Best of Mega Games for DOS/MEGA.iso/notes/trouble.txt

Text File | 1995-07-06 | 7.9 KB | 163 lines

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                    TROUBLE-SHOOTING GUIDE
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1.  Problems due to problematic CONFIG.SYS, especially when you
have some memory managers like QEMM.
Suggestions:
a.  Make sure your CONFIG.SYS has the following lines if you do not
use any third party memory manager, especially
if you load DOS high:
    DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS
    DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE
    DOS=HIGH
b.  If you use third party memory managers like QEMM, try getting
rid of any non-essential drivers and reboot the system until the
problem goes away or until the program runs.  To see if the
memory manager causes the problem, boot up system with "vanilla"
CONFIG.SYS like the one listed in (a) and run the program again.
If it runs without a hitch, then the memory manager causes the
problem.  The "stealth" mode of QEMM tends to cause more headaches.

2.  Problem due to insufficient RAM to load program.
Symptoms:  "Not enough memory to load program"
Suggestions:
a.  Install more memory
b.  Run MemMaker (from MS-DOS 6.x) to optimize your memory setting
or use any memory manager to reconfigure your system.
c.  Remove as many as non-essential drivers and TSR programs.
d.  If running Windows programs, close as many Windows as possible.

3.  Problems due to programs try writing to the CDROM.
(CD is a READ-ONLY device, cannot be written to)
Correction:  Some games need to update the highest score when you
exit the game.  Your computer may hang or give an error message when
the game tries writing to the CDROM.  Either ignore the error and
reset the system OR copy game to hard drive.

4.  I have installed the CD DIRECTOR menu program and it ran fine.
Now I click and the icon and the CD gives me an error message
saying that some MDB or LDB files are missing or incorrect path. Why?
Answer:  To speed up the CD DIRECTOR menu program, the data files are
stored under MAPLEMDA.CD subdirectory.  If you accidentally erased this
directory, you will get the above error message.  Simply re-run
INSTALL ICON selection in your INSTALLATION MENU to fix this problem.

5.  Certain games, especially the graphics-intensive ones, tends to
take a long time to load program into screen, WHY?  How to speed it up?
Answer:  The access time of most single speed CD-ROM drive is about
350- 700ms (compare to hard drives' 10- 30ms), so it is a lot SLOWER
when loading big games.  You may want to get a double-speed CD-ROM
or install cache program that will speed up CD-ROM drive.  Note that
not every cache program speeds up CDROM access time.

6.  Some games runs fine on its existing settings, it freezes, hangs,
or give a disk error or I/O error message when I try to change its
setting.
Answer:  Since CD is a READ-ONLY media, game settings that have been
written onto it cannot be changed.  You get the above symptoms if you
try to change it.  Either play the games as is OR copy it onto your
hard disk, then you can change its setting without problem.

7.  Program still freezes or gives "I/O error" or "Access Denied"
messages even after I have copied program from CD-ROM to my
hard disk.
Answer:  The file attribute of the programs is set to "R" (read-only)
when they are copied to the CD-ROM.  You have copied these files
with the "R" attribute.  If you don't remove the "R" attribute, your
PC will not be able to write or update certain data files and give
you I/O and access error messages. Run the following command
to remove the "R" attribute:
       ATTRIB *.* -R /S

8. How to figure out the playing commands?
Answer: There are two ways:
a.  Most programs has a help key, "F1" is the most popular one.
The help key will give you command summary and other essential info.
So look for the help key on your screen.  If no help key is found,
see if you can found a cursor on screen.  You may control the cursor
with arrow keys or mouse.  Then try out different buttons or choices.
b.  Exit the program and manually log into the subdirectory in which
the game resides.  Look for any file with .DOC or .TXT extension and
read it with DOS's EDIT or the LIST, SEE utility (copies in the NOTES
sub-directoy). Most games comes with instructions in the form of
README file, or README.TXT, or README.DOC, or MANUAL.TXT, or
MANUAL.DOC.  You can print out the instruction with EDIT (from DOS),
or SEE or LIST or your favorite word processor.
For Windows programs, look for the files with .WRI extension, you
can read it by simply "clicking" on the file.

9.  How to EXIT or get out of certain games and demo?
Answer:  Some software authors are too lazy to write the exit routine.
Most common commands to get out of a program are:
   ESC       F10
   CTRL-X;   CTRL-Q;  CTRL-U;  CTRL-Break; CTRL-ESC;  CTRL-PRINT SCREEN
   ALT-X;    ALT-Q;   ALT-ESC
   F10       CTRL-ALT-DEL
FOR WINDOWS PROGRAMS: ALT-F4

When everything fails, use CTRL-ALT-DEL keys.  DON'T use reset button
when running WINDOWS, you may damage the hard disk.

10.  Some games run fine under certain DOS version like DOS 5.0 and do
not run under 6.0 or later.
Suggestion:  Make sure you have this line "DEVICE=C:\DOS\SETVER.EXE"
in your CONFIG.SYS.  Then run SETVER to set the game program to the
DOS version that it will operate.  For example, if GAME.EXE will run
under DOS 5 and you are using DOS 6, run this command:
        C:>SETVER GAME.EXE 5.0

You need to reboot system for the changes to be effective.
Refer to DOS manual on SETVER if you have any questions.

11.  Problem due to insufficient video memory and incorrect video
card driver. (Some games require you to choose a video driver,
some high-resolution games need more than 512k video RAM)
Symptoms:  There's no picture on screen, but the hard disk sounds like
           it is retrieving something.
           Strange colors in pictures.
Correction:  If you have another VGA card, try it to see if problem
persists. Find a VGA card with more memory. Choose a different video
driver to see if problem goes away.

12.  Problem due to pointing devices such as mouse and joystick
(Some games won't run without a mouse)
Correction:  Load the mouse driver and install a mouse.  If the mouse
is jumpy or erratic, check if the mouse driver load is the correct one.
Also check if serial port and/or mouse is defective or not.

13.  Problems due to incorrect sound drivers, program crashes or
refuses to run.
Correction:  If the program assumes you have a sound card installed
and you have none, run the setup or install utility of the program,
select PC speaker or none (no sound card).  Then the program won't
look for a sound card when running.
If you have a sound card and the program reports no sound card or
incorrect driver, re-install your sound card driver that comes with
the card; check if problem goes away; if not; run the setup or install
utility of the program.  The default setting for SoundBlaster type
sound cards are: IRQ5, address 220, DMA1.

14.  Problems due to missing .DLL or .VBX files.
Correction:  You may need to copy some or all of the .DLL or
.VBX files into your Windows subdirectory.


MOST OF THE PROBLEMS THAT YOU RUN INTO WILL GO AWAY WHEN YOU COPY
THE PROGRAM ONTO THE HARD DRIVE, IF NOT, ALSO RUN "SETUP", OR
"CONFIG" TYPE PROGRAM/ UTILITY TO CHANGE THE DEFAULT SETTING TO
THE ONE THAT MATCH YOUR SYSTEM.

If copying the game from CD-ROM to hard disk does not fix the
problem, copy the ZIP files fo the game to hard disk, uncompress
it using PKUNZIP or UNZIP, re-run INSTALL, CONFIG, or SETUP.
Then the game should run fine.  Problems of this sort is caused
by file names characters not allowed for ISO 9660 standard for
CD-ROM.

-- Copyright 1994, 1995  Maple Media, Inc.
   Licensed to Software Values International, Inc.
   All trademarks recognized and are the properties of
   its respective owners.