Picked up the game with the intension of playing my daughter via the internet but starting on the tutorial stage on level two the game keeps freezing with either a static image or a blank screen, the sound also decided to loop.

Not something I expect from a game that is supposidly well established. The version I have is the latest one (checked that already) it's only this game I have issues with nothing else causes these problems.
Is this game still being supported and pending updates to be released?

I am using the latest nvidia drivers.

EDIT the freeze happens in a normal games as well for no aparant reason.

Tried to get the game working on my laptop with an ATI card and it bombs out after the SEGA screen on startup.
Running Vista on the laptop.

I need this game to load so I can play my daughter.
Hopefully she will not have this fun when she tries to install it.

1. Have you installed the latest patch for worms 3d?
http://www.worms3d.com/support.html?area=patc

2. What is your PC spec?(not the laptop) does it satisfy the minimum requirement for the game?

3. Try installing the latest mobo driver, especially if you have a Via 4 in 1 chipset.

4. Since the game is a bit dated, it might lack support for the latest hardware or OS. Why not try getting Worms 4 if all else fails

Well if its not working on both of your machines, have you checked the disk? Perhaps there is somthing wrong with that.

Disk appears fine and it was used straight out of the box.
Just unwrapped my daughter's disk and the same thing happened, it does not appear to be accessing the disk at the time it freezes.
So that's two disks?

1. Have you installed the latest patch for worms 3d?
http://www.worms3d.com/support.html?area=patc

According to the game I already have the latest patch when I get the game to check.

2. What is your PC spec?(not the laptop) does it satisfy the minimum requirement for the game?

The system is a shuttle X which is about 18months old now.
Windows XP Media Center Edition, AMD 64 3200+, 1GB RAM, 25MB GEforce FX 5700 card.

3. Try installing the latest mobo driver, especially if you have a Via 4 in 1 chipset.

Already installed and using nvidia chipset

4. Since the game is a bit dated, it might lack support for the latest hardware or OS. Why not try getting Worms 4 if all else fails

Get Worms 4??? I've just wasted my money buying two copies of 3D, that's my xmas buget used up.


Thanks for the input though

I am guessing were you said 25mb geforce 5700 you ment 256. You have all the basic requerments, and if it did the same thing with both disks it cant be a problem with that. This is really odd. Do you have the newest version of direct x on your pc? Also is this the first game you have tried installing on your computer? because if other games dont work either it could help narrow down the problem.

1. Do you have the newest version of direct x on your pc?
Like he said, do check your DirectX version, start->run->type 'dxdiag'
Make sure you have version 9 or above. (on your PC)

2. You can also check that maybe you have disabled hareware accelaration by mistake, right click on desktop -> properties -> settings tab -> advanced -> troubleshoot , make sure it is on full.

3. Try running the game again with minimal background applications. (i.e. Close your firewall/anti virus for the duration)

4. Is there any other abnormalities to yuor PC at this time? Like PC restart by itself, blue screen ...etc

Like he said, do check your DirectX version, start->run->type 'dxdiag'
Make sure you have version 9 or above. (on your PC)

Direct x 9.0c

2. You can also check that maybe you have disabled hareware accelaration by mistake, right click on desktop -> properties -> settings tab -> advanced -> troubleshoot , make sure it is on full.

It is on full

3. Try running the game again with minimal background applications. (i.e. Close your firewall/anti virus for the duration)

Done, disabled Norton and still locking up (thought it had fixed it but during the assassin round it locked up again.

4. Is there any other abnormalities to your PC at this time? Like PC restart by itself, blue screen ...etc

Nope no other problems and the system has run Doom3 and Half Life 2 etc without a problem.

Thanks for the ideas so far guys.

Got Quicktime installed? Uninstall it, I had problems with that... very weird... myes.

Well, i'm out of ideas. It doesn't seem to be a hardware problem.

Any chance of upgrading your OS to Home or Professional from MC?

There have been compatibility issues on my friend's media center computer. He then tried it on an XP Home Edition and it worked fine, so there's your best option.

There have been compatibility issues on my friend's media center computer. He then tried it on an XP Home Edition and it worked fine, so there's your best option.

Unfortunately changing from Media Center is not an option as I use the system for my music,films and tv recording etc. Moving the OS to Pro etc would actually be more of a downgrade than an upgrade as Media Center is only a shell that's run on top of the normal OS, so when it's not running it should not make an issue.
I'll look into the Quicktime suggestion though.

Well something slightly different happened this time,
The screen went blank (which has happened before) but the game did not lock up and so I could use task manager to end the game instead of the usual locking up and reboot.
I think this is a graphics issue as sometimes the game looks as if it is about to freeze a few times but then continues.

I wonder if the latest nvidia graphics drivers are causing the problem?

Well something slightly different happened this time,
The screen went blank (which has happened before) but the game did not lock up and so I could use task manager to end the game instead of the usual locking up and reboot.
I think this is a graphics issue as sometimes the game looks as if it is about to freeze a few times but then continues.

I wonder if the latest nvidia graphics drivers are causing the problem?
I dont think its the drivers because I have the newest nvidia drivers on my xp home pc and it works fine. I also dont think its because of it being windows media edition bceause I tried it on my friends pc and it still worked and he had windows media. I did notice a bit of a performance problem, but I am guessing thats not because of it being widnwos xp media edition. Well, I have to say I am completely out of ideas. Try sending in a support ticket. you can do that here http://www.team17.com/support.html?subsection=ticket

Ok, just to point out there has been another case (on the web at least) where people say that MCE might be incompatible with Worms 3D. Though this is certainly not the first case where MCE is incompatible with something.

http://forums.techguy.org/thread-games-arcade-discussion/280753-worms-3d-problem.html

Though, as you said, you cant switch to another O/S. Is it possible to try it on another XP machine to test if it works or not?

If, all other problems are ruled out. You might want to try dual boot MCE and XP home on that machine. All you have to do is install them in different partitions (i.e. MCE in C:, XP home in D:) It will setup dual boot by itself.

Ok, just to point out there has been another case (on the web at least) where people say that MCE might be incompatible with Worms 3D. Though this is certainly not the first case where MCE is incompatible with something.

http://forums.techguy.org/thread-games-arcade-discussion/280753-worms-3d-problem.html

Though, as you said, you cant switch to another O/S. Is it possible to try it on another XP machine to test if it works or not?

If, all other problems are ruled out. You might want to try dual boot MCE and XP home on that machine. All you have to do is install them in different partitions (i.e. MCE in C:, XP home in D:) It will setup dual boot by itself.

this is all a bit of a hassle to just play worms 3d though to be honest. It is a great game, but not really worth creating a seperate partition on your pc for it. If you really want to play then you can try, but as Obi_Worm said, try it on another xp machine to see if that works.

The only other pc I can try it on is actually my daughters when I see her at Xmas, unfortunately she also has MCE as it came with the pc I bought her.
Because she does not live with me I will only be able to try sometime next week.

I also can not dualboot my own MCE as I do not have enough space on the system.
In a perfect world I would love to get it working on my Vista system as that is my main pc and also the one I use to keep in touch with my daughter.
Vista is still a bit buggy with certain features but as a new OS it's more user friendly than previous versions of Windows.

Mhhhh... Nvidea drivers ay? Well, i had problems with that too, but then with Flatout (some racing game) it just shut down the game when i tried to start a race... had to wait for the new drivers... >:( now i've got an Ati, wich works perfectly, and never problems with the drivers... But i don't think thats the problem...

Sorry guys, but none of your fix-its have worked for me. I installed Worms 3D with no problem. When I try to start the Worms 3D game, I get the following message "Runtime error! Program: C:\Team17\Worms 3d\bin\Worms3d.exe Abnormal program termination". The read-me says it needs DirectX 9.0a, but I've already got DirectX 9.0c installed!

My video card is Nvidia GeForce 7300 Turbocache 256MB DVI/VGA output


I've also had a similar problem with another game which requires DirectX 9.0b (when I do an analysis on this game, it tells me I've only got DirectX9.0 installed, but the properties screen says I've got version 9.0c installed! - Confusing.

Any ideas?