H2V freeze on loadup

[Don_HH2K]

I recently got around to installing Vista, and naturally Halo 2 was one of the first things I tried out. The installer runs fine, but actually trying to load Halo 2 brings up a black screen that can only be exited through Task Manager (Alt+F4'ing it won't work).

So I tried it again under Windows XP with the appropriate patches... This time, it'll load the "Halo 2" load image, but freezes shortly thereafter with nothing but full CPU utilization and incessantly-climbing memory usage. Neither case turned up any errors in the Windows Event Log.

The machine in question is a dual 2GHz system with 2GB of memory and Vista64/XP64 dual-booting. The real limiting factor is the graphics card, which is a Radeon X300 and non-removable. What I'd like to know is, has anybody seen/heard of this problem before, and is it caused by a bogus/subpar/etc graphics card, or is there anything I can do about it?

[P13F4C3]

its prolly your gfx card, cause the minumum H2V says is an X700

[Xetsuei]

Another problem might be Vista 64bit.

[Don_HH2K]

The thing is, I have a hard time believing that the problem is the graphics chipset. The Radeon X300 < (whatever) < X800 (I think) have the same instruction set, but just process at different speeds and bit depths and have different amounts of memory. If there are reports of people running H2V, however pitifully, on Intel GMA cards, I'd like to think I can run it on even a subpar yet relatively recent Radeon.

Unfortunately I have no way of testing it out on a 32-bit XP or Vista given my current configuration.

[Halo2Vista]

Another problem might be Vista 64bit.

well even on the box and the website it doesnt specify which version of vista you need, just vista.

[Xetsuei]

The thing is, I have a hard time believing that the problem is the graphics chipset. The Radeon X300 < (whatever) < X800 (I think) have the same instruction set, but just process at different speeds and bit depths and have different amounts of memory. If there are reports of people running H2V, however pitifully, on Intel GMA cards, I'd like to think I can run it on even a subpar yet relatively recent Radeon.

Unfortunately I have no way of testing it out on a 32-bit XP or Vista given my current configuration.

Dude, even if you do get it working it will hardly run. My laptop has a Core 2 Duo, 2 Gigs of ram, and a GeForce Go 7600. I can run h2v @ 640x480 low settings no aa, and get no more than 15 fps.

[Don_HH2K]

Trust me: when you finished most of Halo 1's campaign mode on a Radeon 7000 and everything set as low as possible, 15fps isn't too bad. I got used to three or four FPS firefights where even the falling snow would start to glitch out. And to date I've still never run anything with antialiasing enabled.

I guess if worse comes to worse I'll install a 32-bit OS and give that a try... If I still get the same crash, then I've got a problem.

[Syuusuke]

Halo PC + Radeon 7000 + Windows (whatever you were using) does NOT = (equal)
Halo 2 Vista + Windows Vista x64 + ATI Radeon x300

[FireScythe]

I am running Windows Vista x64 and H2V works fine for me so I doubt it is a x64 problem.

[Don_HH2K]

Yeah, x64-related problem. I had mf.dll in &#37;SystemRoot%\System32, not %SystemRoot%\SysWOW64, where it should have been on a 64-bit system. Corrected my stupidity, and it works fine.

Syuusuke - you're right: there's about two frames per second worth of difference. The game averages 17fps under XP and a meager six under Vista. I used Fraps to benchmark both of them. This, of course, is with the LoD set to "Low", no antialiasing, and so forth.

So, my next question is... Is there any equivalent to switches like CE's -vidmode, -safemode, and so forth? I'm alright running it at the minimum 800x600, but if I can get a few more frames out of 640x480 I wouldn't mind doing so.