4pc games will not play

R

Rod Bishop

Member
My nephew has 4 pc games that used to work on a different PC. I loaded them one at a time and the load went great, but when I try play a game the system locks up and a windows error happens with Send or Don't send to windows everytime.

There is something I'm not doing or something I need to do to make the game start.

The game are a few years old, but they all did load form a CD and would run all day long.

What and I missing in the PC to cancel or add so he can play his games again?

The error says, The game has encountered a problem and needs to close.

We are sorry for the inconvenience, send or don't send
 
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What operating system are you trying to install them to? If they are older games, you may need to use compatibility mode when installing.
 
I know about compatability mode online, how can I set it up during installation?

All the games will install perfectly and the Logitech steering wheel is seen by the computer.

But when I click on the "RUN" icon to play the game the screen goes blank and the error prompt comes up as if the game locked up the pc.

By the way, this is the third pc I've tried to run the games on. I loaded the games on two different XP computers and 1 Vista computer.

I still have the Windows 98SE CD, I'm thinking about loading it on another pc to see if the games will work there.

But, I think there is something or a program I can kill on a XP system that will allow the games to work. I removed the virus protection on one XP pc but it still will not run the games.
I've still got about 12 PCs I can rework if someone here has an idea that might work.
To me it's some protection or memory manager thats stopping the game.
 
What specific games are we talking? Kind of hard to troubleshoot without knowing what titles they are.
 
Nascar Racing 4

Nascar RAcing 2

Nascar 2000

Extreme Rally Racer

Jane's F-15 Flight Combat

It's got to be some setting in XP or Vista that I'm missing. Cookie or security blocking the play, because all 5 games load perfectly without a hitch.

The Rally game says it's OK for Windows 7, Vista, XP and lower rated OSs.

And the Rally game does the same as all 4 other games do, locks up at the start or play icon.

All 5 games used to work in the past. The Rally game is new and it fails just like the others, in 3 different computers.

What can I kill or cancel at startup to stop most programs from opening that might the games a problem?
 
I remember having to upgrade my RAM to at least 16 MB in order to play Nascar 2 on Windows 95 ;)

Cookie or security blocking the play, because all 5 games load perfectly without a hitch.
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Simply installing files doesn't really mean anything as far as a suitable runtime environment.

I'd try the most restrictive environment for compatibility settings (95/98, 256 colors, limit to 640x480, run as admin, etc). You might also be able to try installing Windows 98 SE into a virtual environment such as VMware Player and running the games within the container.
 
I solved my game problem.

Ireverted back to an older PC, a 933, XP system. I removed all the Virus protection, the Firewall and Defragged it 10 times. I removed everything I could back to what it came with was nothing much.

The Stering wheel control from Logitech loaded fine and the Nascar 4 game loaded and runs perfectly.

It was not the memory or the HD Or the OS, it was just needing to be about as simple as can be.
My nephew came by twice and each time asked if the game was ready and he left sad.

My nephew will be happy on his next visit.
 
Oh god you're going to kill a computer.

Defragging it 10 times?!?! It's a once off operation. Doing it more than once is like trying to fill up at the next gas station after you just filled up 2 miles back.

Also I wouldn't really call it solving the problem if you just used a different computer. There was more than likely an issue with your previous computer. Simply switching to a different one probably fixed it, not all the anti-virus stuff you did.
 
I tried to run the game after the protection was gone and the game ran alot farther into the game than before but it still failed half way through.

The first Defrag took about 90 minutes, the second took 60 minutes and so on and so on, with the 40 gig HD

The last defrag took about 3 minutes.

I tried the game after the last Defrag and the results were dramatic.

the Nascar game ran like it was in a large Arcade game room in the mall.

Everything about the game was perfect.

With the removal of security and lots of Defrags made the game work.
 
If your old system was that full of garbage you should have just wiped it with a fresh XP install. Would have saved a lot of time :P

Defrag only takes ages if you don't have very much free disk space to swap data around with. Keeping it super full reduces the life of the drive since defrag operations would then require an exponentially higher amount of movement.
 
Rod Bishop said:
I tried to run the game after the protection was gone and the game ran alot farther into the game than before but it still failed half way through.

The first Defrag took about 90 minutes, the second took 60 minutes and so on and so on, with the 40 gig HD

The last defrag took about 3 minutes.

I tried the game after the last Defrag and the results were dramatic.

the Nascar game ran like it was in a large Arcade game room in the mall.

Everything about the game was perfect.

With the removal of security and lots of Defrags made the game work.
Click to expand...

Do you know what defrag actually does?
 
Retired, I have lots of time to work things out. Besides, I enjoy a good mystery that computers will sometimes create.

I find it hard to give up on anything and just reformat and reinstall everytime when the going gets rough.
 
Defragmentation is a process that reduces the amount of fragmentation. It does this by physically organizing the contents of the mass storage device used to store files into the smallest number of contiguous regions (fragments). It also attempts to create larger regions of free space using compaction to impede the return of fragmentation. Some defragmentation utilities try to keep smaller files within a single directory together, as they are often accessed in sequence.

Defragmentation is advantageous and relevant to file systems on electromechanical disk drives. The movement of the hard drive's read/write heads over different areas of the disk when accessing fragmented files is slower, compared to accessing the entire contents of a non-fragmented file sequentially without moving the read/write heads to seek other fragments.

Several defrag operations in my nephew's PC made the necessary changes on the old style hard drive to allow the game to work properly.
 
Rod Bishop said:
Several defrag operations in my nephew's PC made the necessary changes on the old style hard drive to allow the game to work properly.
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This is invalid. It's kind of a waste of time pasting a defrag definition from somewhere to people who are already familiar with the process, though.

Also, please define 'old style hard drive'. Simply because a drive uses an IDE interface doesn't change the mechanical properties of the drive.

The only bearing the location of the data on the drive has on being executed in a runtime environment would be in the time it takes to launch the application and load its resources. There is zero situation that a defrag would fix which would prevent the application from working in any capacity.
 
Well your definition of defrag is right. However because of what it actually does defragging more than once is pointless.

SSD's should not be defragged, correct. Regular HDD's do need defragged every once in a while, but not really that often and certainly not more than one at a time.

It's great that you got the game working, all I (and beers) are saying is that the defrag certainly was the not the reason it started working again. Defrag will make stuff load faster since the arm in the drive doesn't have to physically move as much, but defrag will not fix errors or anything like that. Also I'm still confused why you think defrag fixed it because you stated you switched computers.
 
Also, you seem more interested in trying to deny the outcome to the game running problem that is now finish and final. The game is now working.

I started this post looking for answers and help from members in the begining, and I finished this post by detailing to the members here what I did to fix the game runing problem.

You can deny the outcome I reached and the steps I took, but the facts are true.

What we don't need on this forum is someone denying the results of other members hard work because you alone can't see it.
 
Rod Bishop said:
Also, you seem more interested in trying to deny the outcome to the game running problem that is now finish and final. The game is now working.

I started this post looking for answers and help from members in the begining, and I finished this post by detailing to the members here what I did to fix the game runing problem.

You can deny the outcome I reached and the steps I took, but the facts are true.

What we don't need on this forum is someone denying the results of other members hard work because you alone can't see it.
Click to expand...

If it works then great but all I'm telling you is that something else fixed your issue. You said you did many things including a different computer and a defrag. The defrag is not what fixed your issue. To go with a car analogy, again. Say your Honda Civic isn't starting. Replacing the car with a Toyota Corolla and then refilling the gas tank nine times would not then lead you to believe that refilling the gas tank fixed your Civic not starting. You're sitting in a Corolla with a full tank of gas, and it works because it's not your dead Civic. Filling the gas tank 9 times had nothing to do with it.

I'm really really not trying to be rude about this I'm just making sure you understand that what you think fixed your issue did in fact not. If you don't care what fixed it and are just happy it's working, fine by me, ignore me and my babbling. I just like people to actually understand what is going on to fix their issues, regardless of whether or not it pertains to computers.
 
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The only issue I have is the game refused to work before on three different PCs, the first two may have been to fast for an old game.

The oldest XP PC failed exactly like the first two PCs did, exactly.

I simply removed the security programs first and tried the game again. It seemed to me that the game ran a little farther before failing, but still locked up the PC.

I did the defrag several times and each time the defrag time to finish got quicker.

When the degrag time was five minutes, I reloaded the game and it worked perfectly and faster than before.

I'm not saying the defrag fixed everything, but the game worked after that.

Posting my results seemed to bother some members here.

Take it or leave what I did, but it now the game works.
 
I'm not sure what the other members are up about but defragging will definitely help a system run better. XP's defrag program probably just didn't run correctly as always, should be using a third party program such as smart defrag, defraggler or auslogic disk defragmenter. That may explain why it finally worked on the XP system but there is no explanation so far on why it won't run on the other systems.
 
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