Strange window at startup and during play

[Unhban]

Hi guys, I've done a trawl for the answer to these two problems and can't seem to find one. I've also re-installed my Nvidia graphics drivers and checked I have DirectX 9c.

The two problems don't affect play but I would like to solve them. The first one is from when the Please Wait... screen shows, through the Titled Mill logo and when the opening video plays. The window is offset to the right and down, so about a third of the right and lower part of the window are off the screen. The top and left are just black. Also, the vid plays in 4:3. If I change cotn.ini to play in a Windows window it is all correct and in 16:9, i.e. as a letterbox within the 4:3 window.

Secondly, on the game screen when the game is running (not in a Windows window) the top and bottom of the screen are OK, but the left and right overlap the sides of the screen so I miss both ends. This has never happened with other games, and I cannot correct my monitor. Again, if I play it in a Windows window the aspect is correct and I miss nothing of the sides, but as I have the taskbar at the top, the bottom of the window disappears off the bottom of the screen so I cannot access the SAVE box etc.

Enclosed is my dxdiag.txt! Thanks for any thoughts....

[Keith]

Well, for starters, you are lucky to even get as much on your screen as you have now.

The Geforce4 MX460 card isn't going to cut it. I'm surprised that it works at all because it's a DX7 video card and the game needs a DX9 compliant video card.

Your card doesn't support all the graphic features used by newer 3D games that require DX9.

It's really time to upgrade your video card to a newer one. The problem there is finding a card that will work on your older computer. Many of the newer cards require more wattage from the computer power supply unit (PSU) than computers as old as your's can supply. Computers from 8-9 years ago usually have smaller PSUs, in the 250Watt ranger or less. Most new video cards require PSUs in the 350Watt range or higher.

Your sound card, SB Live!, is pretty old, but it might still work, if you get the game to run eventually, you may want to look for newer drivers than the 2001 drivers you have installed.

[Unhban]

Hi and thanks for the quick reply. Well funnily enough the game runs fine (it's just the opening that's a bit weird), although once the city gets pretty big it stutters at times :) The sound is fine too....

Mind you I did have problems getting it to run initially so tweaked things like re-installing the graphic drivers, doing a registry tweak for the K7 problem of memory overwriting itself, and increased the virtual memory from 1GB to 1.5GB. Then things seemed to settle down. Even Firefox doesn't bomb out now, chuckle :)

But you are dead right, it does need a new motherboard, processor, memory, graphics card and sound.... c'est la vie!

Anyway, many thanks for being blunt and straight to the point as it does help. To be honest I'm quite proud after what you've said that I do have CotN running fine! :)

Ta! U.