Hardware problem?

[ditmx6]

Hi I just got my new laptop last week and installed Win2kPro on it. It seemed to work fine except for when I tried to run Dungeon Siege on it (a game). Anyway when I run the game it works fine until I get to a certain part of the board then it gives me an error message that says the following:

"A fatal error has occured and the app must shut down.
Decoding error! Compressed data is either corrupt or unreadable, possibly due to hardware failure. Try replacing or repairing the resource file (reinstall?) to fix this problem.
File on disk : 'C:\Program files\Microsoft Games\Dungeon Siege\Resources\Terrain.dsres'

Internal info
resource=
are\bitmaps\terrains\abandonded_cave_1\wall\b_t_av c01_wal_04x04-a.raw
offset=0x00e31968
size=87396
crc=0xB565DAFA8
last error=0x0000017"


I should also point out that I tried reinstalling it twice and still the problem persists. Is this some kind of hard ware problem? My desktop that runs XP home edition runs the same game just fine. One difference between the desktop and the laptop is that my laptop is using the NTFS file system. Any suggestions would help.

Thanks,
ditmx6

[randyrhoads1981]

Sounds like a driver issue with the videocard..try getting the most updated drivers..or it could be just the soundcard itself..the Terrain.dsres is a background for the game and it may be as simple as disabling fog or shawdos within the game settings.

[classicsoftware]

I agree with RR that this appears to be a software issue. The best place to go is the website of the game manufacturer. They have experienced this before and they may have a solution such as where to go to get drivers or a patch for the game you can download.

[ditmx6]

Thanks for the quick response everyone. This is where I'm at now. I did some looking online and found some info on the Dungeon Siege site that had a link to Microsoft.com. Anywat the same exact error that I'm getting was listed there and said it could be caused by one of the following three things:

1) „h Dungeon Siege resource files that are currently being stored in memory are becoming corrupted due to incorrect settings on the computer hardware.
2)„h Dungeon Siege interacts extensively with almost every system in the PC and as a result, is very sensitive to the hardware configuration.
3)„h There is a corrupted resource file (.dsres

I then followed the directions that were listed to correct the problem which were:

Verify Files
Verify that the resource files is corrupted by running a cyclical redundancy check (CRC) on the files. To do this, follow these steps.

NOTE: Because there are several versions of Microsoft Windows, the following steps may be different on your computer. If they are, see your product documentation to complete these steps.

1. Right-click the desktop, point to New, and then click Shortcut.
2. Click Browse, click DungeonSiege.exe, and then click Open. By default, the path is "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Dungeon Siege\DungeonSiege.exe".
3. In the Command line box, to the right of the quotation marks ( "), type a space, and then type verifydata=true.
4. Click Next, and then click Finish.
5. Double-click the new shortcut.

The CRC takes several minutes to complete.
If any of the files do not pass the CRC test, the files are corrupted. To remove and reinstall the game, follow these steps:
1. Click Start, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel.
2. Double-click Add/Remove Programs.
3. On the Install/Uninstall tab, click Dungeon Siege, and then click Add/Remove.
4. Click Uninstall, and then click OK.
NOTE: Do not click to select the Remove saved games check box.
5. After the removal is complete, verify the integrity of your hard disk to look for lost clusters and errors. To do this, follow these steps:
1. Double-click My Computer on the desktop, and then click the hard disk where you will install Dungeon Siege.
2. On the File menu, click Properties.
3. On the Tools tab, click Check Now under Error-checking.
4. Under Check disk options, click to select the Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors check box.
5. Click Start.
6. Reinstall Dungeon Siege.
For additional information, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
Q321742 Dungeon Siege: How to Troubleshoot Setup Errors


Anybody have any more ideas? I'm going to try to update the video drivers when I get home (I'm working now). Thanks again,

ditmx6

[ditmx6]

I just tried to find an update for my video card (Radeon Mobility 7500) and couldn't find one that would install. Is there a difference between the Raydeon 7500 and the Raydeon Mobility 7500 drivers? Every driver I found said that I didn't have the required hardware to complete the installation. I also couldn't update to the beat version of Dungeon Siege for some reason. Any ideas?

Ditmx6