Famon
12-28-2004, 04:20 PM
Wow -- I can't believe it worked.
So I was one of the people with the sound problem -- where Pirates would die with the black screen and spinning wheel cursor. Disabling the Windows Audio Service allowed the game to run -- without sound.
Interestingly, Neverwinter Nights recently stopped working on this same machine. It was just dumping me to desktop.
But I had the latest drivers for everything.... so, I went to the NWN boards. Where I read about the sound error that would dump you to desktop. Sure enough, disabling sound fixed NWN too.
So I followed the NWN workaround, copied here (courtesy of http://nwn.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=177680&forum=49 )
If disabling sound (edit the nwn.ini file and change DisableSound=0 to DisableSound=1) allows your game to run, then search your system for the files a3d.dll and a3dapi.dll
If these files are present, then:
1. Boot into safe mode
2. Rename *all* occurrences of the files to a3d.old and a3dapi.old (except for any that are in a CAB file. You don't need to do anything with those).
3. Reboot normally, re-enable sound and you should now have a fully functioning game.
If you aren't sure how to boot into safe mode, this is generally accomplished by pressing the F8 key during system bootup. If you do a search of your windows help for safe it will provide you the exact sequence.
For WinXP users, you will have a menu with two different safe mode choices. You do *not* want the safe restore option.
I had only the a3dapi.dll .... and getting rid of it like this fixed both NWN and Pirates. Both work perfectly with sound.
Hope this helps the community.
Famon
So I was one of the people with the sound problem -- where Pirates would die with the black screen and spinning wheel cursor. Disabling the Windows Audio Service allowed the game to run -- without sound.
Interestingly, Neverwinter Nights recently stopped working on this same machine. It was just dumping me to desktop.
But I had the latest drivers for everything.... so, I went to the NWN boards. Where I read about the sound error that would dump you to desktop. Sure enough, disabling sound fixed NWN too.
So I followed the NWN workaround, copied here (courtesy of http://nwn.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=177680&forum=49 )
If disabling sound (edit the nwn.ini file and change DisableSound=0 to DisableSound=1) allows your game to run, then search your system for the files a3d.dll and a3dapi.dll
If these files are present, then:
1. Boot into safe mode
2. Rename *all* occurrences of the files to a3d.old and a3dapi.old (except for any that are in a CAB file. You don't need to do anything with those).
3. Reboot normally, re-enable sound and you should now have a fully functioning game.
If you aren't sure how to boot into safe mode, this is generally accomplished by pressing the F8 key during system bootup. If you do a search of your windows help for safe it will provide you the exact sequence.
For WinXP users, you will have a menu with two different safe mode choices. You do *not* want the safe restore option.
I had only the a3dapi.dll .... and getting rid of it like this fixed both NWN and Pirates. Both work perfectly with sound.
Hope this helps the community.
Famon