Can't Start games in Windows 7

Hi, i recently wiped my HDD and re-installed Windows 7, i then installed all the necessary audio and video drivers e.t.c

My problem is that games that worked before the wipe have now stopped, such as Civilization 5, Command and Conquer and Dawn of War

DirectX has been upgraded, my graphics card is capable ( worked before ), and i have add updates to these games myself to make sure its not the game, i have also tried most compatibilty attmepts ( never needed before) which still has not worked


In a nutshell, when i start the game, it makes a choice, either nothing happens whatsoever

Or the icon flashes once, then disappears, no errors, nothing

When i check the processes as i do this, it does start the game , but after a few seconds, shuts down



I have figured the game has found something that is no compatible and has automatically shutdown


The only thing i would be able to think of is that i use said laptop connected to a cheap projector which forces me to use 800x600 to see things properly ( it can go higher)

And i have changed the resolution before starting the game to see if that was the problem, but no luck

And i have also tried starting in safe mode, but still no luck


Note: OLD OLD games such as heroes 3, works perfectly ( but has to be run in safe mode due to compatibilty issues, this has always been the case)


ANY and ALL solutions to this will be tried, tested and extremely useful


Much Thanks

Hi

I'd start by trying each game in compatibility mode and see what happens.
That should work with the old games as well.

Right click on the icon, select Properties and go to the Compatibility tab.

Run the Comparability test.

If you've already done that...

Did you reinstall all the games after you reinstalled Windows?
Or are you trying to run them from the old installs on another hard drive or partition?

If none of this helps pick one of the games and reinstall it in another directory from where it is now.
And run the compatibility wizard again.

Make sure that your graphics drivers are the latest ones for your graphics card.

Mike

Hi, thanks for the reply, and in answer to your questions

Compatibility mode was the first thing that i tried, because i do use it quite abit (liking for old games)

I completely wiped the HDD and installed from disc,then installed the games to my HDD so the installs are recent and i have re-installed several games since but no luck

As for partitions, i keep it simple and have 2 partitions, 1 whole partition, and then simply the windows minimum partition of 100Mb, so changing the location of the game would be a issue for me

My graphics card driver is the latest, and direct X is setup for direct x9 - 11, which enables me to play old and new games, this has worked without issues before

So all in all, i have tried these ( except partitions( explained above)) and still have no success with it

Thanks for your reply, and i am still welcome to more solutions

Hi

I've found that most games will run even when they haven't been installed in the Windows That I'm using, I'm running games I installed in Windows 7 in Windows 8 without reinstalling them.

Something very basic must be wrong for it to not even open them, but I just don't know what.

All I can suggest is that you try again, doing a clean install of Windows on a clean partition, I assume that your mean 100 GB is the size of you Windows partition not 100 MB.

I would increase that and try installing some to the games in their default locations on drive C:.

It's possible that you don't have enough free space on your Windows partition, where is your swap file?

I found recently that I was having problems running some things because my swap file for Windows 8 was in the same partition as Windows and I was running out of space.
I moved the swap file to another partition.

I have Windows 8 on a 100 Gigabyte partition, and even though I've tried very hard to put everything I can on another drive, I'm running out of space.

When I install Windows 8 for real next month I'm going to give it 250 gigs of space and not have to worry about it.

Mike

Have you installed the necessary graphics driver ? The problem might be you are using the same installation files to run the game on the new installed OS. You need to run the compatibility mode for the games. Check whether the OS is compatible.

I feel the same way about it being basic, and i feel as though ive missed something when re-installing all the drivers e.t.c

Yes sorry, the partition with my windows is on 500gb, with 300gb currently in use, and of course since i made only 1 partition, windows automatically makes a 100mb second partition dedicated to it

All games are stored at Local Disc C;/ Program Files/(game)
I will try re-installing windows 7 again, but i cant say i would be willing to wipe the partition,


I do have a external hard drive i could use to free room, but i honestly doubt it would be needed,

I have found out my graphics driver is working perfectly, as it allows me to play semi online games ( download .exe and play online) where i would not be able to if i didn't have a graphics driver

Other than that i have tried
Swapping my graphics driver for a close compatible one
Deleting and updating Direct X and Direct X User Runtime to direct x 9
Updating Java
Updating my audio drivers
Borrowing several different games and installing them in different locations
Giving full permissions to every game
Downloading a software file version of my game ( no disc )
Attempting to run the games in a virtual environment
Running dxdiag and checking my hardware acceleration settings

After all this, i noticed that when trying to run civilization 5 direct x 11, i would receive a error message ( obviously due to the fact i downgraded direct x11 to direct x9

Which would make it seem like that basic graphics such as the card and settings, would be functioning until that moment

And when trying to run civilization 5 in direct x9, and all my other games, then no such luck

I would not be willing to go back to XP for a few games ( Vista in my opinion is possibly the worst windows OS to date),

So some sort of a bolted together by ducked tape solution would be highly welcome if im honest

Originally Posted by johhnymarshal

Have you installed the necessary graphics driver ? The problem might be you are using the same installation files to run the game on the new installed OS. You need to run the compatibility mode for the games. Check whether the OS is compatible.

And just a quick reply here, my previous operating system was windows 7 and it worked perfectly, i wiped the drive and re-installed with the same disc, the sole thing to have changed is windows updates, others like direct x, i have kept as a lower version so old games would be compatible,

Originally Posted by Venomouspain

And just a quick reply here, my previous operating system was windows 7 and it worked perfectly, i wiped the drive and re-installed with the same disc, the sole thing to have changed is windows updates, others like direct x, i have kept as a lower version so old games would be compatible,

That is good but that might be creating trouble. By the way, have you tried the updated version ? If not, try once.

After a ridiculous amount of messing around, i found that re-installing registry files made it work

Has nothing to do with it, but whatever happened it hit a chain reaction and now my games work, so im not really complaining

Thanks for all the advice and help, it was very useful, and without it, i probably would have given up