Dread Lords won't load anymore

Recently, after a hard drive crash, I reinstalled GalCiv II from Stardock Central. It appeared that the game had been updated since last I checked Central, but I paid this no heed at the time.

When I loaded the game after installing, a message box appeared claiming that my video card was out of date and this may cause problems (I have a laptop and nothing else, so I can't update the card). I clicked "OK", and the game ran just fine, maybe with a bit of flickering. When I tried loading the program again, it loaded seemingly without problems, but when I tried to load my saved game, the game would just sit on the loading screen forever. I forced a shutdown, came back, and tried starting a new game, but the same thing happened.

I reinstalled the software, but the game still failed to load, even one first time.

The debug.err file contains several thousand copies of the following error:

Debug Message: Error flipping back buffer to primary buffer.
Debug Message: Driver internal error

I'd really appreciate any help I could get with this problem. If it can't be solved, the old version seemed to work: how might I go about installing the game un-patched?

As a side-note, what files are my saved games stored in? I can't seem to find them anywhere, and it annoys me that every time I reinstall I'll lose them again.

Thank you very much for your help.
3,175 views 3 replies
Reply #1 Top
Please post the first page or two of your debug.err. Most likely you just need to update your video drivers (software that tells the computer how to use the video card).
Reply #2 Top
I feel really stupid for not having checked the actual drivers. It turns out there was indeed a new driver update: I thought I had installed everything available when reinstalling the operating system, but apparently I missed a few the first time.

It works now. Thank you very much for your help.
Reply #3 Top
try a chkdsk /r on a boot from your CD Drive (non hard disk boot). i had a similar problem and some file along somewhere is corrupted that may not be GalCiv2, e.g. your anti-virus software. this probably solves the problem.