Blank error message... please help!

[fat_baldwin 0]

I have 2 computers... a winxp 1.8 Ghz w/ a GeForce2 GTS and 512 megs of ram, and a win98SE P3-450 w/ a Radeon 7000 VE and 384 megs of ram.

I installed OFP on both machines and upgraded to the latest patch ( 1.42 ). Everything was upgraded okay, all was fine and dandy. OFP runs perfect on the winxp system ( the powerhouse ), HOWEVER, everytime I try and run OFP on the Win98, I get a blank error message that pops up. ie, an error message with NO message, just an "ok" button. I click it and then nothing happens. The application terminates.

So, I upgrade to Directx 8.1 and download the newest drivers for the Radeon 7000 ( drivers 9009 ). Reboot, yada yada yada, I still get the blank error message whenever I try to

1. load the game

2. load the game preferences.

Does anybody have ANY idea why this is happening?

to recap, the problem system has the following setup:

- Win98SE

- p3-450

- 384 Mb RAM

- ATI Radeon 7000 VE w/ latest drivers ( 9009 )

- DirectX 8.1

- OFP w/ 1.42 patch

please post reply to the forum.

thanks in advance,

- fat_baldwin ( who has lost significant weight over the matter )

[R. Gerschwarzenge 0]

How much space do you have on your hard drive?

[rekrul 7]

Run DxDiag and do the 3D tests.

[fat_baldwin 0]

There's a good 2.2 Gigs free.

What's DxDiag?

At this point, I don't think it'd be a 3d problem, as I can't even load the external game preferences program. I thought about disk space being a problem, but alas I don't believe it is. I checked the settings for the swap file and I just have it set to grow to the size of the drive, so I'm shruggin here.

any other ideas?

[Lt_Damage 0]

Possibly check if there is issues with your motherboard. Find out what chipset / motherboard you have an update to the latest drivers.

Don't discount it being 3D/Video card settings just because the error happens before the software loads. It has to initialize all the software that talks to your hardware before it can display the preferences window or start the game.

Regards,

[fat_baldwin 0]

well, here's an embarassing question (considering I'm a programmer ).

The system I'm having a problem with I bought of my brother in law and I've no idea what the brand of the board actually is. I know it has the i440BX chipset, but dunno how to get the brand to upgrade the drivers.

SO, the embarassing question would be:

without cracking open the case, how do I check what MB I have?

embarrasingly yours...

[fat_baldwin 0]

BTW: I ran DxDiag and ran the 3d tests.

everything worked fine and no conflicts/errors were detected. All my other games work fine ( RTCW, Ghost Recon, Emperror: Battle for Dune, etc. ).