Major problem with some GAMES

I have several simple games installed that were freeware (HappyLand, Alex the Aligator, etc). They have played just fine with no problems, but suddenly I am getting a black screen, with a little bar at the top of the screen where I can just barely read the name of the game on the left, and the OX boxes on the top right corner. I can hear the music from the game playing, but I can't "see" anything. And I can only get back to my normal screen by hitting Cntrl-Alt-Delete.

Also, with a game I purchased, The Longest Journey, was installed and playing just fine. Suddenly that too is not playing now. I do get an error message with this. It confused me, so I uninstalled the game, and then did a complete re-install. And I am getting the same error message.

a little box which reads

game
C:\TLJ\source\game\DX_Module\primarysurface.cpp 868.
check failed: Unrecognized error value

This means nothing to me. Can someone interpret for me. I really enjoy this game and would very much like to get it up and running again.

I am running a Compaq Presario 6420NX
AMD Athlon XP processor 2200+ op. at 1.8GHz
512 DDR SDRAM memory9

I don't really care that much about getting the other games to run, although I am curious as to why they suddenly stopped running correctly. But I really would like to get The Longest Journey working right, and I would appreciate any help someone can give me.

 

Hi sandilew,

A forum thread about the longest journey and pretty much describes your symptoms:
http://forums.longestjourney.com/showthread.php?threadid=615

Even before reading that thread, your symptoms point to hardware problem.

A number of possibillities:

The graphics driver is corrupted or needs updating.

The graphics card is dying or simply not up to the game's demands.

And RAM - test your memory http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

Regards - Charles

 

Thank you Charles,

You hit the nail right on the head!!

I hadn't played the games for some while, but the last time I did play there were no problems.

The minute I read how to fix it (turn on graphic accelerator) I remembered that a short time back, because of a problem I had been having, it was recommended that I turn the graphic accelerator off. It seemed to solve my problem at the time. It did say that unless you were a major gamer, you really didn't need it anyway. And believe me, I am not a major gamer. But it seems that the few games I do play must require it.

So thank you very much, and now that I have had this experience, I doubt I will forget and make that mistake again.

Thank you so much!!!