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I recently installed Halo: Combat Evolved and patched it to version 1.09. When I run it, it plays the logo videos fine but then when it gets to the menu, it plays only the music on a black screen. Is there a compatibility problem with my system?
My specs:
Try installing it in the default directory (don't pick somewhere else). I tried every tweak I could find on the net, and nothing was working. Then I decided to go with the default directory (C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Halo) and voila, none of the other stuff (compatibility, etc.) was necessary -- it worked fine.
I guess the simple thing to check would be to make sure your graphics drivers are up to date, but assuming that doesn't help, There are two solutions I can think of that might work
Running the game in compatibility mode
.exe file in the install location.You can also try Run the Program as an Administrator as well.
Killing explorer before running the game
The other thing I sometimes find when running these old games in Windows 7/8, is that the taskbar seems to stuff them up somehow. You can also try killing explorer.exe before starting the game.
I usually wrap the game's executable in a batch file that kills explorer, starts the game, and waits for it to finish, before starting explorer again. Here are the commands. Put these in a .bat file in the Halo install directory, and run this to launch the game:
@echo off
taskkill /f /IM explorer.exe
start /WAIT <halo executable name>.exe
start explorer.exe
start /WAIT <halo executable name>.exe you can also do start /WAIT %1, which will allow you to drag & drop any executable onto the batch file. That way, you don't have to make a copy for each and every .exe
