Huge Dark Messiah Issues (Vista)

[maxiedaniels]

I recently made the switch to Vista, because I was under the assumption that drivers supporting the 7950gx2 were out. They seem to be working pretty well for other games, but I'm having huge problems with Dark Messiah. I get crashes to the desktop constantly. First, I get strange stuttering, then the game completely quits out. The error message isn't always the same, but most of the time its a Runtime Error, or mm.exe unexpectedly quit.

I've tried switching drivers using driver cleaner, I've gone from 158.22, and now I'm using 160.03.

 

[Silus]

I recently made the switch to Vista, because I was under the assumption that drivers supporting the 7950gx2 were out. They seem to be working pretty well for other games, but I'm having huge problems with Dark Messiah. I get crashes to the desktop constantly. First, I get strange stuttering, then the game completely quits out. The error message isn't always the same, but most of the time its a Runtime Error, or mm.exe unexpectedly quit.

I've tried switching drivers using driver cleaner, I've gone from 158.22, and now I'm using 160.03.

Well, you're running it in Vista, which I never have, but I had the same problems in XP. The game is just a buggy POS. I never bought a game before, that crashed so much. It even crashes when loading the main menu. Most of the times I had to reboot the computer, after the crash.
I had to wait for the second patch, for it to be just barely playable. Needless to say, I never finished it, because I just lost interest.

Anyway, all this to say that the graphics drivers are most likely not the problem, since the game itself is a 8 GB bug.
I don't know if you have, but at least install the second patch. The game didn't crash as much with it in XP. If you did install the patches, then you're yet another victim of this very poorly coded game.

 

[HaMMerHeD]

I am having similar issues with Dark Messiah in Vista. I had no problems running it on XP (unlike many people), but the booger crashes to the desktop in Vista somewhat frequently.

I haven't found any workarounds yet.

 

[maxiedaniels]

Dammit. Well it works perfectly in XP for me, thank god I didn't kill my XP partition yet.
I've already beaten the game once, but I find the sword fighting to be so fun. I'll beat it one more time and move on.

Well.. should I get an 8800gts for Vista's sake then?

 

[Scyles]

I first installed on XP and got constant crashes. Later, I reformatted my computer and the game has never crashed on me since.

 

[Roufuss]

I installed it to Vista, and have had only one crash in the 4 hours I've played it so far.

I don't think it's an issue related to Vista, as others have said the game was extremely buggy when it was released - just make sure you're patched to 1.02, and pray for the best.

It's a pretty good game, but yea, I quicksave like crazy in case it decides to crash.

No other problems, though.

 

[Technoob]

I am having similar issues with Dark Messiah in Vista. I had no problems running it on XP (unlike many people), but the booger crashes to the desktop in Vista somewhat frequently.

I haven't found any workarounds yet.

I too have had issues. I found a fix that works for my problem.

I was having constant MM.exe errors and crashes to desktop, mostly after the opening cinematic.

The fix that worked for me was as follows:

find the file binkw32.dll in your
C:\Program Files\Dark Messiah of Might and Magic\mm\bin
folder, and move (or copy and paste) it into the main directory:
C:\Program Files\Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.
(If you can't find it, you can also copy it from your own DVD: DMOMMGC\Disk1\Support\arch\bin\binkw32.dll, or download and unzip binkw32.zip, it's the same file.)
Also, remove the following key from Registry.
Click Start > Run... type in:
regedit
click OK.
Navigate to the key
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Valve\Source\mm]
which you see in the picture below, and highlight it.
Delete the key.


Deleting that key each time I restart the game makes it work. Once I exit out and play again, the key gets put back in the registry, and if I load the game it crashes once again.

It sucks deleting the key before each time I play, but I'm enjoying the game so it's worth it.

 

[Frosteh]

I hear it's a very buggy game, fortunately my play through with my 7950GX2 in XP was fine, the same in Vista, with my new 8800GTX I had issues with getting into the game after changing the video settings, it would crash just after the intro video.

The steam forums lists a switch "-dxlevel 90" as helping, as this forces all DirectX 9 defaults every time you start the game, after using that I loaded it again fine, changed the setting again and it's been fine ever since.

It's a crap shoot I'm afraid, brilliant game but extremely inconsistent behaviour across PC's