Demo wont start: Black screen with White mouse pointer

[Chiles4]

I know at least one other(Warhammer) is having this problem. About half of the time I start the MP demo, I click on play and it goes to a black screen with a white mouse pointer. The other half of the time the game starts perfectly. Has anyone else had this problem? Anyone know why? And more importantly, does it also occur in the real game?
I thought that if I change the resolution every time I play that I could get around it but I think I'm fooling myself there.

I'm running a Kyro 2 (Hercules) on a 1.2G Tbird system with Aureal sound card in Win98SE. When it runs, it runs perfectly.

[BrianC]

I have the same video card with a 550 mhz Athlon, 192 ram but no problems with me so it can't be the video card.

[Chiles4]

Just FYI, I just got the full game and the game doesn't suffer from this problem - apparently just the demo!

[WarHammer]

I only tried loading the demo a few times before I uninstalled it because I couldn't do anything reboot which is doubly annoying for me because I have some other problem that causes my registry to be corrupt if I shutdown Windows improperly and have to repair my registry each time I forcfully reboot.

I'm glad the full version of the game work for you though, Chiles4. There is a good chance I might be getting Max Payne for X-mas and this gives me hope that maybe I won't have to return it the next day. Maybe I should find a warez copy of the full game but just to find out if it works!

What are your system specs, Chiles4? Maybe we share some hardware in common that is causing the problem. My system at the moment:

AthlonXP 1600+
Asus A7C266-E (VIA KT266A chipset) motherboard)
256MB PC2100 DDR RAM
Creative SBLive! 5.1
Voodoo3 2000 PCI <--(Will likely change very soon)

[Chiles4]

My specs are:
Epox 8KHA (KT266 board)
Athlon 1.2G 266Mhz
256MB Crucial PC2100 DDR
Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 (Kyro 2)
Aureal Superquad Digital (Vortex 2) Sound card

You might want to try ebay for a cheaper copy of MP. I got a used one for $20.

I don't really think this is a hardware issue. I just think there's a bug in the demo.