Help: can't play System Shock 2 in WinXP.

[Babe]

I cant play System Shock 2 in my windows XP machine. The game crashes out ! Any ideas ? This is the first time I am trying to playe System Shock 2 in my Windows XP PC.

[Damien_Azreal]

Okay, patch the game, set it run in compatibility mode for Win98. CD cracks sometimes help with users having problems with SS2 in WinXP.

Does your PC have a CPU with a dual core/hyperthreading? If so SS2 will not work with that. You will need to disable it, or find a way around it.

http://www.ttlg.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=78

This is your best bet on findng help to get it up adn running well. Also, the best member here to help you will be Hudson. He helped me a lot with SS2... even turned my attention to it. Good guy.

Good luck, it's a great game.

[Destructor]

Does your PC have a CPU with a dual core/hyperthreading? If so SS2 will not work with that. You will need to disable it, or find a way around it.

Yay! I bought a new PC recently and it's processor isn't a dual core type nor does it support hyperthreading. \o/ :D

I think I'm gonna install Windows 98 on it soon (got Windows XP with service pack 2 at the moment) so I can play some old games like Max Payne, System Shock 1/2, and Time Commando properly.

[Xerxes]

Does your PC have a CPU with a dual core/hyperthreading? If so SS2 will not work with that. You will need to disable it, or find a way around it.
Whenever the game runs, if you have a dual-core or hyperthreading CPU(or two CPUs, I suppose), minimize it and hit ctrl-alt-del. Find it in the processes tab and right click on it and go to Affinity... Uncheck everything except CPU 0.

[Llama Gibbz]

I had problems trying to get SS2 to run,when i switched from a nvidia card to a ATI card on a AMD 1900xp machine.

I think ss2 has problems with ATI cards or mabey it was just the driver set.

[Hyperactive Slob]

Latest Nvidia drives cause problems with SS2, after I installed the driver the game stopped working.

[Geir]

When I had that crash to desktop problem, I had my divX codec misconfigured... hope that helps.

[Quason]

When I had that crash to desktop problem, I had my divX codec misconfigured... hope that helps.

Same here. I'd crash every time a cinema sequence tried to play. However, I don't know much about divX and I'm not particularly patient, so I just went to the game's movie folder and deleted them all. Now, when a cinema is about to play, it just skips it and moves on. Game works perfect now.

[The Count]

Same here. I'd crash every time a cinema sequence tried to play. However, I don't know much about divX and I'm not particularly patient, so I just went to the game's movie folder and deleted them all. Now, when a cinema is about to play, it just skips it and moves on. Game works perfect now.

The cutscenes in SS2 require indeo, not divx. The problem nowadays is that Windows since XP SP1 doesn`t include an indeo codec anymore.
Second problem: Indeo isn`t free anymore, you`d have to buy the newest version 5.2 from Ligos.
But if you want to watch the cutscenes you can download a free version here http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Indeo_Codec.htm
Hope that helps :)

[Dave-ros]

As with the first two Thief games, you may also have to "re-register" the Indeo codec every so often to be able to watch the movies -- let me dig out my .bat file...

regsvr32.exe /s LGVID.AX
Or, type it into the Run command ;)

[Damien_Azreal]

It might be a ATi problem. SS2 refuses to run on my PC but runs great on Bon's, her's has a GeForceFX 5600 Ultra... so SS2 might like Nvidia cards for some reason.

[Babe]

Guys thanks very much for the replies so far.

I have a GeForce Fx 5700 on my PC that I bought 2 years ago. My PC specs are Pentium 4 , 2.8 Ghz and 1.5 GB RAM.

I will try and disable Multithreading and see what happens. Right now the game wont just start at all, forget movie sequences or anything. I click on the desktop item, and I am greeted with a game crash message :(. I only tried the compatibility mode before, didnt work for me. Lets see what happens after disabling multithreading. But question is if I launch the game and it crashes within a second, how do I disable multi-threading for the game ? Cheers

Babe

[Xerxes]

But question is if I launch the game and it crashes within a second, how do I disable multi-threading for the game ?
If multithreading was your only problem then it wouldn't crash at the start, but a little while after you started a game.

Symptoms:
You are presented with an Error Reporting
dialogue at runtime, and the program fails
to load, or you recieve a blue screen at
runtime.

Reason:
The copy protection "SafeDisc" is very
unreliable under Windows XP, and often causes
this type of error.

Solution:
Locate a safedisc unwrapper, and run it on the
shock2.icd file to generate an unwrapped EXE,
this should solve the problem.

EXE Fix/Patch:
Because unwrapping the ICD file compramises
copy protection, I refrain from providing
direct links to this type of file. Various
crack websites are where you should look for
this type of file.

[Dave-ros]

I just the other day enabled hyperthreading in my computer, and now I try SS2 and it judders to a halt after a short time, as Xerxes describes (hmm, as an aside, I so wonder where he got his screen name :D). My question is, is it worth having hyperthreading enabled on a 3.2 GHz Pentium 4? I seldom play SS2 any more (have really played it to death!), but would still like the chance now and then...

[Damien_Azreal]

I run with Hyperthreading enabled and runs pretty damn good.