[thamasta]

I have the demo of Battle Field 2 installed on my computer. When I double click the icon on the desktop to play it, I get a black screen for about three seconds and then hit goes back to my desktop. I don't get any error messages at all. What is wrong?

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its your video card drivers. bet you have nvidia

[starjax]

its your video card drivers. bet you have nvidia

[thamasta]

Yes I do. Is there anywhere for me to play it though?

[KGH]

Post your video card and machine specs.

It may just be a matter of updating your video drivers. Worse case scenario - you may need a video card upgrade; ultimate worse case - a system upgrade.

[thamasta]

Ok this is going to sounds stupid but how do I find out all the specs and that?

[KGH]

Try running dxdiag.exe from the "run" function in Windows XP start menu. Otherwise download Everest or check your "display adapter" settings in Device Manager. Go to Control Panel; System; Hardware; Device Manager.

[thamasta]

K here goes:
153 GB HD
448 MB of RAM
2.17 GHz Processor
AMD Athlon XP 3000+
NVIDIA GeForce4 MX Integrated GPU
I think those are the important ones.

[KGH]

Ok, well good and bad news.

Bad news - your "video card" is not supported - your chances of playing with that are 0%; you also need more RAM.

Good news - your CPU is satisfactory.

Are you able to post your motherboard specs? (in particular, whether it has a PCI or AGP slot for video card; how many DIMM slots it has for RAM; what speed RAM is supported?) You should be able to get this information from your motherboard manual.

[thamasta]

Where am I finding this motherboard manual? If you can't tell I'm not the greatest with coputers.

[KGH]

I presume that you bought a premade PC? If so, are you able to say what brand it is - eg, Dell, HP etc? Two possible sources:

(1) A hard copy (ie, paper) manual supplied with the PC;

(2) A pdf file (Adobe Reader) on a CD with your motherboard drivers on it.

The other alternative - if you can download and run Everest (google search and download free version), that has an analysis tool which will provide specs for your mobo.

Edited by KGH, 01 August 2005 - 05:11 PM.

[thamasta]

K I ran Everest and this is what I got:
I have 3 PCI slots and 1 AGP slot, 2 DDR DIMM slots and I can't find the part about speed of ram.
My computer is a emachines.

[KGH]

Alright, did it give you the Manufacturer of the motherboard and the board designation? Eg, Abit [manufacturer] AV8 [designation]?

The supported RAM speeds would be something along the lines of DDRAM PC2100, 2700 or PC3200. Do you see any figures like this? Do you know whether one of your DIMM slots is free? Ie, do you have a stick of RAM in each slot?

Because you have an AGP slot you should be able to upgrade your video card without too much difficulty, although I am not familiar with e-machines. Are you in the US?

Do you know how to access your computer's bios? When you boot your computer up, do you get a message on the bottom of the screen saying, eg 'Press F2 to enter BIOS'?

[thamasta]

The manufactur is First International Computers Inc.

The ram speed is PC2700. How do I find out if one of the slots are open?

I am in Canada.

I don't get any messages and don't know how to access them.

[KGH]

Hmm, never heard of First International.

Before we go any further - are you in a position to upgrade any of your components (eg, RAM and video card)?

[thamasta]

Ya I guess so.