Jedi Academy rendering problem?

Discussion in 'Gaming' started by cardinal biggles, Jan 25, 2010.

  1. cardinal biggles

    cardinal biggles A GODDAMN DELIGHT Moderator

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    I'm not much of a gamer, and as my specs will show, I'm still pretty far back in the Stone Age, but I've got a weird tech support question, and maybe you guys can help.

    I'm on an HP Pavilion 762c running XP with 1 GB of RAM, a 250 GB hard drive, and a NVIDIA GeForce 4MX 200 graphics card. When I first bought the game, it ran fine. At some point, though, my first hard drive crapped on me. Ever since I replaced the hard drive, whenever I try to play Jedi Academy the game renders a range of mountains smack in the middle of the action! :eek:

    I've tried doing a clean uninstall and reinstall of the game, and I've made sure I had the most up-to-date NVIDIA driver, and it doesn't seem to help. Any suggestions?
     
  2. Chris3123

    Chris3123 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Heh, you say Stone Age, but that's still a lot better than what I had just prior to Christmas (512 MB RAM, 75 GB hard drive space, the rest I don't pay much attention to). And for what it's worth Jedi Academy worked perfectly for me, even on that.

    No clue on your problem, though. I can't imagine how a hard drive can cause rendering errors, but maybe I'm missing something obvious.
     
  3. Rii

    Rii Rear Admiral

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    Have you tried other games to confirm that the problem is confined to Jedi Academy?

    Regarding drivers, did you actually update/reinstall them or just check the version numbers? If the latter, do the former. Also try updating DirectX.
     
  4. Haggis and tatties

    Haggis and tatties Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Sounds like a driver issue, sometimes drivers can cause issue even the most up to date driver might cause issue that a older drivers did not, try downloading and installing some older versions of your video card driver.
     
  5. cardinal biggles

    cardinal biggles A GODDAMN DELIGHT Moderator

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    ^That's a good point about older drivers.

    Chris, the reason I think it's connected to the hard drive is that when I put in the new hard drive, I did a clean installation of XP along with clean installs of all the latest versions of my drivers. That was when Jedi Academy started rendering the mountains. (I wish I could do a screengrab; it's actually quite hilarious to look at!)

    I have no idea what version I was on before, but I'll have to see if I can find something to roll the NVIDIA driver back to.
     
  6. Chris3123

    Chris3123 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I got that from your initial post. I'm sure it does have something to do with the switch, but I don't think it's the hard drive itself.
     
  7. Sparky

    Sparky Commodore Commodore

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    Is it actually rendering 3D mountains or is it the background skybox being displayed as a foreground object? Have you tried changing the detail settings or the screen resolution?

    It really does sound like a driver issue but like Rii suggests I would make sure that your DirectX is up to date and working correctly.
     
  8. Haggis and tatties

    Haggis and tatties Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Best not to bother with rollback, just go into your control panel and remove the driver, but first go Here, 3D Guru.

    Great place for old and new drivers, had to go back a fair bit to reach drivers that are not to advanced but still show support for your card.

    Try this Driver

    So download driver, remove present driver via the control, remove programs, and then install the driver in the link above......see what happens.
     
    Last edited: Jan 27, 2010
  9. cardinal biggles

    cardinal biggles A GODDAMN DELIGHT Moderator

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    ^That didn't pan out, unfortunately. I tried the three mirror servers; one came up as an empty directory, another came up as a 404 error, and the European server timed out.

    I'll try and reinstall JA and see if there's anything that needs to be tweaked with the detail settings or screen resolution. To be honest, though, I'm too clueless to have played with them. ;)
     
  10. Rii

    Rii Rear Admiral

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    It has nothing to do with the HDD and everything to do with one of the innumerable differences in software configuration between your old installation and your new one.
     
  11. Haggis and tatties

    Haggis and tatties Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Oh sorry bud, i never thought of actually seeing if the download links works, i am a silly donut, OK give this ONE a go, i tried the links and they work......these drivers are 56.72 Xp drivers.
     
  12. cardinal biggles

    cardinal biggles A GODDAMN DELIGHT Moderator

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    It was the NVIDIA driver. The older one you linked me to worked like a charm, Haggis. Thanks to everyone for their help!

    Now to see if I can find where I left my walkthrough three years ago. ;)
     
  13. SpeedRacer

    SpeedRacer Commander Red Shirt

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    Hey, does anyone know if that computer can run Mass Effect? I'm trying to get Biggles into the Mass Effect universe, so I was thinking about picking up the game for him.
     
  14. cardinal biggles

    cardinal biggles A GODDAMN DELIGHT Moderator

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    You don't give up, do you? ;)
     
  15. Haggis and tatties

    Haggis and tatties Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I have no doubt there is a minimum detail setting in the PC version of mass effect, but i think that PC would still be way too under minimum specs to run the game, that GF4mX 200 is really old now, if i remember correctly the minimum specs in video cards from Mass effect was a GT6800 card.
     
  16. cardinal biggles

    cardinal biggles A GODDAMN DELIGHT Moderator

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    Yay! Now, Speed Racer, will you please shut up about it? :p
     
  17. SpeedRacer

    SpeedRacer Commander Red Shirt

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    You wish. It just means that I'll have to get you Mass Effect AND a new video card for Christmas.
     
  18. cardinal biggles

    cardinal biggles A GODDAMN DELIGHT Moderator

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    My processor is too slow, as well. Gonna get me a new one of those, too?
     
  19. Rii

    Rii Rear Admiral

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    The GF4MX was old when it was new, being based on the GF2 architecture and having far less in common with its GF4Ti cousins than its name would suggest. There was a minor controversy at the time about Nvidia relying on such an architecturally limited chip as their mainstream offering and the effect that would have on the next generation of games then in development.
     
  20. cardinal biggles

    cardinal biggles A GODDAMN DELIGHT Moderator

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    That probably explains why I was able to pick up my compy at Sam's Club for a bag of peanuts and a song. :p