Game won't start

[chaucerwatch]

I've just installed Windows XP Pro with SP2, English version, on my Dell Inspiron 500m, Centrino chipset/graphics card, 1.4Gh CPU, 256Mb RAM. I installed GTA:VC last night, while signed in as Administrator. Now when I click the icon to start, the Play CD spins and my pointer icon turns into a spinning-CD symbol, but the game never starts. (And the pointer never goes back to normal until I restart Windows.)

 

I installed Halo just before that, and it also will not start. There is no error message for either of these--they just don't start.

 

Previously, I had another language-version of XP Pro (with SP1), and both games ran fine under that. So I'm suspecting SP2 is the problem. Any ideas what I can do?

[chaucerwatch]

OK, I just found a solution on another forum. I'll post it here so it may help someone else with the same problem.

 

The next time I turned on my computer after installing the games, I noticed that a new piece of hardware was trying to install, called "secdrv." I googled that and found a post on a forum about that. Turns out it was Windows mistaking some software for hardware. I followed the directions on that forum: went to Device Manager, looked for a big yellow ? mark to indicate hardware with no driver, and there was secdrv. Deleted secdrv from the Device Manager, and after that, all games worked fine. Why? No idea.

 

Since I didn't have this problem before, I'm betting it's an SP2 problem. So as more people install SP2, there'll probably be more people having the same problem.

 

Thanks to everyone who read my query and scratched their heads over it. I hope this helps someone else.

[Spuds725]

Thanks for coming back and posting that fix. Will add it to the pinned list of bugs with solutions.

 

Spuds

[babypotato]

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RE:

I'vve just installed Windows XP Pro with SP2, English version, on my Dell Inspiron 500m, Centrino chipset/graphics card, 1.4Gh CPU, 256Mb RAM. I installed GTA:VC last night, while signed in as Administrator. Now when I click the icon to start, the Play CD spins and my pointer icon turns into a spinning-CD symbol, but the game never starts. (And the pointer never goes back to normal until I restart Windows.)

 

---

 

I had the same problem (XP SP2, English, Dell 8400) with the icon changing to spinning CD but wouldn't start. I didn't have any ? or ! in my Device Manager to delete.

 

My fix was to go to the main program "gta-vc" in C:\Program Files\Rockstar Games\Grand Theft Auto Vice City\gta-vc.exe. Right Click on it and choose Properties. Select Compatibility tab and change the Compatibility Mode to Run this program in compatibility mode for: then change to "Windows 98 / Windows ME".

 

Loaded fine after this.

[Justin]

And thank you for providing an alternate solution as well.

 

I'll add that one to the pinned list too.

 

Cheers.