Kiwegapa

It's been mentioned by some folks, but I haven't heard of any fix for it yet. I'll add it to my list of bugs, though.

Well, here's the guide by Dan Simpson that got me through Nar Shaddaa and other parts of the game: http://db.gamefaqs.com/console/xbox/file/s..._kotor_ii_a.txt Maybe it will show you something you missed. I know there ARE bugs on Nar Shaddaa. I killed someone and they stayed alive. And some of the conversations got a little weird. But it is playable. I hope you're able to get through it. If you can't find a way around Nar Shaddaa, why not fly to another planet and play there for a little while you wait for the patch. Good luck.

I have an ATI X800 XT and it's a wonderful card. I can play almost any game in 1600x1200 if I choose. I'm not biased towards aTI or nidia however. In the current generation of cards, both ATI's X800 series and nVidia's 6x00 series are very good. Both are well supported and have good drivers. ATI runs slightly better in DirectX games, nVidia runs slightly better in OpenGL games. KOTOR 1 and 2 use OpenGL graphics. nVidia does have a slight advantage in 3D rendering programs such as 3D Studio Max, DAZ Studio, Lightwave, etc. They like nVidia better. If I were picking right now I'd say a nVidia 6600 card would be a good price/performance balance, but I have heard of a lot of problems with 6600 cards because manufacturers took shortcuts. A 6800 or X800/X850 will be MORE performance than you need, possibly more cost, too. A nVidia 5900 or ATI 9800 are last-generation top of the line cards and are still excellent. I can recommend both heartily, especially considering their low price now that newer cards are out.

Well David, I see you're using Intel onboard graphics, and I think onboard sound. Is this a laptop? Intel graphics are officially unsupported for KOTOR 2 and have caused many problems for people in modern games. If you're using a desktop system, I suggest purchasing an ATI or nVidia graphics card. Your sound might sound good, but if you disable it and the game works, then we know KOTOR 2 is having a problem with it. We could then concentrate on that issue. As long as the sound chipset is DirectX 9 compatible, you should be fine, though. I also see you seem to have 256Mb of memory. That's a problem. 256Mb is the bare minimum needed for the game, and you're sharing that memory with Windows and any other programs you have in the background. Upgrading to 512Mb or 1024Mb would be a HUGE improvement for your system. You said that disabling options didn't help..that's about all I can suggest other than upgrading your system. You would reduce memory usage and possibly improve the stability of the game by lowering texture quality, turning off frame buffer, adding Disable Vertex Buffers=1 under [Graphics Options] and in general trying as minimal a config as you can.

FreakManUltra, there is a much better fix for this, one that has been posted many times. Taken from my KOTOR 2 Issues Guide: On Dantooine or in smoky areas, the game can slow to a crawl. This can be fixed by adding the line Disable Vertex Buffer Objects=1 Under the [Graphics Options] section in the swkotor2.ini file. This restores performance to normal levels and once again makes Dantooine playable.

I can't think of anything else. Hopefully we will have a patch for the game in a few days. Good luck!

There's still more to do. Help all the refugees in the refugee sector. Help all the people in the flophouse. Beat everyone at Pazaak. Eventually you'll need to go see about that landing pad you 'borrowed'. When you have done enough quests, you'll find out. Just keep talking to people.

Printscreen key. it saves a (rather large) .TGA file in your game directory. This is a picture file, if you can read it. If you cannot read .TGA files then hit printscreen or shift-printscreen in-game, quit, then open your paint program of choice and paste by hitting ctrl-V. Save as the file type of your choice, probably .JPG.

Make sure you talk to all the refugees with names in the refugee sector. Explore the Exchange base. Win the Pazaak championship. Help the Rodian merchant. Help all the people in the flophouse by the docks. Some will need to wait to finish their quest until the end of Nar Shaddaa. When you've done enough things, it'll click. You can also talk to Vogga the Hutt, but I recommend you leave that towards the end.

I actually recommend a Radeon 9600-based card instead, if you're looking for a cost-effective ATI card. Thay're almost the same, but the 9600 based cards are slightly faster. And both are older cards so you should be able to get them both for near the same price.

CD recording programs can apparently conflict with KOTOR 2 because of the copy protection. Check c:\Windows\System32\ for wnaspi32.dll. If it exists, you may need to uninstall your CD backup or recording program.

Could be a bad install of your video drivers. If you do as I said above and it still won't work right, do it again, but this time install the drivers that were working for your comp before. A newer card would be a good idea if you can spare the money though.

Ahh..a GeForce 4 MX is a pretty low-end card. nVidia did this sort of sneaky thing when they came out with the GeForce 4. The Ti cards were all brand new technology and pretty powerful for the time. The MX cards were basically redesigned Geforce 2 cards. That might be the cause of your crashes. I'm not sure a Geforce 4 MX supports OpenGL 1.3 in hardware. Since you say your computer keeps crashing, try going to http://www.drivercleaner.net and download Driver Cleaner. Download the latest video drivers. Uninstall your current video drivers. Reboot into Safe Mode by hitting F8 while your computer starts and then picking Safe Mode in the menu. Run Driver Cleaner and get rid of your nVidia drivers remaining files. Use Driver Cleaner's Cab Cleaner too. Then make sure any files you KNOW are related to the old video drivers are deleted. Reboot back into normal Windows. Finally, install the new video drivers.

Your computer setup, meaning what the parts are. What video card, what sound card, whether you have the latest drivers. Things like that. If you run the swconfig program that is in your SWKotor2 directory, you can click 'Scan Hardware' and then it will detect what your hardware setup is. Then click 'Details'. Then click 'Save Report'. It will create a file called swinfo.txt. That swinfo.txt will tell me most of what I need to know.

BTW: What about the glow of the lightsabers??? They do look just like the ones in Kotor1, or did I miss something? Well, that's what is driving me crazy. I don't have two machines to test KOTOR on side-by-side, and I haven't been able to get screenshots of the glow enabled and disabled. But a very large number of people report that Catalyst 4.12, 5.1, and 5.2 do not render the lightsaber glow. If I understand what they mean from text description alone, not only is the lightsaber blade bright, but it casts a tint upon any nearby surfaces and has a bit of colored haze in the air near the blade. *shrugs* About five people promised me they'd 'send both screenshots as soon as I get home from work', but haven't.

Hmm..I don't really see anything out-of-line with your setup except that you seem to be using the motherboard's onboard sound. I see you're forcing software sound, but that could be the root of your trouble. How does the game work if you disable sound entirely? Also, do you have any CD recording or backup programs installed?

Sorry. I'd be happy to help you if you could post more info. What is your computer setup? What is the contents of your swkotor2.ini? Have you tried any common fixes already?

I'm running the 5.2 Catalyst drivers on an X800 XT card with no issues aside from the lack of lightsaber glows and skips around the beginning and end of movies. I'd say the Cat 5.2 set is really pretty good. And ATI have actually improved performance with OpenGL in every driver release for the last six months. The reason why Cat 4.11 is recommended so much is for three reasons: It was the last driver to have fixes designed for KOTOR 1 incorporated into it, and is officially recommended because of the testing done on those fixes. It was the last driver to have properly working lightsaber glows. Many people switch to the 4.11s just for this. And some people who have odd crashes seem to have resolved them by returning to the 4.11 set. However, I tend to believe that there's something else going on if people with near-identical configs can have different experiences with the same driver. A CLEAN 5.2 install should work just fine. If it doesn't for you, then I'm not sure why. A 'clean' install is one where you completely uninstall the current driver and control panel, reboot to safe mode, clean out all old files and DLLs with Driver Cleaner or other handy util, reboot back into regular Windows, and install the new driver and control panel. If your system has been around a while, I also recommend deleting any 'ATI Technologies' registry keys while uninstalling. I've done so and the 5.2 set is working very well indeed. Still want my lightsaber glowies, though.

To get the thread back on track a bit.. sisco, have you got any CD burning software installed? wnaspi32.dll has been known to cause conflicts in some systems. It would be present in the Windows/System32 directory if it's there at all. Your config looks really good. I can't think of any reaosn why sound or video would be leading to your crashes. The patch is in the works, and I urge you to hang on til then. I'm sorry there isn't much more I can suggest. Perhaps double check your computer's temperatures and power supply voltages, if you are able to do so. Good luck, and have faith. KOTOR 2 really does have some excellent touches to it, and the designers did a good job. Once it's able to run, I think you'll enjoy KOTOR 2 as much as the first game.

Well, that's mostly true. You CAN download drivers with OpenGL support for any version they're programmed for, BUT the functions in the software are sent through the graphics card's chips and those chips must have the proper functions built in and optimized. Otherwise you might as well get rid of the graphics card and try to do it all in software at 1 frame per second. The weak link is really KOTOR 2. It requires OpenGL 1.4 on ATI hardware, which means that you must have both a recent card (Within the last 3 years should do, I think) and that you must have a recent driver to unlock the capabilities of the card. If you had a recent card but an old driver, the OpenGL calls would fail because the game wouldn't be able to talk to the card. The game would either not run or would run poorly because it can only send some calls to the card. But everything the card gets in a format it recognizes, it can respond to. If you had an old card but a new driver, the OpenGL calls make it from the game to the card and then the card has no idea what to do with them. It most likely ignores the calls it does not recognize, returning only part of the information the game wanted. This also means the game will run poorly, if at all. I hope this clears things up a bit without being too simple or too complex.

Organized differently, but the fix SHOULD be the same on both 9x/ME and 2K/XP. It's just different in where the necessary files are located and where they go. Windows 98 and ME use the Windows/System directory for important DLLs. Windows 2000 and XP use the Windows/System32 directory. If you want a DLL to apply to every program you run, it goes there. For the ATI drivers, they differ for each release, so I can't say exactly what the directory names are. But the default extract location is C:\ATI\SUPPORT and under that will be the driver dir itself, a long number. Under that will be either a 2KXP_INF folder or (if I remember right) a 9X_INF folder. Under that is a single folder with a short number that varies with every driver release. But inside there are the compressed DLL files including atioglxx.dl_ Kind of long-winded, I know..but I hope that's helpful.

Not really..try updating graphics drivers, make sure that until the patch comes out that you are not spending more than 20-30 minutes in one area. The game is known to crash if you spend too long without loading a new area. I haven't heard of the crashes corrupting save files before, though. Save frequently. Quick Save (F4 key) is your friend.

Thank you. This helps me to feel a bit better. I'll add the quote to my KOTOR 2 Issues Guide.

I hate to say it, but an Intel graphics chipset won't do for KOTOR 2 or several other modern games. I really recommend you purchase an ATI or nVidia graphics card. Both are very good, although nVidia works best with KOTOR 2. Intel graphics are intended for websurfing and office work. They are NOT good 3D chipsets and do NOT handle games well. Sorry. The bonus is that if you should have the ability to add a video card to your computer, pretty much ANY new video card will increase your performance dramatically.

One at a time, try setting Frame Buffer to 0 (disabled), try setting Force Software to 1 (disables hardware acceleration), try setting Disable Sound to 1 (disables sound completely). Regardless of the above helping or not, add Disable Vertex Buffer Objects=1 under [Graphics Options]. You can get a swinfo.txt file by running the swconfig program in your SWKotor2 directory and clicking Scan Hardware. It will then give you the option to save the results as a text file.