Game hangs after splash screens

[Greyfell]

OS: Windows XP SP2

Video: ATI Radeon 800XL 256MB, Catalyst Diver 5.8

CPU: Athlon XP 3200+

RAM: 1 GB

 

I can't seem to get this game to start. It shows the first two splash screens (EAX, Nvidia), but then just hangs at a black screen. It never crashes. It just sits there indefinitely until I kill the process. On one occasion, while running in compatibility mode for Win98/ME, I did get it to play part of the Rock Star animation after the Nvidia splash screen. That never worked again, though, in compatibility mode or not.

 

Also, in case this is relevant, the settings file never shows up in my "GTA San Andreas User Files" folder. I've tried putting one I downloaded from here in that folder, but no luck. Since the game stops before the Rock Star logo video plays, I'm guessing the settings file isn't relevant since it would not be called on until the actual game engine comes up. Before that, there is no 3D in use -- just playing a frickin' MPEG. I seem to be dying before my video card ever gets asked to do anything fancy.

 

I've already updated my video driver to the latest from ATI, and my sound drivers to the latest from Creative. I've uninstalled several codecs since someone mentioned that, and have disabled my antivirus and spyware filter to see if that helped. Nothing is working. Vague suggestions like "clean up your machine" or "learn how to maintain a PC" are not particularly helpful. If anyone has some direction for me, please volunteer it. Otherwise, I'll chalk this up as a lesson learned and avoid Rock Star products for the PC in the future. Thanks.

[Greyfell]

Okay, I'm replying to myself. I tested something and wanted to mention the results in case this means more to you veterans than it does to me. I found the Rock Star MPEG I mentioned in the Movies folder and de-multiplexed it -- basically, I stripped the audio out of it. Now when I start the game, I get the first two splash screens I mentioned before *and* the Rock Star video plays. Alas, that is as far as it gets.

 

Since stripping out sound helped me get further, it stands to reason that this problem is somehow related to my audio. As I said, I've updated the driver for my sound card (a Creative Labs SB Live!), but that didn't help. I even disabled that card and enabled my on-board Crystal Media card, but no effect. This tends to bring me back to possibly an audio codec problem. I'm reluctant to frivolously start removing codecs I might have difficulty getting back. Can someone who is working post the audio codecs they have to give me a list of ones that should be safe? Thanks.

Edited August 28, 2005 by Greyfell

[Greyfell]

Okay, I'm replying to myself again. I thought about it after my last post and the next logical step became clear. There were two MPEG files in the movies directory -- if de-multiplexing one of them got me one step further, de-multiplexing both might get me all the way. I did that, and now I get into the game. There appear to be no problems once I'm in the game -- audio and video are both great. Hopefully the game won't try to play anymore MPEG files at a later point.

 

While I was able to cobble together a solution to my problem by stripping audio from those two files, that is not something the average user could do. Thumbs down to Rock Star for letting their entire game be contingent on two unskippable movie files. That's some rotten programming. Ugh.