Seeking GTA Vice City technical help

Shaggy

Shaggy

Vice Admiral
Okay your first question maybe be why am I posting a GTAVC question on a WC board, well I'm getting jack in response to my queries on other GTA boards, maybe everybody's off playing San Andreas. :confused:
Well here's the problem:
I recently picked up a new copy of GTA Vice City at Wal-Mart, and installed it on my machine after having upgraded only the main hard drive and installing Win XP as my OS. The old drive was formatted and then set it as a slave drive. Right from the start there were sound glitches in the game, the cutscenes and radio channels would stutter repeating the last half second of whatever you're listening to. And there were graphic glitches as well. When ever I was driving around it seemed like I was outrunning the game's ability to render textures, at one point I even outrun it's ability to place solid objects, trying to get a good jump off of a ramp I got a good run up but the ramp wasn't there until about three seconds after I had hit the side of the building I was trying to jump. Then I started using a trainer program to help pass some of the harder missions. As the week went by it finally developed a problem where the character constantly fires any weapon on hand except the fist and ones requiring the secondary view-switching to this view would cause him to fire all of the rounds or not fire at all even with input from the mouse. I switched the mouse out but the problem persisted. Now my computer will boot up normally but all I can do in my OS is move the mouse pointer and bring up the start menu by hitting the Windows button on my keyboard. Nothing else will respond, and I can't start any programs. No mouse clicks seem to register, nor the Enter key, I can't even get the task manager to come up using CTRL ALT Delete!
So if anybody here can help me it would be greatly appreciated, here's my system specs:
AMD Athlon 1.2 GHz processor
SiS 650 Integrated video card
C-Media AC97 Integrated sound
Windows XP
Microsoft PS2 roller mouse with wheel, was a Microsoft USB optical till I had to change it
Compaq Presario keyboard, carried over from my old Presario
I'm not exactly sure of how much RAM I have, but it's at least over 400 Meg because part of it is adjustable and set aside for video RAM.
The trainer I was using I had been able to use with no problems whatsoever on my older copy of GTAVC, which now resides with my brother. The Trainer was LithJoe's Ultimate Vice City Trainer version 2.
 
Your video problems are probably due to your lack of a real video card. GTA3 was really bad about just using the min reqs. VC is much better about it, but you still a nice system. At this point, I think your best bet is to go buy a decent to low end video card. I ran the game pretty well on a 1.5 amd w/ a g4 64mb card and it ran pretty well. During hardcore explosion I got some really bad slowdown (one mission in particular), but otherwise it worked great. Honestly, you should still mess with some of the advanced video options to get it play well. A g4 can be had for under $50. I think I actually saw one for less than $40 at Walmart. If I were you, I'd go with something better than that. There's no use in getting something that won't last you very long, unless you don't play PC games that often.
 
The two problems with buying a new video card is, 1) I only have PCI and ISA slots open and 2) The freaking machine isn't responding as it is.
 
Hmmmm.....You have plenty of processing power to run Windows XP so that isn't it. To find out how much RAM you have go to Start-My Computer-View System Information. RAM will be displayed near the bottom of the window.

Sometimes slicking the drive before installing a new OS is the best way to go. In theory you shouldn't have to do that, but in practice it is often less of a hassel, even though it is more time consuming. When I updated my last machine from ME to XP I noticed several small (mostly annoying) inconsistencies that were gone once I decided to erase the HD and reinstall the OS.

Are you sure your motherboard doesn't have an AGP slot? I've got Pentium 133s and 166s that have one, and your machine is clearly more advanced than that. If not, ATI still offers PCI video cards. I remember looking around for one for a Celeron 400 I was building for a friend not long ago, and I saw a 128MB card from the Radeon series for less than $100. A good video card is never a bad investment.

Hope this helps some :)
 
I managed to get the system responding again, almost back to normal. Winamp is still slow to start but it does start. I hit the two week mark of running Windows XP, which is about when things went to crap the last time I was using XP.
I do have an AGP video card but the AGP architecture is built into the system board, rather than having a slot.
 
Actually, you get that with a lot of integrated motherboards. It's an excellent cost-saving device when you're turning out a few hundred computers to sell as business desktops that will never be upgraded, but it sucks if you own one at home.
 
Take the game back.
Buy yourself a Playstation 2.
Buy yourself the Playstation 2 version of the game.
Don't be anal about "but its graphics aren't as good as a PC". :p
 
Shipgate said:
Well GTA is the shittiest game ever.
Click to expand...

Good job, your response to his request for technical assistance will surely help him to play his video game. You're really, really close to going away for a month.
 
Shaggy said:
The two problems with buying a new video card is, 1) I only have PCI and ISA slots open and 2) The freaking machine isn't responding as it is.
Click to expand...


1)ATI does indeed still make PCI cards. In fact, if you head on over to walmart.com and go to electronics/computers/videocards you'll find a couple of them. One of them even has 128 MB on it for under $70. I'm not too familiar with ATI cards, so I can't tell you anything about them. I imagine you could go to an actual store and find one.

2)Glad you got it running.

Quite honestly, I would advise you to invest in a better motherboard.

Do you know how much memory is reserved for you video "card"?

I'm not at home right now, but I'll check to see what my settings are for the sound and video options and post them later. I know if you turn off trails it tends to help the speed quite a bit.
 
Ok, so I'm back with my setting suggestions.

For sound, I'm using the dsound3D hardware support. I also have a cheap sound card that's basically on par with what comes on most motherboards.

For video, keep the frame limiter on. Turn the draw distance down and change the resolution to something a little low. See what you can get to work.

Also, apparently the trails option isn't in VC, it's only in GTA3. So my bad.

Hope any of that helps.
 
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