In the following you will find information which may help you to solve most problems related to your hardware, especially graphics and sound. If the following proposed solutions do not resolve the problems please refer to the Customer Service chapter for ways of contacting us.
Please take the time to check whether your system fulfills the requirements. You can find the minimum requirements in the System Requirements chapter.
It may occur that other programs are using the system resources which the game requires in order to run properly. It is not always obvious which programs are active and many of them are started automatically when the system boots up. Such programs, which are constantly active on your system, are also known as “background applications”. In some cases they may be the reason for your program to lag or crash. Therefore we recommend you close those background applications before starting the game.
Anti-virus programs can also influence the performance in a negative way. In case the game does not run smoothly or if it is even unplayably slow you should shut down your anti-virus program and restart the game.
Some programs are not closed properly after shutting them down and they occupy the memory and/or use nearly all of your system resources. You can check this by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del on your desktop, which opens the Windows Task Manager. Select the “Processes” tab and sort the list of processes by CPU usage. The list will normally be arranged in a descending order when you double-click on “CPU Usage”. Everything should be normal if the System Idle Process is on top. If a different program is using most of the resources click on the name and terminate it by clicking on “End Process”.
On systems which automatically switch to “Sleep” or “Suspend” modes (such as laptops or other mobile systems) the game can lose its control over the screen and the keyboard and this may lead to an unstable PC environment. We strongly recommend that you switch off that function before starting the game.
In case there should be any difficulties with the virtual memory while playing the game you could try to increase the size of the swap file on your hard disk. You will find information about how to change the virtual memory settings on the Microsoft Windows Help pages.
This game was optimized for DirectX 9.0c. DirectX 9.0 compatible graphics and sound drivers are required for running this game. DirectX 9 is not included in the contents of this game. Please also keep in mind that the graphics and sound drivers are not updated when installing the game.
If you have technical problems with the graphics please check first if you have installed an up-to-date driver version and if DirectX 9 has been installed. In the following you will find a list of links to the most important graphics card and chipset manufacturers:
Microsoft DirectX: www.microsoft.com/directx
Graphics card manufacturers
Asus:
www.asus.com
ATI: www.ati.com
Creative Labs: www.europe.creative.com
Guillemot: www.guillemot.com
Hercules: www.hercules.com
Graphics chipset manufacturers
Nvidia: www.nvidia.com
ATI: www.ati.com
Power VR: www.powervr.com
Matrox: www.matrox.com
S3: www.s3graphics.com
Intel: www.intel.com
SIS: www.sis.com
Note: Should installing the latest DirectX version and graphics drivers not
solve the problem, you might still try to switch to the OpenGL graphics
driver using the game's configuration utility (see “Graphics” tab). Although
this mode is officially not supported by us, it may help to get rid of particular
rendering issues that you experience in DirectX mode.
If you have sound problems please check first if other applications which use your sound card are active. In case you are still not hearing any sound make sure that the OpenAL driver has been installed. You can find a recent version of the OpenAL driver at www.openal.org.
Are you still experiencing problems with clipped or stuttering sound or are there interruptions in the sound playback? Then you should try downloading the most recent drivers for your sound card.
Sound card manufacturers
Creative Labs: www.europe.creative.com
C-Media: www.cmedia.com.tw
Diamond: www.diamondmm.com
ESS: www.esstech.com
Terratec: www.terratec.de
Videologic: www.videologic.com
Yamaha: www.yamaha.com
Glow can only detect a gamepad which has already been detected by Windows. When several gamepads are connected the game only accepts the pad which has been identified as gamepad number 1 by Windows. If you have several pads connected and the desired pad does not work you will have to disconnect the other pads and restart Glow.
If only one gamepad is connected and it is not working you need to check if your gamepad has been detected in Windows by going to Start/Control Panel/Printers and Other Hardware/Game Controllers. If it has not been detected you will need to reconfigure your gamepad with the manufacturer’s drivers. When using a USB pad it often helps to quickly disconnect the pad and then reconnect it again.
If you are using a pad with radio technology you will also need to check if the communication between pad and receiver is working properly. Please check the gamepad’s batteries if the communication is not working and repeated activation did not help.
Moreover, please make sure that you have installed a recent version of DirectX. It should be version 9.0c or higher.
Gamepad manufacturers
Gravis: www.gravis.de
Logitech: www.logitech.com
Microsoft: www.microsoft.com
We feel obliged to provide every possible support to customers who have bought one of our games. Therefore it is possible that a program patch for this game will be released in order to correct any errors in the game. As a Black Chronos customer you will be informed by e-mail about patches, upgrades and improvements.