a recent development ocured when for no know reason newly installed games ceased to start, some games are; red alert 4, counter-strike, civ 3. i would think it was a hardware problem with a graphics card or maybe a drivers problem but Rome Total War puts more strain on my system than civ 3 and Rome runs fine. It was installed previous to this problem.

the games seem to attepmt a start up, getting to the initial start image (little 3x3 square in the middle of the screen stating game name and whatnot) and then when the computer attempts launch the game itself the screen flickers black for a split second like it is going to launch then just returns to the desktop like some twilight zone **** and nothing ever happened.

is there an idea for a solution that doesn't involve reformatting my hard drive, or being told i should update my drivers?

Hello and welcome to PCHelpForum.

I admit games are not my section.

However lets see if we can get some information posted ready for the gamers to help out.

Could you do this:Post PC Specs

Also how much free space do you have on your hard drive?

I have marked your thread as "Open" ready for the more knowing with games.

Jelly Bean.

Can you also include in your post what DirectX version you are running please?

CPU:Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E4500@ 2.20GHz

Motherboardell (0RY007)

Ram:2046mb

Primary Hard Drive:298gb (ST3320620AS)

Graphics Card:ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT

OS:xp

and all the current drivers, updates and sex magic for everything, this problem actually started around the time Red Alert 3 was installed via steam.

I would probably download the latest ATi drivers from their website just to make sure.

uh thats why i said all the latest drivers updates and what not mate it seems to be how ever thing gets diagnosed. i was hoping someone else might have a similar problem. tell me i need to reconfig. i actually think the problem has to do with a file called binkw32.dll (i'm almost positive that is the case in civIII, maybe not the other games)

Oh... whoops sorry I missed that part, my bad. Hmmm.. Unfortunately this kind of thing is not my area of expertise. I will ask around for someone who might know something.