Windowed mode is broken/Strong Bad DVD disc checking
I'm having a problem with windowed mode on all the TTG titles I have. It shows up all garbled and unreadable and sometimes it has bits of other things in the window, like fish from my screen saver, the 20th Century Fox logo from a movie I watched. Full screen mode works just fine. I think it has something to do with upgrading my ATI Catalyst drivers to version 10.6. Hopefully when 10.7 comes out, it'll be fixed, but I was wondering if someone can has a fix for this. Of all the games I have, I only want to play Texas Hold'em windowed, since the game is perfect to play while multitasking.
My other problem is with the SBCG4AP DVD. I installed from disc, but Securom (grr!) wants the disc to be in there every time I play the game. It's a small inconvenience, but I prefer to have the drive empty so I don't have to deal with having lots of crap on my desk, I swap multiple discs out and I get lazy, I leave discs out of their cases and they get spots, dust and even scratches. I'm wondering if I should uninstall and download the chapters from my account and see if a "launch game" screen is more or less annoying than keeping the disc in there while I play it. Or is there something else I can do? The Tales of Monkey Island DVD doesn't care if the disc is loaded or not. An unusual discrepancy.
My other problem is with the SBCG4AP DVD. I installed from disc, but Securom (grr!) wants the disc to be in there every time I play the game. It's a small inconvenience, but I prefer to have the drive empty so I don't have to deal with having lots of crap on my desk, I swap multiple discs out and I get lazy, I leave discs out of their cases and they get spots, dust and even scratches. I'm wondering if I should uninstall and download the chapters from my account and see if a "launch game" screen is more or less annoying than keeping the disc in there while I play it. Or is there something else I can do? The Tales of Monkey Island DVD doesn't care if the disc is loaded or not. An unusual discrepancy.
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You could also try turning off all other programs, just in case it's one of them. Here's the thorough way to do it:
To Boot Clean in Windows XP
1. Click Start --> Run --> Type MSCONFIG --> Click OK
2. On the General tab, choose Selective Startup
3. Uncheck Process SYSTEM.INI file
4. Uncheck Process WIN.INI file
5. Uncheck Load Startup Items
6. Click on the Services tab
7. At the bottom, check Hide All Microsoft Services
8. Uncheck all boxes in the window or click the button labeled Disable All
6. Click OK
7. Click Restart
8. After reboot, run game to see if it works.
After performing the necessary steps, restore your system by doing the following:
1. Click Start --> Run --> Type MSCONFIG--> Click OK
2. On the General tab, choose Normal Startup
3. Click OK
4. Click YES, when asked to restart your computer
Catalyst v10.7 came out a couple days ago, but installing it didn't fix the problem. I'm pretty sure it was working with 10.3, which was out in March but I haven't played it after I upgraded to 10.6 in June. Most likely windowed mode got broken along the way to 10.6.
Okay, that is really weird. I was experimenting with different resolution and color depth combinations and nothing worked except when I disable my secondary monitor, it runs fine windowed. I've always used two screens and I didn't discover this problem until last week. Is there anyone with two monitors and using one or two HD4850s or similar who can test windowed mode with the latest drivers? Disabling one of my screens is not really an option and I wouldn't even need to use windowed mode if I wasn't planning on multitasking on both screens.
I don't think there's a startup program interfering with anything and I've recently used that method to find, disable and then uninstalled a program called hydradm.exe, an ATI multitasking extension that I wasn't using that battle.net didn't like for Starcraft multiplayer. It's pretty unlikely, especially if the only difference between working and not working is a second monitor enabled, plus I need to keep my computer running some background processes for a few weeks before I can restart or else extreme headaches. When my computer's all done, I can try if no solutions have been found until then, but if no one here can figure anything out, I'll ask ATI support for any advice.