Blank Screens

[demonix]

Well I can guess that the games worked in full screen before on the same equipment (by that I mean the same monitor) which would put one of my theories to one side (monitor doesn’t support 640x480 resolution) and even changing between XP MCE and XP Pro wouldn’t produce these problems so I’m guessing that there’s a refresh rate issue which can be fixed by forcing every game to run at a pre determined refresh rate.

the link and information in the second post of the thread I’ve linked to should help even though the information is for another game it is relevant for your problem.

[demonix]

In that case I think that it actually is that your monitor can’t support 640x480 since princess waltz runs at 800x600 and snow drop and snow sakura run at 640x480 so if APC runs at 800x600 (I wouldn’t know since I don’t have the game myself) then you shouldn’t have any problems running it in fullscreen mode (although I prefer to stick with windowed mode since I have a widescreen monitor and I son’t like stretched images).

[mirage]

@BaSF

Have you tried playing the moviefiles in the installation folder using Windows Media Player (Do not use VLC or any other non-codec players)? This will test wether the necessary codecs are available at all, also uninstall ffdshow if installed (Often bundled with players so you might have it without knowing) as it has a lot of issues.

Don’t uninstall ffdshow and don’t install any codec.
The codec are for encoding, you don’t need them for decoding (Playing a video file).

What you need is Filter, and only Filter.And ffdshow is the most used filter by a lof of different Video and audio format (if you using a Media Player which need filter).
The best advice is to install CCCP… if you still have blank screen, gogo install the latest version of DirectX, check you driver (CG, Audio device etc…)

Because i’m under XP Pro 32 SP3 and i don’t have problem with Snow Sakura and Snow Drop (and my Snow Drop is an old CD version for in 95/98/ME dated from about end 2001 and work totally fine even without using the compatibility mode).
So, it’s safe to assume that either you have problem with your filter or driver or DirectX.

[mirage]

Like i said, you’re using filter for decoding the Video.
You don’t need the Codec (wich is a full package for encoding purpose with the filter for decoding included) for playing a video, only the Filter is necessary.

So, in the end, installing a lot of codec is uterlly useless and only lead to breakdown your OS.
Only some filter are necessary… in fact only ffdshow + some MKV splitter is necessary for playing almost all the video (except 2 or 3 (like the crappy realmedia) or a good non-codec based Media Player (so MPlayer, VLC is a crap).

Anyway, CCCP is really the best for playing all the Media File.It install only the necessary Filter and don’t clog you PC with a lot of useless Codec.