Bioshock demo crashes on my 8800 ultra & Vista

I am having the same issue with the demo and the non-beta nvidia drivers on my 8800GTX. The game won't even start. I see the bio shock splash screen then the monitor goes dark like the game is about to load, then nothing happens...

to julest and rayzor , what drivers are u using ? and also vista 64 or 32 ?

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=41827

crap, that article doesnt help because I have that version of the driver. Vista just stinks, that is the problem.

I am using the fileplanet version of the bioshock and I haven't tried my full steam version yet since we still have a few hours for activation.

If I go to play the full version and it does this, I will not furious! What does the beta driver give? If it is just performance then I will uninstall and go back to the latest non beta because I can't go without play all night tonight.

Have you guys gotten that patch that anandtech reviewed about a week ago? It is a patch to chill the memory usage by windows when using high end cards. I can't remember all the tech specs buy you should all install that. You all have a big card with lots of memory and it really depends on the rest of your system. Microsoft has hidden this patch and is not making it easy to get. Go check anandtech.com and find the patch. It is something in there about a hotfix. It was call hotfix ........ whatever those numbers are and I just woke up and am lazy so you need to go find it yourselves but that seems to be the problem. You 2 gigers on vista 32 with a GTX definitly will run into problems without this patch. Probably is everyone's problem here because usuage was getting worse as time went on; I'm not as sure about you people who crash right away. Don't know enough about your configs.


In my ramblings I forgot to mention it was something microsuck released a few weeks ago or a week ago: something like that. Anyhow, find out that patch. Its not your graphics driver either. It is something to do with vista's memory usage, like your system mem. I don't want to give specs on it cause I don't remember at all but it sounds like the exact same problem. Good luck guys

I have both of those patches and I still get this crap. Just a black screen when I try to run it and I have to press the power button on my computer, at which point windows shuts down properly like nothing is wrong.

Also my gts only has 320MB of VRAM, so memory usage is likely not the culprit. Thanks for the suggestion though.

Full specs:
Athlon 64 X2 3800+ @2.5GHz
2GB DDR-400 @208MHz 2.5-3-3-7-T2
eVGA 8800gts 320MB @ 600/900
Cheapo sound card
120GB Western Digital HDD
BenQ DVD burner
Memorex CD burner
XCLIO Goodpower 500W
Vista x86

Well mine plays but then goes back to the desktop and says video driver not responding and the game is still running with the sound but no video of the game just the desktop which still responds. I can actually end the task and run again

That one and another one that helps with memory usage. I got them both before they were made publicly available, maybe there's a newer version out now?

Ok, I applied all patches and hopefully when I get home from work, all will work well. Thanks for the information everyone.

So I applied the permerance patch, the two hotfixes that require support and I have the latest nvidia drivers. I hope that is all I need.

I just build this

Quad 2.6ghz
MSI 8800 Ultra OC
4GB Dominator Mem
150GB Raptors
Dell Ultrasharp 24" 16:10 Display

I am ready to play

nvidia drivers and vista were having issues for a while now. I think some people have been able to run the game using DX9, but it's a shot in the dark at this point.

Demo surprisingly working fine for me at max settings and I am using a Athlon 64 x2 and a 8800 320MB GC.

I am shocked to say the least -- maybe the 8800 series is better than we have given it credit for.

The Upright'stand corrected'man!

chances are its those few patches and hotfixes that are not apart of windows updates.

What resolution are you using?

1280 x 1024 --

Alright guys I figured it out. You have to update directx. I feel stupid now.
August update

Seems like there isn't one solution. I have the new beta drivers, dx10 and everything runs great.
EDIT: Full game that is

I can also confirm the DX update. Mine wouldn't even launch at all until I updated DX. Simple fix.

Well I thought mine was good but it still crashes from time to time, we need to make Nvidia aware so they fix this. I been playing for about 6 hours and had to reboot the computer abouit 6 times. I can go an hour before it crashes but other then that it looks and runs great. I love this game!

I refuse to be a beta tester for MS, Nvidia, unless they pay me for my time. Good luck to you guys.

Who is complaining??? I just stated that I won't beta test for MS or Nvidia. Its that hard to understand? So If I don't make myself part of the problem then I'm complaning? There just isn't any logic in that.

I have a 8800GTX / Vista, and am using the beta drivers that the demo recommended I use. The game runs smoothly at 1920x1080 on maximum settings.

Hey! Wait just a minute!!! I thought Vista was supposed to enhance the gaming experience!?!

Honestly, Vista isn't taking gaming performance away from your system anymore, since Forceware 158.22 I think performance has been on par with XP SP2, the only difference is that you need 2GB of ram to run smoothly. (Which is something gamers aren't really concerned, because any serious gamer probably has 2-4GB of ram now)

I can honestly see DX10 doing some great things, but it will take also a good group of devs that actually put work into it (Like Bioshock), instead of doing a half-assed job like we've seen from the DX10 patches on most games.

Installing the latest dx update solved my problem of the game crashing on startup. Playing with 8800GTX and 1680x1050 and it looks and plays AWESOME! This is an incredibly detailed game. If this game is any indicator of the performance we'll get out of the next few "true" dx10 games then I am very happy with my 8800GTX for now! Can't wait to get my hands on Crysis in a couple months...