This page contains a TROUBLESHOOTING section that will help you resolve common problems you may be having.

You can also check the DOWNLOADS section to ensure that you have the latest version of Video Game Tycoon.  There are frequent upgrades posted that contain important fixes.

 

TROUBLESHOOTING

 

INSTALLATION ISSUES

WON'T INSTALL ... CD/DVD LIGHT IS ON BUT INSTALLATION HANGS

Frequently people think Video Game TYCOON is hung when installing, particularly under VISTA. 

Please be patient and as long as the CD/DVD light is on, let the installation continue.  It may take up to 10 minutes when running under Vista.

We have not had a case reported yet that the installation didn't start after the CD/DVD light went on.

WON'T INSTALL ... MISSING DISK 1 ERROR MESSAGE

If you receive an error message regarding needing to insert Disk1 during installation, it means that the installation CD is bad.  First ensure that the disk doesn't have any dirt or debris on it and that your drive is working properly.  If that checks out ok, then you'll either need to download the latest version in the DOWNLOADS section of GAMESweet.com, or you'll need to exchange the product with the retailer from which it was purchased.

 

LICENSING ISSUES

INVALID KEY

If you cannot unlock your software and continue to get 'Invalid Key' messages, it most likely indicates several possible problems:

1.  You (or your child) were not logged in as administrator when you attempted to unlock the game online.  This was only an issue with version 1.22 and earlier.

2.  You are attempting to unlock the software online and your firewall or virus-checker is blocking Video Game Tycoon from accessing the internet.

3.  You have not typed in the proper information.

4.  Your Administrator account is 'broken'.  

Please be sure that you are logged in as ADMINISTRATOR or as somebody that has ADMINISTRATOR privileges when attempting to unlock and play the game.  Version 1.23 and later now require this. 

Be sure that all information is correctly entered.

Also, please be sure your firewall and virus-checker are disabled when you unlock. You can re-enable them after unlocking.

If you'd rather, you can call 207-875-2820 and unlock your software by phone 24/7.   To do this, have your License ID and Password ready, along with the Computer Software ID (SWID) and Hardward ID (HWID).  These numbers are displayed in the game, either by pressing UNLOCK and answering NO for older versions of the game, or by pressing UNLOCK-BY-PHONE in newer versions of the game.   You will need to enter the password characters (if any) as numbers on your phone, so for example 'GSC' would be '472' on your phone.

If you are logged in with ADMINISTRATOR privileges and continue to get this error, then chances are your unlocks are 'all used up' due to attempting to unlock the game as a non-ADMIN user.  If you encounter this problem, then please and we will get you going as soon as possible again.  Please be sure to include your License ID in your correspondence.

If this doesn't fix your problem, then we have also had a few customers have problems with their Administrator accounts being 'broken'.  By creating a new user with Administrator rights, they were then able to successfully unlock their game.

DIAMOND EDITION LicenseID ISSUE

The LicenseID numeric values have some invalid characters appended to them on some early DIAMOND EDITION games.   For example, the following code:

LicenseID 5283γγPassword XXXXXX

should be...

LicenseID 5283    Password XXXXXX

Please ignore the invalid characters and just use the numeric portion of the LicenseID.

 

DISPLAY ISSUES

GAME WON'T RUN ... NO TEXTURE SUPPORT MESSAGE

GAME WON'T RUN ... SOFTWARE-ONLY RASTERIZER MESSAGE

TEXT SHOWS UP AS BOXES

CORRUPT OR FLASHING GRAPHICS

These issues are generally related to your video card drivers, and normally updating your driver will fix them.  Here is a helpful link that will tell you how to do this:

http://www.ehow.com/how_5572_upgrade-drivers-video.html
 

For those of your running ATI Radeon chipsets that are seeing white boxes instead of text, you can use these links to find a driver that should fix the problem for you. 

For the ATI Radeon 9000 series, we were able to reproduce the problem, and correct it by installing this Omega driver; however we've been told that this doesn't fix the issue on the ATI Radeon 7000 series (see below).

http://www.ngohq.com/home.php?page=Files&go=cat&dwn_cat_id=14&go=giveme&dwn_id=295

For the ATI Radeon 7000 series, you can use this link.  This site has lots of ATI drivers; however we do not know which one will actually fix this issue yet (if any).  We suggest going back to 6.5 and working backwards down to 4.10 or so.  Hopefully one of the drivers will work properly for you.  If you find one that works, please inform GAMESweet as to the version and your ATI Radeon series, so we can post that information here for other customers.  Thanks.
 
 

GAME WON'T RUN ... DISPLAY RESOLUTION ISSUE

If you attempt to change the resolution that your game runs in to one that is not supported by your hardware, you may not be able to get back into the game.  If this occurs, please follow these steps to correct the problem.

Either...

Go to the DOWNLOADS section of this website and upgrade to version 1.23 or later.  This version can better handle resolutions that are not supported by your hardware.

OR...

Delete the registry setting for the Video Game Tycoon resolution.  Be very careful when attempting this, because if you delete or change the wrong thing in the registry your system could become unstable.  

This is done as follows:

1.  Go to the START menu, and select RUN
 
2.  Type in 'regedit'
 
3.  Open 'HKEY_CURRENT_USER'
 
4.  Open 'Software'
 
5.  Open 'GAMESweet'
 
6.  Select 'SetupScreenRes' and press the Delete key to delete it.

 

OTHER ISSUES

GAME WON'T RUN ... CRASHES WITH MESSAGE ABOUT USER OR DESIGNER FILE

Some versions of Video Game Tycoon could generate corrupted Designer files that then cause the game to fail to start, generating an error message related to user files and/or designer files.

To fix this, please delete all files in the folder listed below.   Be sure to substitute the proper installation directory if you installed the game to anything but the "c:\Program Files\" folder.

c:\Program Files\GAMESweet\VideoGameTYCOON_GOLD\rom\config_shared\Designers

Also, versions before 1.25 required administrator privileges to run properly.  To fix this issue, upgrade to the free 1.25 patch (or later) in the DOWNLOADS section of GAMESweet.com.

GAME WON'T RUN IN NON-ADMINISTRATOR MODE

Versions before 1.25 required administrator privileges to run properly.  To fix this issue, upgrade to the free 1.25 patch (or later) in the DOWNLOADS section of GAMESweet.com.

GAME WON'T RUN ... CRASHES WITH APPLICATION ERROR

If you receive the following error:

"The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000005). Click on OK to terminate the application"

then it usually means that you need to modify your Windows 'DEP' environment for the game. To do this, go to...

My Computer --> (right-click to get) Properties --> Advanced --> Performance --> Data Execution Prevention

Then either select 'Turn on DEP for essential Windows programs and services only' or configure it to exclude just the VideoGameTycoon executable (vgt_gold.exe, vgt_diamond.exe, etc.).

Here is a link with more information:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/prodtech/windowsxp/depcnfxp.mspx#ETJAC

VISTA ISSUES

We suggest disabling the User-Access-Control in Vista for Video Game Tycoon to run with fewer Operating System prompts.  To do this, follow the simple steps below. 

  1. Open Control Panel.

  2. Under User Account and Family settings click on the "Add or remove user account".

  1. Click on one of the user accounts, for example you can use the Guest account.

  2. Under the user account click on the "Go to the main User Account page" link.

  1. Under "Make changes to your user account" click on the "Change security settings" link.

  1. In the "Turn on User Account Control (UAC) to make your computer more secure" click to unselect the "Use User Account Control (UAC) to help protect your computer". Click on the Ok button.

  1. You will be prompted to reboot your computer. Do so when ready.

In order to re-enable UAC just select the above checkbox and reboot.

 

 

OTHER ISSUES

We at GAMESweet Software, Inc. want you to be completely satisfied with your experience of our Video Game Tycoon software series.   

Please feel free to contact us with any inquiries, problems or suggestions.