Monitor - Dell E171FPb (At least 6 years old)
Video Card - NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT 512 MB
nVidia ForceWare v186.18
Video Resolution - 1280 x 1024 @ 75 Hz
VTMB v6.4

When I launch the game, I immediately get a black screen with white text "Cannot Display This Video Mode".
When this happens, I hear the introduction music but I cannot exit with CAD or Alt+F4. I am forced to restart.
I have tried 1024x768 and 60 Hz as my refresh rate.
I played this game fine on this system about 2 years ago but I believe I had a GeForce 6800GS 256MB back then. Same monitor, though.

Any help would be appreciated.


Jeremy

I encountered a similar problem with NHL series games from EA. The problem is you are using an LCD and the game's menu system is not part of the 3D engine. Setting the game's resolution rarely concerns the menu system. The menu system may be defaulting to a lower resolution, such as 800x600 or any other resolution that your monitor does not support.

You can check for config files or INIs to see if you can manually set the display resolution that the game uses prior to opening it. In the NHL series of games, I wrote a mod that allowed the game's menu to support higher resolutions for the menu system. That's the only point I can lead you on about this.

http://www.nhldepot.net/ndforums/add-showr...on-menu-fe.html

The game natively supports 1280x1024.
I have played it before on this resolution about 2 years ago.
It works fine on my wife's PC on 1280x1024. She has SiS integrated graphics.
I will reinstall my nVidia ForceWare and see if that helps.

I think I found a solution

Out of sync or black screen at launch
https://activision.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/act...p?p_faqid=13884

You can find unofficial patches here
http://www.patches-scrolls.de/vampire_bloodlines.php

Thanks, Dig.
I will try some of that.
I am using the latest unofficial patch for VTMB.

I did a manual override of the refresh rate in dxdiag and that fixed the problem.
Thanks again.