I've got a retail copy of FreeSpace: The Great War (and also Silent Threat) that ran fine on my old laptop running Windows 98 and Windows 2000. I wanted to run the game on my desktop which is running XP.

It installs from the disk fine (and the readme file lists v1.06 as the latest update). When I try to play the game however, it goes to a black screen and sits there. I can't get out of the black screen without turning off the computer.

To the best of my knowledge, I have the most recent drivers. In the settings menu for the game, I've searched for and selected my video and sound drivers and set the speed to Very High (per a recommendation on another forum). I've also tried running it under all the lower options in the compatability menu. Still, the same thing: black screen. I can see the cursor arrow, and when it floats over certain parts of the screen it changes to a pointer hand, but nothing happens when I click that area.

I'm stuck and don't know what to try next. any help would be appreciated.

Compatability mode

Right click freespace2.exe go down to properties.
Then click compatability.

Err.. Or is that just for afterburners??

I tried compatability. And this is FS1, not FS2.

Your best bet would be to use Turey's installer to download the SCP and the FS1 port.

Don't I have to have FS2 for Turey's installer to work?

Make sure it's allowed as a firewall exception.

Run it in software rendering mode rather than hardware. A modern PC has more than enough grunt to do that and because of coding for hardware limitations in 1997 it will probably look better too.

This question may reveal my noobishness, but how does one go about changing to software rendering mode? That's a new one for me. A google search didn't turn up much on the how to's for that.

Well actually, this exact same dilemma occurs with me, and had me stumped. But I assume it is something along those lines as it actually worked before I installed the SCP. It could be that I changed the hard/software rendering mode in the process though...

Cool as the port is, you can't beat old school FS with 1990s graphics, music and sounds.

Where can I find out how to try software rendering mode?

In the launcher. Choose a different graphics option. If it finds a graphics card that it can use it will select that by default. The other mode is software.

I give up. I spent three days tinkering with FS:TGW retail then went with Tureys Installer and all I got was a myriad of errors I don't understand, multiple computer crashes and lots of frustration. It seems to step from a video driver problem, but every fix I attempted (most from suggestions on the HLP forums) just made the problems worse.

Thanks for the attempts at help guys. I just don't have the knowledge or understanding of my OS, drivers, etc. to get this up and running. I'd rather have a computer that runs than risk further problems.