Empire: Total War

jim0711 posted...
What happens is that when I start the game I reach the loading screen and then it crashes. I can here audio in the background (the intro track and menu music) but it stays on a flickering loading screen image and does not display the menu or the intro cutscene at all.Very irritating, does anyone else have the same problem or have a solution at all.One thing I heard was that people were having problems with the audio. If you had RealTek drivers or something but this is not the issue for me and something else is going on.

This EXACT thing is happening to me! It's not the audio drivers, I'm using my gpu's audio device, not Real Tek. ETW was working fine until I upgraded to a Nvidia GTX 470, and Geek Squad updated my Vista to SP2. Now I have the aforementioned problem, just a flickering load screen with audio. I tried removing all files of ETW and reinstalling everything twice. I even removed steam and reinstalled steam. The problem persists. I've checked probably a dozen message boards online and this is the first time I've seen my problem posted. Steam basically tells you to talk to Sega, Sega tells you to go figure it out for yourself. No online support to help you, and Sega's hotline # is worthless for support. (You can guess what I'm thinking Sega can go do to itself) : )

I want to say it's a gpu compatibility issue but I've seen a few message boards where players who have my same graphics card are running it just fine. Thanks Jim, hopefully we can get this fixed together! SOMEONE PLEASE HELP!

All drivers are updated, steam is updated, ETW is updated.

I tried the "delete scripts" option, that didn't work either. I have exhausted all my ideas and I am really missing me some Empire TW right now. =(

Here are my specs: (and don't tell me it's a 32 bit issue b/c ETW was running just fine before I upgraded my gpu.)
NZXT Apollo
OS: Windows Vista 32bit Service Pack 2
Processor: Intel Core2 6420 @ 2.13GHz / 2.13 GHz
Memory/RAM: 2.0 GB
GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 470 2GB ram

PS, it's a little disheartening when Jim's post has been on here for almost a week and I'm the first one to comment on it.

jim0711 posted...
Used to have a gtx 295 and then upgraded to a 480. Had the demo for Empire Total War back when I had the 295 in my pc and it worked fine then. I have only just recently bought Empire though (played Shogun 2 and LOVED it) and now I have this annoying problem.So yeah, at first I though it might be a gpu problem aswell (something up with the 400 series maybe) but if others are not having this problem then it has to be something else.My specs are,Windows vista 64-bit ultimate, i7 920 for the cpu, get 480 for gpu and 6 gbs of ram. Motherboard is Asus pt6 delux v2.Glad to know I'm not the only, one and would love to have to problem solved aswell so thanks for your reply.

The closest thing I was able to find was this thread dating back to 2009.

"http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/empiretotalwar/show_msgs.php?pid=942966&topic_id=m-1-48437561"

Unfortunately, their solution was to install a core optimizer that only works for AMD, not Intel. I did a search and as far as I can tell there's no equivalent for an Intel processor. I did find a 'core maximizer' but it seems to only be applicable to Supreme Commander/Forged Alliance. I'll keep looking to see if I can find anything. Any luck on your end?

I have this problem as well, after I upgraded my video card I'm at a loss as to what to do.