ArmA wont start.. no error.. no window.. only a process.. Options

[BarfWood]

Hey there,

A month back I bought a new Laptop..

The Acer Aspire 8930G quite expensive. Here are the
specs.

Armed Assault + Queens Gamibit + Latest Patch - LEGIT copies.

Intel Core 2 Duo T5800 Processor (I know this really isnt recommended..)
Up to 1791mb Nvia GeForce 9600M (Yeh i know.. turbocache, it sucks)
Direct-X 10
4GB DDR3
320GB HDD
Blu-Ray

Windows Vista Home Premium 32-Bit

Now on to my problem... Whe I first got the laptop, i was so happy with it,
except for having Vista on there.

So I go ahead and install Armed Assault, and the game works FAB! On full
settings, even with the View Distant set to max, it was absolutely perfect.
Regardless of the specs mentioned above.. they dont seem all that good,
it could run armed assault fluidly with about 20 groups of 10 men on each
side with loads of tanks, boats, helicopters, planes etc... it could handle it.
Wow.

But after a few weeks of playing Armed Assault on my system.. it just suddenly
stopped working. I would start up the game, and I get no error.. no windows..
no nothing.. except a arma.exe process running, where the memory usage is
exactly the same as it was when I played the game in a window... and no CPU
usage..

So i got hacked off i may have wasted my money on this darn system (which is
beautful mind you.) So i decided to go through the process of resetting the system..
which involved press F8 at bootup, to reinstall windows Vista again. So that went
fine, i installed armed assault... Amazing! It worked!! Woohoo! So i as playing this
for a bit longer than I did before, and now its done that same thing as i mentioned
above again Its not working, but it has a process.

In the event Viewer, I am getting errors, but its not showing during app time.. which
is weird.

CODE

- System

  - Provider

   [ Name]  Application Error

  - EventID 1000

   [ Qualifiers]  0

   Level 2

   Task 100

   Keywords 0x80000000000000

  - TimeCreated

   [ SystemTime]  2009-02-02T15:25:02.000Z

   EventRecordID 1876

   Channel Application

   Computer Sams-PC

   Security


- EventData

   arma.exe
   1.14.0.5256
   482aea00
   arma.exe
   1.14.0.5256
   482aea00
   c0000005
   00031b71
   111c
   01c98545cc30f8e1

So I am just wondering if anyone can help me out? I have had no viruses on this machines... but then
again maybe McAfee cannot pick everything up.

So games work on this machine and some dont.. The games that dont work, just shows a black screen
and wont go any further. ArmA does show anything.

I have installed

##WORKS
1. Bioshock
2. RollerCoaster Tycoon 2
3. Neverwinter Nights 2

##DONT WORK
1. Battlefield 2
2. Battlefield 2142
3. Lord of the Rings - Conquest
4. Tribes Vengeance
5. Enemy Territory Quake Wars (Could be possble to fix...)

Help me.. thanks.. i have been without a proper gaming system since a power surge destroyed my quad-
core pc... the best i ever had.. with XP on it!

Many Thanks,

Sam.

edit: Oh yeh, I have a 3D Modelling app on here (Cinema 4D which i use for Uni) and it works perfect..

edit2: And Armed Assault is upgraded to the max with Queens Gambit. As for laptop drivers, i only touched
the ones from the Acer Website. WHen in-fact they are the same versions as the drivers that came with the
laptop itself.

edit3: I have done a "Can you run it test"... this may not be related to my problem at all but im just curious
about 2 parts of the results...



check it out.

Video Card Driver Version
and
Sound Card Driver Version

This post has been edited by BarfWood: Feb 23 2009, 21:02

[D@V£]

There are issues with Vista and 4GiB Ram

Though I wouldn't be surprised if it were down to this:

Windows Vista Business Edition 32-bit

The business version of Vista IIRC doesn't include many of the essential worky bits needed to play games. I'm actually surprised Bioshock works (it has... issues.... with Vista).

[BarfWood]

Hey there.. im deeply sorry that I have mistaken my Windows Vista Version... It turned out that when I was
looking for other laptops at PC World (Uk) i saw a fantastic gaming laptop that uses Windows Vista Business..

I got a bit carried away last night since i was tired... the actual version of Windows Vista is the

Windows Vista Home Premium 32-Bit.

Sorry for complicating things a bit here.

Im sure it may not be the ram,

1. Because 32-bit only use up to 3gb of ram
2. The rest is being used by my grapic card... as its turbocache, it also uses RAM memory..

But if Armed Assault was working, then im sure its none of these issues...

And yes Bioshock is quite buggy, but very playable at full speed.. only problem I have is that at the
beginning where u fall into the water... half the sky is pitch black, and then theres a blue coloured
sky with Moonlight... strange. I couldnt work out where i was going half the time. But it works very
well. just a damn hard game... ahh and also

Never Winter Nights 2 work very well too, on settings almost maxed out.

I'll update my first post.

Many thanks for your response. I wish to get this sorted soon, because Armed Assault is my favourite
game I have atm, and I made a wicked mission in the editor (not gonna be released.. it has no story)
where i have more than 200 or 300 units on there (including vehicles and aircraft) and i wish to play it
again..

Again, many thanks, I hope someone can help me out.

edit: Also Tribes Vengeance wont work... Im seriously considering getting Vista 64-bit (apparently
everything works on that) or getting XP 64-bit..

This post has been edited by BarfWood: Feb 23 2009, 19:34

[D@V£]

Ok, a few things to check off;

1. Do you have DX9 as well as DX10? ArmA doesn't use DX9. I'm not too sure how DirectX works, but IIRC correctly you need to install 9.0c then 10.
2. Graphics driver, sound drivers etc, do you have the latest versions? Update anyway just to be sure. (A lot of new PCs don't have these installed when they ship. Lazy if you ask me)


Out of interest, did the other games mentioned work before ArmA stopped working? If so it's probably a problem with the laptops hardware. I remeber back when I had an Acer laptop it had a lot of issues with hardware failing after a few months. (Then again, it was the cheapest laptop money could buy... )

[BarfWood]

1. I must have installed DX9 alongside some of the other games.. but this system came with DX10... which u need DX9 first to be able tpo upgrade to DX10. Thats afaik
2. Im a bit weary about updating my graphic drivers/sound drivers.. but i already done it from their website, and the version is the same one as I had already in the machine..

No.. a lot of the games dont work.. Unfortunately it explains the crappiness of Vista.. I love this £799 system to bits, but Vista just bites into my head, its annoying.. the software
is not faulty, but there something that is not right...

I installed Enemy Territory Quake Wars alongside the latest patch.. and upon startup, it just stays at the screen.. "Initializing Direct Input" just stays there... so I thought about
checking DXDiag.. and i did, and on the Direct Input tab, the loading bar would just stop in the middle and not carry on through... so i quit DXDiag and a message appears regarding
the Direct Input was failing to load, would i like to bypass it.. so i say yes, when i look at it.. theres nothing on there..

Do you reckon that my Pen Tablet is conflicting? I read up online tha someone had a problem with Quake Wars after installing a pen tablet, it worked fine for him before he installed
it.. but there was no solution, and he was the only guy in the Google search that had that problem...

[D@V£]

I don't see how a Tablet could be conflicting... if you've exhausted every other option you could try uninstalling it. Though like I said, I don't see how it could conflict.
Vista shouldn't be too much of a problem. I know a lot of people who run Vista without any problems (including myself ).



Though, the problem may be down to Vista's User Account Control (UAC), you could try disabling this as well. It's generally the cause of most compatibility problems with Vista. Here's a guide to disabling it: http://www.windowsnetworking.com/kbase/Win...sablingUAC.html



To be honest, if it's not any of these, then I'm not too sure what it could be. Though I can't see how it could be a problem with the setup or any software (as you said yourself, it was running perfectly fine before). I suppose the best way to try and work out the problem would be to think back to what you did when it stopped working.

For the record, which version of ArmA are you running? (Atari, 505, Morphicon or Steam?)

[BarfWood]

Im not sure now.. even when i look back, all i have ever done was play this game, and do some 3D uni work.. but i did that even when the game
was working...

UAC didnt do anything at all...

And i reinstalled it twice, even on a different drive. Nothing changed..

and i have that 505 Games edition.

Here is a screenshot of the process with no game window.. im deeply saddened



Im gonna have to wait until i get my apple mac and bootcamp xp from it..

Many thanks for your help mate, maybe a solution will appear? I hope so, i miss
playing Armed Assault.

This post has been edited by BarfWood: Feb 24 2009, 12:55

[DaKa]

Did you try RightClick---->Run as Administrator? I had similar problems but that gave me a cure...

[BarfWood]

Hey.. yeh i tried your suggestion... and nothing happened.. nothing is popping up
i regret getting this laptop with Vista.. but all the shops sell them with vista .
But i love this laptop to bits.. its amazing, just that some games work and some dont..