Game Starts Fine, but loading screen before gameplay never finishes.

[Phsion]

Hi all, I have a problem that I haven't been able to find anywhere else, so heres hoping someone can help out. Purchased from Steam, Gold Edition. When I start the original DoD game, everything seems fine. I made a profile, and clicked through all the menus to start the first mission of the campaign, but after that, i get the loading screen with the Game Tips and the "hilarious" loading messages, but the game never goes from loading to actually playing. It looks like either the loading progress bar is done or VERY close to being done, and the loading message is "Forecast The Weather". This happens no matter what game mode I try to start with (Campaign or Scenario). The mouse cursors stays responsive the whole time, in the hour glass animation. My task manager says the game is using a boat load of memory but zero processor time, and another process names anno4web.exe is also running.

Also, for giggles, i tried running the Venice addon, and got everything working seemingly fine, except there wasn't a single character of text, anywhere. So, thats another problem i'll be trying to fix.

I don't have the exact specs for my machine, but its a Win Vista 32bit, AMD Phenom Quad @ 2.8ghz(not sure about speed), with a Radeon HD 5770 card, 4gigs of RAM (3 usable), 1.5TB harddrive space, onboard sound/networking. The drivers are all from last week.

I've modified the engine.ini for DX version 9, and when i get home i'll check the language param to make sure it says 'usa' and not 'eng'.

Anyone else with any ideas on either problem? Thanks.

[dmdilks]

How much stuff do you have running in the back ground. here is some stuff you can try.

Here are some things that can help speed up they computers.

1. Right click on My Computer. Then click on properties.
2. Click on Advanced Tab in XP and in Vista/win7 click on Advanced System Settings
3. Performance - Click on “settings” Tab
4. Visual Effects - Click on Adjust for best performance. The only thing in the list you want with a check mark is: Use Drop shadows for Icon Labels on Desktop that is only in XP in vista/win7 leave everything uncheck.
5. Click Apply – It will change to the Classic Windows Desktop and that is OK for now.
6. Don’t exit out of that just yet.
7. Click on the Advanced Tab
8. Virtual Memory – Click on Change Tab.
9. Uncheck Auto Manage page file size - then click on “custom size”
In XP you set the initial size “3000” – Maximum Size “4092” – Click “Set” Tab.
In Vista/win7 you set them for any size you want. In vista it will ask to reboot the computer don’t reboot for now.
When done just click OK on everything till you are back at the Desktop
This will help with Page file memory for your computer.
I run mine at 10000 and 20000 in Vista.
10. Once you are back on the Desktop right click on the screen and click on properties in XP and in Vista/Win7 click on Personalize.
XP – Click on Appearance - click on Effects and uncheck Fade Effects. Click OK.
XP – Windows and Buttons: Click Windows XP Style – Click Apply and then click OK and you are done.
Vista - Click on Windows Color and Appearance if it doesn’t come up on the Classic view then you have to click on Open Classic Appearance.
Vista/win7 - In Vista Effects don’t really have change that.
Vista - Color Scheme: Click on Windows Basic. You don’t really need Windows Aero because it only uses more memory. Click Apply and then OK and you are done.
Win7 - Color Scheme: You really need Windows Aero for all the little things to work. Look and click on the Windows 7 Icon under Windows Themes. It will change and you are done.
11. There is another thing you can do to help is go to “run” and type in msconfig click OK. Once in there you will click on startup tab and in there you can turn things off that are using memory and running in the background at startup.

[10TonGamer]

ATI display drivers are notorious regarding this game. Either make sure you are running the latest, or if you are maybe revert to another version to see if it works. Also, disable any ccc settings you maybe have set as well.

[ogreballerina]

ATI drivers are fine for this game...

It could be corrupted drivers or something else...but the latest drivers are fine..

[feek]

i had this same problem when i bought the game the other day. i thought it was an activation issue, like maybe i didn't properly enter the cdkey into the authenticator, and that could have been partially it, but what finally fixed it was when steam downloaded an additional 95mb of the game. once that was finished it loaded fine.

so i think what you should do is 1) make sure you put the cdkey in properly for the stand alone game and venice and 2)restart steam/do what you can to make sure it has downloaded all of the game.

[brokenguns25]

I too had a problem with this game. Installed the directx that comes with it and everything worked fine after that.