Cannot start Battles (Medieval 2, fully patched)

**TheWorldJoker** · September 24, 2009, 08:50 AM

Whenever I try to start a battle, whether it be custom, historical, or from the campaign map, the loading progress bar completely fills up, and then the game just hangs. My computer doesn't freeze -- I can minimize stuff, call up the task manager, etc. But if I return to the game, it's still sitting in the exact same place. Any ideas?

Note: I am attempting this on a laptop running Windows 7. I know, not top of the line, but it should be able to run it at the low settings. But since it won't crash or return any message, I have no idea what the cause may be.

**irishron** · September 24, 2009, 09:09 AM

What are the specs of your laptop as in memory, cpu, video card/chip?

Rule of thumb for Vista and 7 is take the recommended specs for this game add about 30% easy. Both are resource hogs.

**TheWorldJoker** · September 24, 2009, 11:08 AM

CPU: Dual Core, 1.6Ghz-ish?
RAM: 4GB
The graphics card is quite crappy: Intel GMA 950.

**TheWorldJoker** · September 24, 2009, 12:11 PM

Problem resolved:

I downloaded modded graphics drivers for my chipset, and it worked. This leads me to believe it is an issue with either wanting hardware TnL instead of software, or possibly with the pixel shader.

**irishron** · September 24, 2009, 12:13 PM

Your graphics chip is the bottleneck. Battles don't work on Intel 900 series chipsets. I had one in a desktop.

**TheWorldJoker** · September 24, 2009, 03:10 PM

While I agree that it is a bottleneck, the modded drivers got it to work. Still, the graphics card doesn't allow for much, but at least it's playable.

I can provide a link if desired?

**irishron** · September 24, 2009, 03:24 PM

If you got it to work, great. I am glad.

Yeah, go ahead and post the link. I'll take a look.

**TheWorldJoker** · September 24, 2009, 04:56 PM

There's a google group dealing with intel 9xx gaming, and resources/help for getting stuff working can be found there.

As for the modded 945GM family drivers, they can be found here:
http://groups.google.com/group/intel...rivers-for-9xx

(Note: If installing on Windows 7, you need to set compatibility for Vista)