Erik Rutins
Posts: 37503
Joined: 3/28/2000
From: Vermont, USA
Status: offline
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Okay, I'm going to try to consolidate the suggested steps and answers for troubleshooting your system and dealing with any problems you may have with UV. There are a lot of common solutions that involve system maintenance. We are certainly hopeful that these will help.
If you go through these and your problem remains, please post or "bump" any already posted details here and state that you've tried everything in this post. If you need help trying these things out, post here and we'll do the best we can.
First, update to the latest version using the True Update program in your Uncommon Valor Folder.
== DirectX:
Install DirectX 8.1. You can find this at:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/directx/downloads/drx81.asp
Follow the instructions there to get the right version for your OS.
== Video Drivers:
Video card drivers are often updated frequently. Check with your card's manufacturer to make sure you have downloaded and installed the latest set. You can also check with sites like:
http://www.reactorcritical.com
http://www.3dchipset.com
http://www.driverzone.com
Sometimes bugs in drivers will make certain versions buggy with some applications. If the newest version doesn't work, try one or two other versions to see if they do.
== Sound Drivers:
Many sound drivers seem to cause problems or are not entirely DirectX compliant. Check with your card's manufacturer to make sure you have downloaded and installed the latest set. You can also check with sites like:
http://www.driverzone.com
Try disabling your sound card in your system control panel. See if that helps. Try re-enabling it and see if the problem still happens.
If that doesn't help try using Start -> Run to launch dxdiag.exe. Go into your sound settings and disable hardware acceleration. See if that helps.
== Chipset Drivers:
Many motherboards, including Intel and VIA types, need drivers to perform at their best level. These drivers often help resolve hardware conflicts and increase compatibility.
You'll need to know who made your motherboard and/or who's chipset is on it. Go to the manufacturer's website and get the latest chipset drivers. For Intel (chipset drivers) and VIA-based (they call them 4in1 drivers) motherboards, try here:
http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/
http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=2
== Other Drivers:
If a particular piece of attached hardware (like a scanner or removable drive) is active while you're experiencing problems, try disabling it or unhooking it from your computer. Try disabling any interface cards it may be using. See if that resolves the problem.
If you're using a lot of external devices, including USB devices, check the drivers on all of these as well.
Also, please check to see if your mouse drivers have been updated!
== Hard Drive:
Make sure you have a lot of free hard drive space (keeping around 1GB free is a good idea in general, but not absolutely necessary).
Try uninstalling UV, then run Scandisk on your drive, fixing all errors. Then Defragment your drive, then reinstall UV and see if that helps.
Do not use drive compression as this can cause problems with all kinds of software.
== Background Processes:
It's a good idea when playing any game to turn off things like your antivirus software and any other little applications that sit in the background and periodically poll the operating system or the hardware.
If you can pull up a task list with Ctrl-Alt-Del, ideally you should only see Explorer and Systray running. If you can end all processes except those before running UV you will have a much simpler troubleshooting (and gaming) environment.
== Registry Corruption and General System Maintenance:
Investing in something like Norton Systemworks 2002 is worthwhile for Windows users. The comprehensive and simple system maintenance utilities this includes can remove errors from your registry and solve all kinds of niggling problems that accumulate over time. If you can, pick up a copy and you'll generally be a happier Windows user. Note that there are also similar utilities by different names - I mention this one since I've used it with great success.
== Uncommon Valor Files:
To disable the video, rename the Video subdirectory to xVideo.
To disable the CD insertion screen, turn off Auto-insert notification for your CD drive (should be in the drive's properties under System in your control panel).
To avoid the game menu, use the Uncommon Valor shortcut in your start menu rather than the Uncommon Valor Game Menu shortcut on your desktop. You can copy the non-menu shortcut to your desktop if you like by holding down the control key, left-clicking and dragging it from the start menu to the desktop (then release the control key).
To see the replay in PBEM, make sure the Japanese player sends the 001 slot combat replay file back to the Allied player along with the Japanese player's save file. When zipped, these two files come out to about 700k combined. The Allied player sends back just his own save file, which should zip down to 250k - 300k.
If you need a way to zip and unzip files, go to [url]www.winzip.com[/url] and download the evaluation version of their excellent software.
== Unreadable fonts (Windows XP):
This is due to Xp´s "ClearType" feature. In order to fix this problem just disable ClearType.
To disable ClearType font smoothing, right-click on your desktop, select Properties, select the Appearance tab and press the Effects button. There is a drop down box to choose between Standard or ClearType font smoothing
== Posting Procedures:
Before posting any gameplay questions, try doing a search on related keywords in the Adobe PDF manual. This is often the fastest way to find something your eyes may have skipped over while reading. If you can't find it there, try searching the main UV forum for those keywords. If you still can't find it and you think it's a bug rather than a misunderstanding, post it here. Otherwise, please post it in the main forum.
Also, please understand that we are a small company and none of us are full-time forum moderators. Therefore, while we are eager to help you we are often also overworked and it takes us a little while to respond. If six hours have gone by without a response, feel free to "bump" your post. If a day has gone by, try bumping it again. This will work in 99.9% of cases to make sure that one of us responds to you.
== Shipping / CD Problems
If you have a problem with shipping or a defective CD, please go to our Help Desk and log a request. That's the only trackable and guaranteed way to move such problems to the resolution stage.
Finally, thanks for buying Uncommon Valor. Happy gaming!
Best Regards,
- Erik
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