HELP! - CPU not supported

Grail Quest · November 4, 2003, 16:33

I upgraded (that is, "upgraded") from a Celeron 500 MMX to a Celeron 2.4 GHz.

Now SMACX tells me my CPU is not supported. There is the option to try running anyway and risk crashes, but the game crashes to desktop immediately.

HELP!
Anyone seen this before?
Is there a workaround?

Minute Mirage · November 4, 2003, 16:49

I haven't had the problem myself, so I don't claim I know what works, but you might want to try reading the SMAC/X FAQ thread, which gives the following hint:

Quote:

13) SMAC/X won't run under my Pentium 4, producing "Processor not supported" errors
A:Edit the Alpha Centauri.ini file so that it contains the following lines at the start of the file:
[PREFERENCES]
ForceOldVoxelAlgorithm=1

Jamski · November 4, 2003, 18:12

If you also "upgraded" to Window XP, then you should get the XP-patch as well.

Let us now if it works

(Dammit, MM was faster than me - but the line can go anywher under the preferences heading)

-Jam

Grail Quest · November 4, 2003, 21:47

Quote:

[PREFERENCES]
ForceOldVoxelAlgorithm=1

Did this. Still got the warning.
No idea of stability, but at least it didn't crash immediately. Am 40 turns into the game so far.

SMAC XP Patch
It's a SMAC patch, not a SMACX patch. Should I still be installing it? Wouldn't SMACX and the SMACX patch overwrite it?

Petek · November 4, 2003, 23:48

Quote:

Originally posted by Grail Quest
Did this. Still got the warning.

This is normal. After applying the fix, you get the warning, but the game plays fine.

self biased · November 5, 2003, 03:07

i'm glad i looked first, rather than throwing my computer out...

Grail Quest · November 6, 2003, 22:29

Quote:

Originally posted by Jamski
If you also "upgraded" to Window XP, then you should get the XP-patch as well.

Let us now if it works

-Jam

It SNAFU'ed my computer.

I rebooted today, and Windows choked about 5 times consecutively. Each time, it got a bit closer to the desktop, but at no time did I get any error message until it was successful. Then it said it had recovered from a serious error and asked if I wanted to send a report.

I tested it, and sure enough, every time I play, the computer won't reboot correctly.
Scandisk reported a couple of corrupted files and fixed them. No idea what "fixed" meant, though. The O/S is very much black-boxed.

Did a full uninstall, removed NAV from loading into the background, and will try a clean install without the compatibility patch.

Gods... And all this because I got an "upgrade".
I bet Miriam's got a quote about this situation somewhere...

Jamski · November 7, 2003, 03:30

So we see the evils of XP in action. At least it was easy to re-install, eh?

-Jam

Grail Quest · November 9, 2003, 19:42

Quote:

Originally posted by Grail Quest

Did a full uninstall, removed NAV from loading into the background, and will try a clean install without the compatibility patch.

The game was "stable" for a while: that is, the computer still restarted, even though it reported it had to recover something to the registry each time.

Just today, however, I got one helluva shock: Windows XP Pro would not restart.

Not even in safe mode.

I don't know what to blame: the CPU or the O/S, but I'm planning to take my computer back to the shop, and trade in Windows XP and the Celeron CPU for a P4 CPU and ask that my trusty Win98 be installed instead.

Sigh. The advance of technology. May God save us all.

Jamski · November 11, 2003, 06:05

YICK! You got a Celeron? A Celeron is a Pentium with the balls chopped off for cheaper production. I had a Celeron on trial and NOTHING worked properly. I changed to an Athlon and everything was fine.

Guess which computer I bought

-Jam

knighterrant · November 30, 2003, 03:45

If it helps anyone, I have XP and did the v4.0 patch and it doing both of these changes helped it to run.

No bad disk boots as of yet.

Next, I'll see if I can get smacx to work.