Filibuster

Thanks, I'll do that. (secretly relieved I won't have to name my first kid 'Systems'...)

1. In DXDIAG, does it say "AGP enabled"? Does the Direct3D test pass? Yes and Yes. 2. What is your AGP aperture in the BIOS? 128Mb is usually best unless you have 256Mb RAM or less. 128. 3. Are you running anti-virus or any other taskbar apps? Antivirus, sound control panel, nVidia control panel, joystick control panel, Messenger (which I exit before starting any games). All have been there basically since I first installed the OS so I doubt they're the problem. 4. Are you running unnecessary services (do a right-click on My Computer and select "Manage", then go to services at the bottom). Hmm... not that I would recognise. 5. In your Detonator drivers, are you running in "High Quality" mode? I'd turn that off for a GeForce MX and go with "Performance" I've tried with practically all the possible settings. 6. Do another My Computer -> Manage and this time look in Device Manager. Is there any hardware marked in yellow or red? Well, there was an USB 2.0 controller for some reason without a driver (USB's been working fine nevertheless) but that's fixed now. Also, there's a secondary LAN controller I've disabled, that's also since I installed the system way back when. Sorry for not replying sooner - I spent last night doing a fresh installation of XP on a HD I borrowed from my old computer, and on that, both NWN and UFO work perfectly. Should at least rule out problems with BIOS settings. Thanks for the help, guys, but I believe the path of least bother here is reinstalling the OS. Well, they say that's a healthy thing to do every once in a while...

No, nothing that easy, I'm afraid.

Okay... this post is taking this thread off topic. First of all, apparently my woes aren't limited to U:AM. Shadowblade above mentioned Neverwinter Nights. Well, as it happens, I also have that installed on my HD. On a random impulse, I decided to test how it works... well, it took me about 8-10 minutes to load a saved game, after which I got 10-15 frames per minute in the game. The same problem is also present in the toolset. Both used to work perfectly well before. So, I have probably been barking up the wrong tree blaming UFO for the problems, although I have no idea what changes I have made to the system that could have caused this. The problem first exhibited itself after UFO installation, but I haven't played any of the afflicted games in a while, so the introduction of the problem may very well predate that. Interestingly enough, C&C:Generals which I mentioned before still works perfectly, no slowdown whatsoever. So, I've been doing some experimentation to rule out stuff... the desktop colour setting is 32bit, so no problem there. Uninstalled/reinstalled nVidia drivers, no change. Dxdiag shows all green, reinstallation of DirectX 9b does nothing. I've tried changing every D3D and OpenGL setting in the nVidia properties, and in the AGP settings in the BIOS (also put BIOS back to default and even jumper-cleared it). Strangely enough, it does not affect every game. Maybe just those which use OpenGL? Then again, I also tested Half-Life, both with in OpenGL and Direct3D mode, neither works. As I said, this does not seem to be an UFO problem anymore, so this is probably the wrong forum to continue this, but if anyone has any ideas how to fix this thing I'll name my firstborn baby after him/her*. Otherwise I'll have no difficulties in deciding how to spend next weekend... reinstalling everything from the OS up... * - pending agreement from its mother.

Well, I sent the same complaint to Altar support, I'll relay any reply I get here.

Installed the game today, and there is no chance I'm playing it in this state. Even with all configurations turned to minimal, the 'Test' in the config program, the intro movie and the menu all run very slow. The intro movie is the worst, it can be counted as seconds per frame instead of frames per second (and I'm not exaggerating just to coin a cool phrase). The menu is so slow it doesn't even seem to be accepting mouse clicks, I actually had to Alt-F4 my way out. Tried fiddling with my GPU settings and then setting them to default, no improvement. - Athlon XP 2600 - Epox 8RGA+ motherboard - 1GB DDR in nForce2 Dual Channel mode - Samsung Syncmaster monitor, 1024x768x85Hz supported - Integrated Geforce 4 MX GPU using the latest nVidia drivers (6.14.10.4523). - Windows XP sp1 - English version 1.1a (same performance in 1.0 and after applying patch) I'm getting no error messages and the game seems to be running okay, if you ignore the fact that it seems as if I'm running it on a 486. No other game has given me trouble like this, for example, C&C:Generals runs quite nicely with all the detail settings maxed.