Star Wars Empire At War Crash

[Bobthemaster]

So, I have a problem that I have now been scouring the internet for, trying to solve. Both my copies of Star Wars Empire at War, and the expansion Forces of Corruption continuously crash at the loading screen for the main menu. Now, before I am told to download the patch, I have tried running the Vista patch, as well as running the game in compatibility mode in XP AND Vista, and as administrator. I've also been told that it may be my graphics card, but I'm not sure. My specs are as follows:

Intel i7 920 2.66 GhZ running 3.00 GhZ
nVidia GTX 480
6 GB Corsair RAM
2 TB HDD
EVGA 121-BL-E756-TR LGA 1366 Intel X58 Micro ATX SLI

Think I could get any help with this matter?

 

[Bobthemaster]

Well, after going through some extensive work, I have managed to get the game running. However, the game is now having rendering issues, specifically it doesn't want to load particle effects and ambient lighting. Are there any suggestions as to how I could fix this issue now?

(Also, I now know that the crash in the title of the thread is irrelevant, so if a mod wishes to change this, please go right ahead.)

 

[Clinkz]

Bobthemaster,

If it is ok would you mind posting how you got the game past the initial crash. Just in case other people have the same problem, they can refer to your solution.

As for yourr graphics issues, have you tried updating both your GPU drivers and Direct X 9?

 

[Bobthemaster]

Well, my solution was a little bit convoluted, and kinda shoehorned. What I did was I did a complete uninstall of both my games, and a very thorough cleaning out of my registry errors. Afterwards, I did a complete reboot of my machine, and then I proceeded to install the games again, this time on my external HDD. Afterwards, I ran the various patches for the game, including the FoC Vista 64-bit RAM fix. Afterwards, my current set up has both the launchers for the games, and their executables have been set to run as admin and are running in compatibility mode for Vista SP 2.

In regards to the graphics, yes, I did the most recent update available through Windows, though I have yet to check on the nVidia website for newer drivers. And for DirectX 9, I installed the DirectX 9 that came bundled with the games. I've even tried having my shortcuts for the games trying to run the .exe with the dx9 command. It hasn't fixed it yet. Is it possible my graphics card is too new, and too powerful(since it runs standard with DirectX 11) to run this game?