Vista Black load screen?

[Evishion 0]

Quote[/b] ]EDIT:

To make a dual-boot, the normal way you achieve this is to insert your OS disc into the drive and change your boot order so that the CD/DVD drive is 1st on the list (or just make all of them say CD/CD). You can do this through your BIOS. Depening on the make and model of the board you have you get into it in different ways, but the most common ways are pressing the "Delete" key as it boots (or just keep pressing it when you turn it on so you know you have haha). The other way on some boards is pressing F2. (REMEMBER TO SET THIS BACK TO HARD DISC WHEN YOU NO LONGER NEED THE DISC! OR IT'LL START OVER AGAIN WHEN IT REBOOTS)

Anyway, it'll check your system specs when it boots from the disc then prompt you with a series of new screens to install it. It's very simple really. The first thing you normally see with a Windows install is the disc partition. If you want to keep your current OS, then make a new partition. Depending on how much disc space you have left and how big the drive is it'll vary on how much space you'll want to assign for the new partition, but 20-40gb should be more than enough for XP if you're just going to use it for game play.

When it's done that it'll load it onto the partition. When it's all installed when you restart your system in theory you should get a screen asking you which OS you wish to boot. Vista will most probably be the primary OS and it'll boot into that on it's own if you don't press anything within 30 seconds or so.

Anyway, it's more simple than you'd think. Google it for more info. There's ways to change the primary OS too so if you wanted XP to load on it's own without having to wait around for the list then you can do that.

This is also a hell of a lot easier with Linux Ubuntu aswell. The install system for that is seriously simple. It makes Windows look antiquated (it doesn't have to reboot as often either!.

There's plenty of guides on the net explaining how to make dual-boots. I think there's some on youtube too which is even better as you can actually see what to do rather than simply read it and look at some static screenshots.

dunno if that was meant for my question or not, but if it was, i kinda want, the same windows, same partition and everything. just a 3gb and a 4gb boot. so when i load the 3gb, i can play arma lol :P and load the 4gb one when i wanna play anything else.

[Madus_Maximus 0]

I'm not entirely sure if that's possible, but it may very well be. The best bet is to simply use the maxmem command in your ArmA shortcut, it'll give you the same thing you want and doesn't require messing about with sensitive settings. I believe SOME (very rare though I think) motherboards (most probably server based boards to be honest) have settings on them which tells them how much memory to read from. If you want to look around in there, or if you dont want to risk messing something up with the settings then Google for the board model and see what you find.

[sickboy 13]

Madus, -maxmem doesn't resolve the "larger than 3GB" memory issues mate, you do need to mess about with either the bios and if not possible, the boot settings of Vista to get rid of it

Will get back to you on your huge post soon. Just for the record, IIRC Longhorn was a from-the-ground up kernel, and not based on XP. When the scrapped it, it was indeed the 2003-kernel they used as base for Vista

[Evishion 0]

guess i need to mess about the boot file. if i find it. and do right ^^ no idea what i shall edit tbh. just want to play queens gambit, and still can play other games with 4gb :P

[BraTTy 0]

Lange ,why you waste my time, making ridiculous and erronous statements.

Didn't take much searching to see that what you are saying is false.Many games and programs are having problems in Vista and 4gb mem.

I thought you may have been on to something here stating Arma is only game with problem.You actually had me searching for something that is common problem.

Just google it:

http://www.google.com/search?....=0&sa=N

MS pub forums

http://www.vistax64.com/vista-games/

Funny I don't see people complaining about Arma, just every other game

Check and see for yourself rather than spouting

[Odie3 0]

I have to agree with sickboy, it's mostly the hardware vender's they had Alpha's, Beta's, RC's, and RTM Vista versions. Creative Labs is the best example with their flag ship X-Fi card and their Vista Drivers. My X-Fi card is driving me freaking crazy and I would love to throw my card right into their face (or stick it where the sun does not shine). CL, IMO are morons.

All software (OS's, Drivers, games, etc) have bugs, however it's how the company writes/creates the code handles the problems [patches]. As time goes by Vista will over take XP, just like XP replaced Windows 98/Windows 2000.

Also from my point of view, Vista 64bit (or any 64bit OS) is the future - period. So I am sticking to it and reporting problems now because before you know it, I will not longer be in the minority.

Now, should ArmedA be fixed for Vista 32/64 bit? That is debatable and in my point of view it should be due to the time frame Vista and ArmedA where released to the public. However, I am not going to jump up and down and get all pissed off (like I am with CL X-Fi card). At best all I can be allow to do, is be disappointed at Bohemia Interactive [for not being forward thinking].

As a side topic - ArmedA Requirements (Atari Boxed Version):

On my box I can not find anything about it's requirements (shame on Atari). However, once I open the box and look at page 3 of the manual I get this information: System Requirements for OS "Windows 2000/XP".

Now, XP has at least 4 flavors: XP Home, XP Pro, XP Pro 64bit, and XP Media Center.

Which one of those XP versions are supported? From the manual it leads me to believe that if the OS has "XP" in it, it meets the "Requirements". If that is so, then XP Pro 64bit with 4GB of memory should function (I recall it has the same black issue).

[Madus_Maximus 0]

Microsoft are quite behind on 64-bit to be fair. The support isn't quite there. It's much better for Vista 64 than XP 64 but they still have some way to go. I've been reading about 64 XP/Vista having the same issues with 4gb+ of RAM than the 32-bit versions have, which seems a bit suspect. It makes me think they simply ported it over and didn't spend the time to make it use the 64-bit capabilities. OSX has had 64-bit support for quite a while, and it runs 32-bit apps perfectly fine in the same environment.

MS always seem to be playing catch up which is somewhat disturbing when you consider how rich they are. Also, as a personal annoyance, they should have made ONE version of Vista. They claimed they'd have the 64bit and 32bit version on the same disc or in the same box and not be seperate, so you can decide which you want to use. Instead they put a voucher thing in there to get a copy of the 64bit version.

Oh and Atari are [insert nasty word here]. They love missinforming their customers or withholding information from them. Their box art is a perfect example, it rarely has 100% legit images and so on on it of what's actually on the disc. Are you serious too when you say the system specs are inside the box? I think that's illegal here in the UK (indeed EU wide).

[Odie3 0]

As a last thing. I think MS should have released Vista as a 64-bit OS with 32-bit support native, exactly like OSX.

This is one thing I completely agree with - 32bit Vista should have never seen the drawing board much less been released. IMO - that was a bad move. 32 bit is dead, no one seems to understand that yet. All the time wasted on dual drivers/software for 32/64 bit is a waste of time, effort and money.

32 bit is dead, long live 64bit!

[Odie3 0]

Are you serious too when you say the system specs are inside the box? I think that's illegal here in the UK (indeed EU wide).

100% serious - like for me to take pictures of it?

As for your statements about 32/64 bit vista I already covered my thoughts in my previous post. However, for my Boxed version of Vista I got both disks (I have Vista Ultimate).

[Evishion 0]

downloading 158.45 and the newest drivers, gonna delete, clean and play arma, and delete, clean to play other games :P

someway im gonna play arma ^^

[sickboy 13]

guess i need to mess about the boot file. if i find it. and do right ^^ no idea what i shall edit tbh. just want to play queens gambit, and still can play other games with 4gb :P

For now, just press windowskey+R, and run msconfig

then at boot tab, pick advanced options and put maximum memory to 3072, reboot, and it should work aswell. I read that the limitmemory functionality is less good than using removememory, but removememory is only a command you can execute manually in a dos prompt so when I get some more time I might write a guide for that.

[Madus_Maximus 0]

Ha! You learn something new every day. I never knew about that maxmem start parameter! Most likely because I've never had to use it haha. Proof yet again that the most simple thing is generally the correct one haha. Makes perfect sense that it'd be there.

[Odie3 0]

Didn't take much searching to see that what you are saying is false.Many games and programs are having problems in Vista and 4gb mem.

I thought you may have been on to something here stating Arma is only game with problem.You actually had me searching for something that is common problem.

Yes, there are many issues with Vista 64 + 4GBs of memory.

For me:

ArmedA

CL X-Fi

Hauppauge 150 PVR

Vista SP1 Beta help nothing with the above issues I have had and made my CL X-Fi worse - IMO.

With that said, I believe it is poor software/driver writing that is causing this, since so many other games/hardware works perfectly in my Vista 64bit + 4GB. Like BF2, America's Army, HL2 and many others (which are older than ArmedA).

For example at my company we switched from .Net 1x to .Net 2.0 and with our first builds half of our stuff either did not work or was not 100% stable. As we corrected each "issue" it was due to changes in .Net 2.0 that was no longer allowed [and should not have been in the first place]. In others words, our .Net 1.x code while it worked just fine, it was only because MS was allowing sloppy code to pass through it (in .Net 2.0 those holes where closed).

So, to a point I expect the same to be true with this 64 bit 4Gb issue - since it seems to touch both software programs and Hardware drivers. Perhaps sloppy code writing is not the proper word but it is close enough.

[Evishion 0]

guess i need to mess about the boot file. if i find it. and do right ^^ no idea what i shall edit tbh. just want to play queens gambit, and still can play other games with 4gb :P

For now, just press windowskey+R, and run msconfig

then at boot tab, pick advanced options and put maximum memory to 3072, reboot, and it should work aswell. I read that the limitmemory functionality is less good than using removememory, but removememory is only a command you can execute manually in a dos prompt so when I get some more time I might write a guide for that.

thanks alot il sure try this out, so basicly, when i want to run other games and stuff later on, i simply just put that max mem thingy back to 4gb, and reboot, and it was like original?

[Madus_Maximus 0]

Another thing to consider with Vista and games is OpenGL. As far as I'm aware Vista has very limited OpenGL support, and no longer has the software library on the system. It's run entirely from DirectX now. Newer games are having to ship the library with them or in patches as well as in graphics drivers.

Also another reason for the driver nightmare is the fact there's so many versions out there to code them for. XP 32/64 and Vista 32/64. As was mentioned earlier making a single OS with 64 AND 32 bit support in the same OS would make things a hell of a lot easier. Oh and .Net has been slammed repeatedly for it's sloppyness in the past. I think the same culture of coding is inheirent in most Microsoft programmes *coughwindows*.

[Evishion 0]

finally got the game to work. thanks to sickboy.

only got 1 prob now though.

i started the game, all as fine, started a campaign, intro was all looking nice, until i saw some vehicles on it, then everything was like washed out on the screen, every soldier was like. how shall i explain it, they where filling up the screen with only lines. like i was using super old graphic drivers. using the newest ofc.

then i aborted, and got back to the menu, now everything was fu*cked up. all icons, terrain, everything was vashed out, like it was in a resolution 1x1

any tips?

EDIT. i also get a error at startup of queens gambit, something about graphic settings in my user/xxx/arma config.. who also puts all the graphic settings on default when i star the game over.

edit2: i give up when i start a mission. soldiers, objects, trees and anything is blorry in the distanse, i get a bluescreen everytime i quit the game etc., only probs..

but thanks alot for helping me anyway really apprechiate it

[Lepardi 0]

Is BIS ever going to fix this problem, if the same problem occurs with XP 64-bit, too?

I wanna play arma but can't because of this !!

[sickboy 13]

Diablo, The combi is basicly this:

[*] -maxmem=512

[*] Limit to 3GB system memory

[*] Install Vista Hotfixes http://www.nvidia.com/object/windows_vista_hotfixes.html

[*] And install latest 16x.xx drivers

And you should be set without system crashes and whatever

[Evishion 0]

hm havent tryed those hotfixes. il give it a another try

thanks again. brb testing ^^

[Evishion 0]

sorry for this bump, just wanna tell what i need to tell.

sickboy... you man. should be promoted to ArmA GOD.. those few steps u wrote above, FINALLY letted me play queens gamble.. got NO probs now! all is clean.. finally! what would arma be without you.

just wanna say. i REALLY apprechiate the time u spent on me here :P

and for all of u vista 64 + 4GB users, follow these small steps as sickboy wrote above me, and you will be playing in Notime!

thanks ALOT sickboy!

EDIT: noticed that i got some small probs that came after. dont think its drivers issues though. 1) still bluescreen 2) somehow when i star the game, i get a error message. seems like it cant find the 3d.performance in the arma.cfg file. so every time i start the game, i have to adjust gfx settings.

maybe because i cant shutn down the game properly. so it wont be "saved" ?

3) seems like there is some probs with the HDR, it flashes alot!. kinda annoying. especially when i cant see anything, due to the screen is totaly white :P

[Lepardi 0]

Black loading screen, add an extra boot entry for vista "3gb limit" and edit it using msconfig, limit ur memory to 3072 and you can play, all you gotto do is choose that boot entry when starting up the PC. Works for me, in the hope any of the parties resolves it completely.

I actually used: bcdedit /set removememory 1024 on the new entry and rebooted.

Info:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms791501.aspx

my bcdedit output looks like:

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">Windows Boot Manager

--------------------

identifier {bootmgr}

device partition=C:

description Windows Boot Manager

locale en-US

inherit {globalsettings}

default {current}

displayorder {b64f2673-4dc5-11dc-840d-e9de4da511d2}

{current}

toolsdisplayorder {memdiag}

timeout 5

Windows Boot Loader

-------------------

identifier {b64f2673-4dc5-11dc-840d-e9de4da511d2}

device partition=C:

path \Windows\system32\winload.exe

description Microsoft Windows Vista

locale en-US

loadoptions DDISABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS

inherit {bootloadersettings}

testsigning No

osdevice partition=C:

systemroot \Windows

resumeobject {b64f2674-4dc5-11dc-840d-e9de4da511d2}

nx OptIn

Windows Boot Loader

-------------------

identifier {current}

device partition=C:

path \Windows\system32\winload.exe

description Microsoft Windows Vista MemoryLimit

locale en-US

loadoptions DDISABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS

inherit {bootloadersettings}

testsigning No

osdevice partition=C:

systemroot \Windows

resumeobject {b64f2674-4dc5-11dc-840d-e9de4da511d2}

nx OptIn

removememory 1024

Works fine with latest 163.xx series drivers, and the hotfixes supplied by microsoft, linked by Nvidia: http://www.nvidia.com/object/windows_vista_hotfixes.html

So what exactly do I have to do to get it working?

How can I get back my missing 1024 memory, when I go to play other games rather than ArmA?

[jasono 0]

Black loading screen, add an extra boot entry for vista "3gb limit" and edit it using msconfig, limit ur memory to 3072 and you can play, all you gotto do is choose that boot entry when starting up the PC. Works for me, in the hope any of the parties resolves it completely.

I actually used: bcdedit /set removememory 1024 on the new entry and rebooted.

Info:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms791501.aspx

my bcdedit output looks like:

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">Windows Boot Manager

--------------------

Works fine with latest 163.xx series drivers, and the hotfixes supplied by microsoft, linked by Nvidia: http://www.nvidia.com/object/windows_vista_hotfixes.html

So what exactly do I have to do to get it working?

How can I get back my missing 1024 memory, when I go to play other games rather than ArmA?

Page 7 - Sickboy mentioned this, so i'll just quote it here as you can disable it by resetting your memory to default by the second command I presume.

Quote[/b] ]Enable

bcdedit /set removememory 1024

reboot

Disable

bcdedit /deletevalue removememory

reboot

[sickboy 13]

@Diablo, what is the bluescreen message?

Also, did you check windows update to install all latest drivers for chipset, storage etc?

@lepardi:

Updated my post on Page 7

[Evishion 0]

@Diablo, what is the bluescreen message?

Also, did you check windows update to install all latest drivers for chipset, storage etc?

@lepardi:

Updated my post on Page 7

Hmm, cant really remmeber what it sayd, all i know is that it kept crashing every time i quitted the game, and then it somehow putted every graphic option back to default.

Do you mean those pretty new relased fixes? those pre SP1 or what i shall call them? if so. yes i got them installed , i can cheack the windows update for some new drivers though.

[BraTTy 0]

Sickboy is a saint (where'd he come from ... I don't remember him from OFP?)

I think instead of supporting each and every crash topic if he would be so kind to make a new topic with very simple instructions and even screenshots of exactly what to do would help alot of users out.

Remember it would need to be very simple and explanatory (with screenshots of where to click)

Still bewilders me why MS sells beta OS software that is complex to the common user.

Requirements on Vista box should say (Warning : MS Cert required for use)