Just starting the game and directly after speaking with Caroline and the little Sister screams and is found bitten by a bat in the closet the game then asks for to switch from Disc 3 to disc 2. When I do this the game is totally lost to me. It says it requires all my resourses. I've tried numerous things such as switching to 256 colors, lowering hardware acceleration and nothing seems to help. Looks like a really cool game and would like to progress. Is there a patch for the game or is there any known problems in this particular area of the game?

P.W.

Hi P.W.

Although I'm sorry that I can't help you with this, I do hope that you'll get some ideas on what to do. If it's any consolation to you, I have a similiar problem with Vampire Diaries, in the same exact place as you seem to be experiencing yours. I get no error messages after that scream, but my game dumps me back to the desktop immediately after.

I'm wishing that someone will come along and give us both some help.

Leigh-Anne

Maybe this will help.

VAMPIRE DIARIES TECHNICAL SUPPORT

If your computer experiences audio skipping while playing Vampire Diaries, switch the video mode to 640 x 480 256 color palette. Do the following to change your display in Win95/98

Click on Start
Select SETTINGS
Select CONTROL PANEL
Select DISPLAY
Choose the SETTINGS tab
Change the color palette to 256 colors
Move the slider indicator in the Desktop Area to 640 x 480
Restart your computer

CD-Rom drive letters greater than E are not recognized during the installation of the game. If you are always getting prompted to Enter CD1 when it is already in the CD-ROM bay, please check the game.ini file in the Vampire Diaries directory to insure that the CD-Rom drive listed is correct. If not, you will need to open the game.ini file with Notepad and edit the following lines:

CDDrive1=X:
CDDrive2=X:
CDDrive3=X:

Enter your CD-Rom drive letter in place of X. Save file and play.

DIRECTX INSTALLATION
Before running the game, you MUST have the Microsoft DirectX components installed in your system. The Directx installer is run after Vampire Diaries is installed.

SYSTEM PERFORMANCE
The options menu in the install program allows you to adjust the game performance according to your system hardware. The following table shows different system hardware configurations and the corresponding system quality setting.


Processor/speed RAM (in mb) System quality
pentium 90 or faster 16 good
pentium 75-90 12 fair
pentium 60-75 12 poor

If you receive an error saying you need a file with a .dll extension, go to the autorun folder in Vampire Diaries CD #1 and copy the needed file into your windows\system folder.

Looks like a no-go for me here with this particular game. I have tried everything there is to try butI wanted to thank Mabeco for some additional things to try that I hadn't already.

Sorry to hear you experienced the same problem Presto, I wonder how much disk swapping there is invovled and even if we were to acquire a saved game after this part, if we would just encounter the same problem further on in the game. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Confused]" src="confused.gif" />

On the bright side with all my tinkering around with this game with no luck, I got ambitious and tried Riddle of Master Lu again and got it working thanks to some tips from Laura (Gatorlaw).

P.W.

"CD-Rom drive letters greater than E are not recognized during the installation of the game. If you are always getting prompted to Enter CD1 when it is already in the CD-ROM bay, please check the game.ini file in the Vampire Diaries directory to insure that the CD-Rom drive listed is correct. If not, you will need to open the game.ini file with Notepad and edit the following lines:

CDDrive1=X:
CDDrive2=X:
CDDrive3=X:

Enter your CD-Rom drive letter in place of X. Save file and play."
I copied and pasted this from mabeco above in this thread. My question is where is the game.ini file? If I haven't gotten the game to install, is it on my computer yet?
Thank you, Julie

I wonder if it could be a fast CD problem similar to the one in Pandora Directive and Ripper. On those games, it's best to click OK before the CD has finished spinning up.

Thank you Jenny100. Are you saying try and install the game again and when it ask for CD1 click OK before the CD stops spinning? Then it might go ahead and install?

Actually I was talking to Puzzlewoman who seemed to have the game already installed and has been playing it, but can't get it to recognize CD3 when swapping time comes.

If you can't get the game to install, that might be a different problem. But it might still be worth a try and is easy enough to test. Let me know if it works.

Hi,
When trying to install, it doesn't work to click OK before the CD stops spinning. Or I can't click fast enough. My drives are F and M.
The part where mabeco writes to edit the game.ini is where I am confused. If the game won't install is the game.ini on my system? Do you copy the CD to you hard drive and edit that file then try and install it?
Thank you, Julie

I think Macebo's instructions are for editing the game.ini after installing the game. Are you getting that error about the .dll extension when you try to install?

What kind of computer are you trying to install on? 98, XP, ME? If you think your CD drive might be too fast, you can try using CD Bremse.

I'm not sure the install would work if you copied the CD to the hard drive (unless you used a CD emulation program to do it). But it might be worth a try. If all the game does during the install is copy files to a folder on the hard drive, and doesn't check to see if the information is coming from a CD drive, it might work - especially if you have an empty partition D: or E:.

I am trying on a 98, the CD drive is M I am getting the Insert CD 1 message while trying to install. It starts to Install then stops and ask for CD1. I thought that all of what Macebo wrote,
"CD-Rom drive letters greater than E are not recognized during the installation of the game. If you are always getting prompted to Enter CD1 when it is already in the CD-ROM bay, please check the game.ini file in the Vampire Diaries directory to insure that the CD-Rom drive listed is correct. If not, you will need to open the game.ini file with Notepad and edit the following lines:
CDDrive1=X:
CDDrive2=X:
CDDrive3=X:
Enter your CD-Rom drive letter in place of X. Save file and play."
was about getting the Insert CD 1 error while installing. I just didn't see how there could be a game.ini file on my system to edit if the game won't install. I just didn't read it right. It really doesn't say what to do if you get the Insert CD 1 while trying to install.
Thank you, Julie

I used an external CD drive that shows up as F: and got the game to install. Then I edited the game.ini file and changed it to CDDrives=M on all three. The game played from M until the little Sister screams and is found bitten by a bat in the closet then the game then asks for a switch from Disc 3 to disc 2. When I eject the Cd to change I get a box that says it requires all my resources and to hit enter to exit, all you can do is hit enter and it is back to the desktop.

I'm not sure what that "requires all my resources" message is about.

Can you play the game from that external CD drive?

It says Vampire Diaries requires all the systems resources and you will not be able to use a browser or word program, etc. so the game is shutting down you can hit s to save or x to exit.
I have not tried it from the external drive yet. I loaded it up on an older slower computer the graphics aren't as good, but it is playing for now. Thank you so much for your help.

I don't know what's going on with that game. But at least you have the older computer to play it on.

I finished it on the older computer. I wish I could have figured it out on the other computer. I like solving the problems if I can, but I was glad I had the other to actually play it on. Thank you Jenny for all your help. I am glad you are here and know so much about computers.

I'm glad you were able to finish it on your older computer. I'm sorry I couldn't help you play it on your newer one.