Oolite Bulletins

Hi all! I've just discovered Oolite and it has brought back good memories of playing Elite on a BBC micro

I have one MAJOR problem though - Oolite doesn't want to work on my computer All I get is that annoying windows error box - Oolite has encountered a problem and needs to close'

My system is a AMD Athlon (1100Mhz) with 768Mb RAM. I'm running XP Pro SP2.
Graphics card is a geforce4 MX 64Mb, I don't have a sound card and the onboard sound is disabled because SP2 doesn't like it

The Oolite version downloaded is OoliteInstall-v1.65.exe

**edit** - i get the same when I try Oolite-1.71.2-test.exe

Hopefully someone can help, because I want to go blasting innocent traders again!

The forum will need a copy of the first fifty lines or so of your stderr.txt file post here (in XP the stderr file is created when oolite runs and lives in the same directory as the executable)

Sound may be an issue...

thanks... I'll post results tomorrow

(and I'm also picking up a soundcard tomorrow, so hopefully!!!!! )

This might seem like a stupid question, but have you tried getting new drivers for your PCs onboard sound? A 1.1GHz Athlon might not sit on the newest system board around, but I'd be surprised if there aren't updated drivers for it somewhere...

the onboard is Realtek AC'97 - i've looked EVERYWHERE for a compatible driver It stopped working when I upgraded to XP pro SP2

stderr.txt please? First fifty plus ending lines could be a very enlightening thing indeed.

Thargoid wrote:

Any particular reason you're still at SP2 rather than SP3?

I presume you've looked at places like this, this and this for the correct driver?

And what does it being an Athlon matter in terms of the sound driver, that's not doing the sound. It will be something else on the motherboard coping with the audio surely?

yes, I've tried all those drivers, with no luck. Everywhere else I've asked for help on various problems I always seem to get flamed for not posting the system details, so i just thought it would be a little helpful to state what hardware I am running.

It is indeed something else on the mobo that controls sound

I'm going to install a pci card later on, maybe that will solve stuff

Thargoid wrote:

And what does it being an Athlon matter in terms of the sound driver, that's not doing the sound. It will be something else on the motherboard coping with the audio surely?

Yep, but Athlon motherboards are not necessarily the same as Intel motherboards; given Micr0$haft's um, apparent preference for Intel processors, it can make a difference.
IIRC, there were high-end machines with 1.1GHz chips on the market before XP came out.

But it might be because you're running XP Pro rather than the "home" version... I think there were things disabled (as in deliberately stopped by Microsoft rather than accidentaly nobbled by some innocent mistake) in Pro that work fine under the standard XP - to prevent people running games on 'work' machines. I've got XP SP2 with a RealTek AC'97 onboard and that is working fine...

And as for "upgrading" to SP3, why bother? It's supposed to be just a collection of all the software updates since SP2, but with some "features" from Vista added. The most telling comment as to a good reason NOT to install it is that, when you read the 'documentation' on the Micr0$haft update tool, it warns you that it should not make any noticable changes to the way XP operates... sorry, but they put something like that in there - especially in light of the poor take-up of Vista (and the complaints by those who have bought it) and I wonder what "features" from Vista have been added. The only real "features" I know of that are substantially "better" than in XP (Micr0$haft's words - not mine!) relate to the hated security "improvements" and the fancy Aero 'rolladex' interface thing that is meant to replace ALT-TAB between applications. And since it hasn't added Aero to XP machines, there's not much else...

One of the more cynical theories is that there will be no problems for a while, then suddenly every machne running XP SP3 will start to suffer "inexplicable" slowness, and other problems - and people will suddenly decide to replace their XP machines with new Vista machines (if Vista is so good, how come machines with a much higher spec than "old" XP macihnes seem to be running slower???)

I T W O R K S ! ! ! ! ! !

i put a soundblaster live in and it loads up no problem now

i don't think my graphics are quite up to it, so i need to figure out how to make it a little less graphics intense now
I'll go and have a tweak

When I boot to XP for occasional web-cam use or to use my scanner - I ignore M$ advice to install SP3 update...

reduced detail + 800x600 = one happy Jameson!!!

cheers for the suggestions everyone, I'm going off to earn me some credits!!

Are you sure you got the right service pack?

love it!!!

where can you get the 1.71.2 test, im dying for it, MUST HAVE OOLITE!