. Both sides of the system (98 and XP) have the newest drivers for everything, but nothing seems to work.

The worst part is, I bought the damn game at Best Buy (stupid, I know), so I'm out of luck returning the damn thing. Damn, I knew I should have just bought a damn PS2 game.

 

[Valhalla1]

or u could wait for a patch or something..

 

[datalink7]

I get the exact same error with the exact same file "cwcwdm.sys" for a couple of games (Ghost Recon, Independence War 2, Operation Flashpoint). It has gotten to the point where all new games seem to get this error. I just stopped buying games and only play half life mods now, which doesn't get the error.

If anyone knows how to fix this, I would be EXTREMELY grateful.

 

[Need4Speed]

yup...its the GTXP....does the same for me and some others I know. Have you tried the new Herc drivers? I have yet to reinstall the game to try them out. LMK what you find

 

[trmiv]

<< yup...its the GTXP....does the same for me and some others I know. Have you tried the new Herc drivers? I have yet to reinstall the game to try them out. LMK what you find >>



I tried them, still crashed. I even tried turning down sound acceleration, and it still did it. This sound card is starting to drive me nuts, most of my game crashes are related to it. It hasn't happened in awhile, but here it goes again. I thought the last few drivers had fixed it. Too bad I can't afford to get a new one right now.

 

[datalink7]

I have the newest drivers as well. No go.

 

[dishawbr]

That really sux! I'm running XP and I play all the time.. you'll love it once you get it working...

 

[Fokks]

Yup, it's a driver problem.
I've seen this error a couple times and each time it's been something different.
One time it was disabling the ACPI feature of the USB hubs on the motherboard!
(unchecking the "allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" under the device manager)

If you reinstall XP without ACPI support, like in the Anandtech FAQ, same as windows 2000.
link http://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.html?i=47
I bet that will solve your problem. But you'll have to manually turn off your pc each time you shut down.

At least until better drivers are written.

Good luck.