Why can't my computer handle WW?

blargue · #1 January 5th, 2006, 10:13 PM

Hey guys. Great game. The only problem is that my computer doesn't seem to be able to run it at all. I have a Gforce 4 video card. I'm running XP. I have a P4 2.66. And I have 256 MBs of Ram. In other words, nothing special but well above and beyond what I should need to run it smoothly.

I run WW on the second lowest resolution it has available. I'm not running anything else at the same time. It's loading about a frame every 2 seconds.

Any ideas?

Zogu · #2 January 6th, 2006, 01:18 AM

Hmmm if you're running an anti-virus and/or a firewall, try to carefully turn them off for a few minutes. Then try running WW. Don't forget to turn your protections back on afterwards! Some crappy firewall programs are CPU hogs.

Otherwise, try to find out if there are some "hidden" programs or drivers eating up a lot of CPU. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL and check the CPU usage, sort it by process. Anything special running in the background... an indexing process, a MP3 downloader, an unknown process, ...?

Run dxdiag and check your video drivers' compatibility; please provide your current DirectX version.

Flashfire · #3 January 6th, 2006, 02:58 PM

Just had the same problem with my computer at work. Fixed it by going into DXDIAG and ENABLING Direct3D and DirectDraw in the display tab. Give it a shot.

blargue · #4 January 6th, 2006, 05:16 PM

Argh! I tried those suggestions and nothing seems to help here. I checked the processes running (ctl + alt + del) and nothing peculiar showing there either. I tried updating DirectX to the newest version available too. No dice.

Any other ideas?

Thanks for your help by the way.

Fingers · #5 January 6th, 2006, 05:28 PM

GF4 should be enough to run the game, so it's some kind of a configuration issue. ZoneAlarm is known to have memory problems (on my laptop its memory usage slowly creeps up until it uses 2GB of memory...) but this sounds too drastic.

Do you have recent drivers for your video card? Is your desktop set to 32-bit color? Have you tried running with the -nosound command line option? Have you tried both windowed and fullscreen modes?

Strider · #6 January 6th, 2006, 06:50 PM

You might try turning off System Restore, also.
Start | Settings | Control Panel | System
Put a check on turning off System Restore.

PvK · #7 January 29th, 2006, 08:42 PM

Sounds to me like your video card isn't working well with the OpenGL code that WW uses.

PvK

senon · #8 January 30th, 2006, 03:35 AM

hmm... i'll try it with somehting else that uses openGL and see how that goes. thanks.

-senon

PvK · #9 January 30th, 2006, 06:28 PM

(BTW I actually had the reverse issue on one of my computers - its GeForce4 4000 won't work with Direct3D in DirectX 9.0c at all, but it plays Wierd Worlds great since it has no problem with OpenGL.)

Shadowcat · #10 January 30th, 2006, 07:23 PM

PvK: Weird. I have a GF4Ti4200 and have no trouble with D3D and DX9.0c. I use the 56.64 drivers under Win98 (the later drivers are directed at their newer hardware, and only cause problems for the GF4 series in my experience). Which drivers do you use??