Blackouts under XP, have I found a solution?

C

Cancerous1

First time out of the vault
I was looking for an easy way to run my old games windowed, FO1 specifically, and in the spirit of readying myself to play FO2 I opted not to install the dos version to use dosbox. D3Dwindower scared the crap out of me I didnt want to use some program I couldnt even read what its options were i was clicking, and I'm too lazy to look for my 98 disk to use vm ware.

Onto my point, i found an old microsoft app called Dxwindow. Killed two birds with on e stone apparently, I get a window, after reseting my desktop res back to what it was after running fallout, and I get NO blackouts... Cool eh?

correction: not a microsoft app, although i had found it on one of their pages, apparently an old workaround for them.. get it here: http://www.nynaeve.net/?p=52
 
It seems like you have!!!

I've tried your method with Fallout 1 (well, after having decrypted your rather free style of writing ;) ) and it works!!!

My screen was blacking out after a short time except the moving parts on it, like cursor, enemies etc. I did not try many different ways, only patching and playing around with the compatibility modes, all of them didnt work.

I'm gonna write the method down as i used it, since i needed some time figuring out your post ;)

1. Install DxWindow from the OP's link.
2. Run DxWindow and choose the first entry <Generic>. Press "Run...".
3. Choose Falloutw.exe from your Fallout one install directory.
4. At this point my screen flickers, returning me back to desktop. Nothing seemed to have happened. But when i open falloutw.exe in win98 compatibility mode (didnt try any other) from the explorer...

5. VIOLA! No more Blackouts.

Just wanted to tell you all that it worked for me. I didn't test if the blackouts were returning, but still this seems to be a MUCH better alternative to the "disable gfx card" method suggested in the troubleshooting sticky...

greets Dolator

EDIT:I just turned off compatibility mode completely, giving me an out of disk space error. When i turned win98 mode back on it worked again, so it seems like the compatibility mode is also important.
 
Feel free to post informatively about this in the troubleshooting thread when you think you have the details worked out.

Edit: Oops, you had. Add the procedure itself, perhaps?
 
Re: It seems like you have!!!

DolAtoR said:
I'm gonna write the method down as i used it, since i needed some time figuring out your post ;)

1. Install DxWindow from the OP's link.
2. Run DxWindow and choose the first entry <Generic>. Press "Run...".
3. Choose Falloutw.exe from your Fallout one install directory.
4. At this point my screen flickers, returning me back to desktop. Nothing seemed to have happened. But when i open falloutw.exe in win98 compatibility mode (didnt try any other) from the explorer...

5. VIOLA! No more Blackouts.
Click to expand...

I did this, but once I finished step 3, instead of the screen simply flickering, the game opened in a small window and the intro didn't work. I couldn't resize the window so I exited the screen and then entered the game in win98 comp. mode and the thing blacked out right at the main screen!

This may have something to do with the fact that I'm using Vista (Home Premium 32bit) instead of xp though.
 
running with Vista Ultimate. Fallout1 runs fine (opening videos are black) with dXwnd but is quite small. If i specify a larger resolution (say 1280x960), a black window that size is created, but fallout only occupies the top left corner of it. It doesnt stretch despite using the stretch option in the config.
Anyone got it stretching under Vista, or am i expecting too much ?

tar

Edit: disregard my last. I thought re-configuring existing fallout/dxwnd shortcut would save changes to the existing fallout/dxwnd shortcut...but it doesnt. Creating new shortcut from dxwnd from scratch with desired settings now gets fallout1 working in 1280x960.
 
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