Can't Play Some Games

UltimaGecko

<div class="IPBDescription">...stupid emulated sound devices</div> Well, I think the sound devices are to blame at least.

My sister wants to play Tropico (...so do I...so I can repress people, mwhahahahaha. ...), however, the game quits after the loading screen (people that have it: when it zooms out of the palace thing and looks back at the island.

It just quits to the desktop, without any errors or anything.
It does the same thing in safe mode.

The game was working about a year ago, before I lent it to my cousin (...no he didn't break it).

I think the problem lies in the fact I once emulated 2 sound devices, when the computer crashed a while ago. The computer has its own sound card, I just emulated a game compatible one (which, in all its irony, is probably screwing the game up). I can't remember where I set up the emulated devices though, and I can't turn them off.

I've looked in settings, multimedia, add/remove and my computer (among others that didn't even look like they could help)...I just can't find it.

The computer's running on Windows 98. Or, if you know of problems with Tropico itself, the computer runs on an ATI Rage Pro Turbo 2x. All other specifications are above the recommended on the box. As I said, it did work before.

Thanks for any assistance.

taboofires

Let's start with the obvious: have you reinstalled the game, and ensured that it is recently patched? Or tryed reinstalling your sound card drivers (fully remove them, then install)? Have you had any actual hardware changes since last time you've played?

UltimaGecko

I've reinstalled the game 3 times. Not sure if there are any patches, but it worked before without patches. There haven't been any hardware changes either.

The only differance that I'm aware of is the emulated sound devices. I have no idea where I made them emulated (it's an internal windows program though). It's the only thing I can think of that's making it crash. As in, it's using the emulated (Game Compatible Sound Device) sound card instead of the one in the computer.

If you don't get what I mean, if I go to dxdiag it gives me Sound 1, Sound 2 and Sound 3. Sound 1 is the computers actual sound device and has all it's registration and licensing info. Sound 2 and 3 are emulated, one is game compatible device and the other is...a mistake or something, because I don't see why it's necessary at all, probably made it because I had no idea what I was doing. In the drivers box 2 and 3 have nothing but Other files (as in no provider, version or name).

I'd get new sound drivers, but I don't think the company that made that sound card exists; or if it does, I don't think it has drivers for how old my card is. However, as stated before, it worked with the current drivers a year ago.