F.E.A.R. won't start

[GentleThud]

I've just (finally) downloaded the F.E.A.R. special trio from a month ago and have just tried to fire it up .... and ... nothing!

It runs through the credits (albeit a bit jerkily) and then simply stalls. The HD looks like it's madly doing stuff, but if I go to the task manager, it says the software's not responding. So I crash out of it.

Now, I'm running this on a laptop, but a pretty powerful one. But it is running an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650, which didn't like the Need For Speed : Shift demo when I tried that ... pretty much the same problem happened.

So does this mean F.E.A.R. is 'toast' on this laptop?

Other games run fine on it. DiRT2 and all the other Codemaster race games are fine. So is it that games coded for Nvidia graphics cards are incompatible with ATI cards? Or at least ATI laptop cards?

Cheers

GT

[ThePointMan]

RE-INSTALL!

[GentleThud]

Sorry for a stupid question but (gulp) does that involve re-downloading all 17+GB again? I had to wait 4 weeks to accumulate enough download quota to do this the first time.

If not, where are the installation files on my computer?

Many thanks

GT

[MADDOGGE]

Hold on there parter! Lets hold off going thru' the torture of re-downloading until you try some other things first. Are you getting any actual error messages at all?

Verify your game cache first

Make sure DEP and virusware and firewall has permissions for the game. You can try running as admin. I don't have to but each rig is different.

Delete Blob file.( exit Steam before do this)

[GentleThud]

Thanx Maddogge

First, what do you mean 'verify game cache'?

Second, do I tell the anti-virus (Kaspersky) to accept F.E.A.R. or to accept anything from Steam?

And what/where is the 'Blob' file?

Sorry if this all sounds ignorant ... I just am ...

GT

[MADDOGGE]

R-click on the game in your game list then choose/properties/local files/verify integrity of game cache.

I give permission for Steam and the game exe personally. they are two different programs.

Blob file for me is in E:\Program Files\Steam\ClientRegistry.blob. It's important that you exit Steam before doing this. After deleting the file, restart Steam and it will rebuild the Blob file for you.

The final thing you could try is deleting Steam itself but DON'T do that unless you save you steamapps file somewhere safe otherwise you will have to download ALL your games again. After reinstalling Steam which takes no time you can paste your steamapps folder back into the fresh install. The amount of time it takes to save and then paste the steamapps folder back in naturally depends on how many games you have. For me it's over 2.5 hours each way.:(

If none of this works and you are sure your rig is within specs for the game, the OS and all drivers are good then and only then would I re-download this 17gig behemoth.