From a quick glance around it looks like there are still some people who enjoy MM1/MM2 hanging around...cool. I've always really liked these games, but haven't played either in years, so a few days ago I had my eyes on my spare old computer and thought I'd triple-boot Win98SE, Win2k and WinXP to have environments to run older software and games.

Specs on the computer:
AthlonXP 2500+ (I believe 1.8GHz)
1GB of RAM (Win98 barfed all over itself, needed a setting adjustment)
AGP Radeon 9250
3DFX Voodoo2 accelerator, although this was more for comparison's sake as the 9250's drivers actually do play alright with these games, so the V2 is disabled presently.

Also relevant: my copies of these games date back to my second-ever computer, a Pentium Pro box. They are just the game folders which had no-CD patches applied, and have been copied from hard drive to hard drive to CD to hard drive over the years. I do not have the original game media and the games are not "installed", just copied.

They both work fine except for one fault, common to both games: they will not save graphics settings on exit. MM1 in particular will give the "detect the presence of a hardware accelerator" prompt on every launch, and I have to go in to set the resolution each time I play. Is this an issue anyone else has seen with newer video hardware? Does anyone know which files in the game folder actually store these settings for next launch? I have ensured that all files in the game folder are not read-only. Controls and audio settings do save, it's pretty much just video settings (more than just resolution, everything in the video screen).

If there are people who do not see this issue on newer hardware whose game is "installed" correctly, I may just have to track down a disk image and do it that way.

Thanks

Do I understand correct the VooDoo is in the machine but disconnected? Seems like the first possible cause of trouble to me. Take it out.
The fact that on both games you loose video settings also points to the hardware and drivers. It looks like it's re-detected all the time.
Btw on MM1 the settings are in video.cfg. MM1 does set back the settings by itself so once you made the correct settings for MM1 you can make video.cfg read only.

Is the error appearing on W98, W2000 and XP or on just one of those?

I have experience with a Radeon 9200 with is sufficient for playing both games. Trying different drivers can make a difference, some drivers run better then other drivers. Did you install Direct-X?

Also you can try the various MM, graphic and XP patches.

Finally you could clean the register from any key and value "Midtown".

Basically the MM games run from the game folder without installing.

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Fiat lux

The 3DFX V2 is indeed in the system but with the drivers removed; software should not be able to see that it is present. Nonetheless I'll remove it and see what happens.

I vaguely remember having a similar issue when I last played this years and years ago...it's possible something is wrong with my actual copy of the game, but I'll give it some testing.

The Radeon 9250 does show up in both games as "RADEON 9250".

After a little more testing last night, I might have been wrong about how consistent the issue is. It seems like under Win98SE the resolution will never be remembered, but under Win2k it will sometimes be remembered. XP, I haven't tested much with because of the lengthy delay before either game opens regardless of compatibility mode settings.

As for MM2, it is remembering all settings except the resolution, but again on Win2k I think I saw it remember it a couple times. Odd.

As I recall both games have all patches that exist applied. I'll try to re-apply some and see if anything changes. I'll get my hands on a second copy of each game and see if anything is different side-by-side.

DirectX: I've tried 7 (when using the V2 as it is the newest the drivers support) and then bumped it up to 9.0c with the Radeon...no change between them except things look much better with the newer card and DirectX.

The read-only trick is what I actually was aiming for when I asked what file stores the settings. It would be a kludge, but if it works, I'd be happy with that.

Erm...yeah.

I pulled out the Voodoo2 and obtained copies of the install media and started fresh with both games, initially on Win98.

Results?
MM1 will not remember the resolution. It keeps defaulting back to 640x480, which has "recommended" noted on it. Every launch, it re-does the hardware accelerator check, even if I set the video.csv file to read-only while the game is running after changing the settings.

MM2 is remembering all video settings correctly, so I consider MM2 resolved.

Above results were the same before and after the patches (as obtained from this site).

Not sure what MM1 doesn't like about this configuration, but it must not like something about the ATI drivers.

Does it show hardware or software rendering?
Try different ATi drivers.

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Fiat lux

Hardware rendering, and it detects the card by name.

I've now tried 3 different drivers and 2 different copies of the game, both with and without patches, and the best I can conclude is that MM1 does not like something about ATI video card drivers on Win98SE. Odd.

However - on Win2k, it works perfectly after applying the XP patch, but didn't before applying said patch. More odd, but since MM1 and 2 both seem to work on 2k I might just nuke the Win98 partition and stick with 2k.

W2000 and XP are more stable, with W98 MM would frequently boink, freeze, requiring a reboot of the system.
But on my W2000 and XP systems always the MM1 comments are out of sync, cut off, etc.

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Fiat lux

A late addition -it might be useful for others.
Most modern video cards can connect two monitors. MM1 gets confused by the presence of apparently two graphic adapters. Then the 'redetect video card' issue comes up.
Most people have one single monitor connected to the computer. A workaround then can be to go into the device manager and simply disable (not remove!) the unused graphics adapter. MM1will then once more detect the hardware and should be fine after that.

_________________
Fiat lux