Graphics Cards Blues

           Taken from a phone call from Lol Oakes

I had a call from Lol in early April about a problem he'd had. He
thought the eventual solution might also help some of you.  Here's
what he told me.

Some months ago, Lol got a demo of Serious Sam. He couldn't get it
running and the error message he got was that it required Open GL.
He found this confusing because his card supported Open GL. He
loaned the demo to two other people, both of whom had the same
card. One, Ann, got the same error message as he did. For the
other, his brother, it ran without problems. But as Lol wasn't too
worried about playing the game, he just put it to one side.

Some time later, he saw the Alone in the Dark 4 demo; this was a
game he'd been waiting for! But when he tried to install it he got
the same message about it requiring Open GL. Again, Ann got the
same message but his brother didn't.

A bit of trawling through the Internet came up with the answer.
Opening their WIN.INI files and scrolling down about three
quarters of the way, they came to a section titled Draw DIB which
is to do with resolution. In the middle of his and Ann's files,
but not his brother's, was the line DVA = 0 which mans that Direct
Video Access is turned off.

They gather that if you install an old game, it adds this line so
that it can be played by cutting down the video spec. When you
uninstall the game, it doesn't remove this line. If you remove the
line yourself, games which give this error message no longer do so
and will play.

If you also find this help useful, please let me know. Or if you
have a useful tip of your own, do send it in.



                              - o -