psclient and pssetup both fail to work properly

[Jadah]

everytime i open the client it is a black screen with the orange cursor and a small white veritical line. if i type, more lines appear to the right, and if i press backspace, then more lines appear through the ones that went right and go past the first vertical line. when i open setup, it starts loading and there are a few boxes where it looks like options would be, but its blank. if i click one of those boxes, there is ANOTHER vertical white line. it is the size of a basic l. if i try closing the setup window, it says it is unresponsive. id love to post my specs, but i dont exactly know how to get them. any help would be appreciated

[LigH]

Welcome to the PlaneShift forums.

Everyone who owns a computer should know what it contains... and if it meets the minimum requirements of the software which shall work on it.

Minimum requirements for PlaneShift are:
- a supported operating system
- a powerful CPU (a clock frequency in "GHz" is mandatory, a "dual core" is useful)
- a powerful GPU (3D graphics card - more or less only Nvidia GeForce or ATI Radeon), preferably a real separate graphic card - not just an onboard wanna-be, or even worse, a mobile solution in a laptop...
- full-featured (ICD) OpenGL graphic drivers; in case of Windows XP: Not just those shipped with the install CD from Microsoft, but specifically from the card manufacturer!

Let's try to approach it step by step: Which operating system do you have? Each OS has differnt tools to reveal your hardware details.

- Windows (XP or Vista, 32 bit [usual] or 64 bit [sounds like I am a nerd when I use it] - or even Windows 7 beta?)
- Linux (well, Linux users in general shall also know their Distro, and their hardware...)
- Apple Macintosh, MacOS X (like which jungle cat is it named?)

[Jadah]

here is a screen shot of some if my information.

[Jadah]

also, here is a screenie of  what my setup window looks like. notice the vertical white lines in the boxes. those dont appear until after i click in one of the boxes

[neko kyouran]

it is definitely something wrong with your current video card drivers not supporting openGL.  If you can look up what video card you have in your system we can direct you to the appropriate drivers to install and that typically fixes the issues.

[LigH]

- Windows XP Home SP3: OK
- Athlon XP 3000+: OK
- 448 MB RAM: quite little, upgrade highly recommendable
- eMachines: sounds like "cheaper than recommendable to play 3D games".

Press Windows+E to call the Windows Explorer. Go to the "Control Panel". Enter the "Administrative Tools". Open the "Computer Management". Access the "Device Manager". Look in the device tree for the "Graphic card" branch. Report the name you can find here. Open the driver properties by right-clicking on the graphic-card driver. Report more details you can find there.

But I already suspect that it will be a "shared memory" low-performance on-board GPU. One that is probably not supported by PlaneShift. 448 MB RAM are too strange, the graphic chip will surely take away 128 MB of the available RAM. Or someone put in a horrible mix of memory chips.

[Jadah]

here are screen shots of my device manager and its contents

[LigH]

GeForce4 MX: Rather weak, but technically OK for the current game version. (Not anymore for the next update, though...)

Now the big question: Is there current and complete OpenGL support? Are those GPU drivers the original ones from the Windows XP installation, or was there ever any Nvidia driver installed?

You may try to install the latest drivers from http://www.nvidia.com ... but this PC you own is not really a "gaming PC" anyway.

[Jadah]

well i think im just gonna wait a few weeks and get a new more powerful computer. i can play certain games like everquest and counterstrike but this isnt the first game ive had problems with. i think its exactly because of what you said. its not a gaming computer
thank you for your help though! maybe ill see you guys in-game someday

[LigH]

I hope so as well. People with enough Will and Dexterity to handle hardware issues are just perfect for a roleplaying game ...