A video problem

Archived from groups: alt.games.diablo2 (More info?)

The day before yesterday, I was at my nephew's birthday party.

But a lot of things went wrong. He has an old machine, an Athlon A, 800
MHz, on a Gigabyte mainboard with AMD ironthingie chipset. Video card
is a MX400, DirectX is 9.0c.

He had been playing D2 with me whenever he visited me (I have a small
network at home, and have to sit him while he runs into the monsters
like a banzai barb), and of course wanted me to give it to him as a
birthday present.

I had obtained a full set with expansion, extra for him (I must add,
though, that the Classic portion was from a game magazine cover, and
only the expansion was from a shop), installed it, and no video card is
found. After checking the video drivers and running the DirectX test, I
couldn't find anything wrong.

Okay, maybe he needs newer drivers. I decide to meet the rest of the
family, and a few moments later, he comes after me. "There is an
error." "Which error," I ask. "Dunno. It is in this message box."

I walk back to his computer and see:

INCOMPATIBLE VERSION OF RPC STUB (he tried to install Civ3)

Dang. I had told him last year, that he shouldn't install so much,
after I had fixed exactly this error, before. But I cannot remember for
the heck of it, which dll it is, that has to be restored to the correct
version.

Ok, my house is half an hour away (by foot), so let's make a hike. I
run my DSL connection, find that the problem is with the oleaut32.dll,
and tell him, he should still have the Windows installation cd, as we
gave it to him with said pc. Also, I download a newer version of the
nvidia driver.

Back in his room, I cannot find this Win98 install cd. He says, he
never owned one. I tell him not to tell me stories, and find a Win98SE
cd (from a remote uncle), and beneath that one - the mainboard driver
cd. The rest of all the stuff that came with the machine has vanished
into the void, probably while they moved this february.

I search his computer, find *several* oleaut32, and the one in Windows
\system has been copied 31st of July. "No, I didn't install anything on
my computer this day; there was nothing."

I search for files changed on July 31st, and guess what? At least three
games were installed on that day. He has a problem with the calculation
of dates, it appears.

I search the hard disk for all instances of oleaut32, and find five,
two of them (ver 2.40) of a different size than the installed one (ver
3.50), and replace the current one with the older one, which is sitting
in a *games* directory. Go figure.

Finally, he can install his other present, Civilization III, and
happily starts playing. But Diablo2 won't find a video card. I
installed the most recent driver of the 4.x series, but still no go.
There is no 5.x version on the nvidia homepage, and the 6.x series is
probably too new for this computer.

How do I fix it? Uninstall and reinstall? Try installing my own regular
Diablo with his ID keys? Does the glide wrapper of Sven Labusch work
(probably not, on this slow machine) even when the directx is broken?


Gabriele Neukam

Gabriele.Spamfighter.Neukam@t-online.de


--
Ah, Information. A property, too valuable these days, to give it away,
just so, at no cost.

Archived from groups: alt.games.diablo2 (More info?)

Gabriele Neukam wrote:
> I had obtained a full set with expansion, extra for him (I must add,
> though, that the Classic portion was from a game magazine cover, and
> only the expansion was from a shop), installed it, and no video card
> is found. After checking the video drivers and running the DirectX
> test, I couldn't find anything wrong.
>
> Okay, maybe he needs newer drivers. I decide to meet the rest of the
> family, and a few moments later, he comes after me. "There is an
> error." "Which error," I ask. "Dunno. It is in this message box."
>
> I walk back to his computer and see:
>
> INCOMPATIBLE VERSION OF RPC STUB (he tried to install Civ3)

I must admit I didn't read through all the rest, but is it the PC GAMES
version? If yes, could the information in this thread be helpful to you?
http://forum2.ingame.de/diablo2/sh [...] did=886988