SOLUTION FOR: Display problem with Halo: Combat Evolved

[blackspawn]

I recentely got Halo and I installed it on my PC, the installation went without a glitch. However whenever I try to change either the refresh rate or the screen resolution (above 800x600) when the confirmation screen appears (to save the configs) a BSOD occurs and the computer restarts (I can't read it because the PC restarts to quickly but I can tell it's a BSOD). My desktop resolution is 1152x864 @ 75Hz (and I usually run 3D intensive games @ 1024x768)

My system specs are:
P4 1.5 GHz
WinXP Pro SP1
Nvidia GeForce 3 Ti 200 (using detonator 40.72)
768 MB RAM

I can run other 3d apps just fine (GTA: Vice City for example) but somehow Halo refuses to run... is it because my system can't handle it?
Oh! and I can't install the latest detonators because it hangs my system (no idea why...) when windows is loading.

Can anyone help me?

(meanwhile I'll be playing the game with 800x600 @60Hz)

[igalan]

I have heard many complaints about this port of Halo, so I'm not surprised about this problem . Anyway for a GeForce 3 Ti200 I would use Detonator 41.09 (I have one of those cards ). In my experience this detonator is more stable that 40.72, although somewhat slower.

Oh, also you should get a program to fix refresh rates. I use this program: Refresh Force 1.10 Run this program, click the button to set refresh rates and reboot. This program doesn't run in the backgroud, it doesn't need to be run everytime or anything else. It will just set the correct refresh rates in the registry and Windows will use them every time for every game.

[LPDad]

Blackspawn, You saw my OTHER post on the probable solution for this : http://www.ntfs.org/forum/showthread...936#post353936


are you still having problems??

If so then try using the 1.1 pixelShader command, althought the 1.4 shaders seem to work well for me.

Anyone else having problems running Halo on a highend system...please check out my FIX at the above link-- it seems to have worked for almost everyone having problems with choppy video or BSODs.

[LPDad]

For those of you who don't want to leave PCTT, here is the post:

I think everyone agrees that this issue needed to be addressed a little better before they released the pc version...Oh well..

I have a fairly high-end system and out of the box halo played like crap for me. My brother-in-law has a mid-range system with a cheaper nvidia card and it played like a dream for him...go figure..
ANYWAYS, here is what worked for my system..hopefully it will save you some time..give it a try.

My system:
WinXP Pro
Lots of Harddrives
Nvidia GF4 4400 (latest drivers from Nvidia)
Asus A7N8X-Deluxe (+ latest n-force drivers)
Onboard sound
blah, blah, blah...

Bottom line is to add some qualifiers to your shortcut (as zomar suggested)
..besides the refresh fix listed above it helps if you specify the pixelshaders that you want the game to use. I found for my nvidia card PS1.4 work the best (I have included a listing of all the options at the end of the post)

I have EVERYTHING set to HIGH, and I am using sound Hardware acceleration (YES)...BUT TURN OFF EAX.

I run at 1024x768 and I am specifying a Refresh rate of 85. (my monitor's actual refresh rate is set much higher)

in game set the FRAMERATE= VSYNC

Once again all ingame settings are set to either YES or HIGH except for EAX which is OFF. (Antialiasing is turned off in the Nvidia control panel, but the "controlled by application" works also)



To get this to work on my machine add the following to the last part of the shortcut (as outlined above):

-vidmode 1024,768,85 -use14

So that your shortcut will be:


"H:\Games\Halo\halo.exe" -vidmode 1024,768,85 -use14

(your drive/folders may be different)
if you want to try the PixelShaders 1.1 then simply change to -use11.

Hope this helps some of you out with this very frustrating problem.

Here is a list of the Commands you can append:

To add the command line:

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Halo\halo.exe" -vidmode 1024,768,85 -use14

Other commands you can tack on (straight from the Readme.rtf)

-nosound
Disables all sound.

-novideo
Disables video playback.

-nojoystick
Disables joystick/gamepads.

-nogamma
Disables adjustment of gamma.

-useff
Forces the game to run as a fixed function card.

-use11
Forces the game to run as a shader 1.1 card.

-use20
Forces the game to run as a shader 2.0 card.

-safemode
Disables as much as possible from the game.

-window
Runs the game in a window.

-width640
Forces the game to run at 640x480.

-vidmode w,h,r
Forces the game to run at width, height, refresh rate.

-adapter x
Forces the game to run fullscreen on a multimon adaptor.

-port x
Server port address used when hosting games.

-cport x
Client port address used when joining games.

-ip x.x.x.x
Server IP address used when you have multiple IP addresses.

-screenshot
Enables the "Print Screen" key to generate screenshots

-timedemo
Runs four movies and writes out timedemo.txt.

-console
Enables the debugging console.

[blackspawn]

Thanks LPDad your solution solved my problem (using pixel shader 1.4)

This afternoon I tried changing the resolution to 800x600 (cause of slowdowns when there are many enemies) in the shortcut, as soon as the game reached the main menu BAM! reboot. However I ran it a second time and this time no problems detected... it's really weird either it's the game or it's my card (though I kind amore inclined to say that it's the game...)

Anyway thanks for the help I'm now a happy halo player