Getting Fallout 2 to work in XP

[Kyberkind]

I intentionally deleted my Graphics accelerator media driver entirely.. THEN reinstalled it and the game now works perfectly!!!! /hurray

[CarolusRex]

I have tried everything I have read on this forum and in other forums, I have reinstalled Fallout 2 with every type and size of installation, I have disabled my graphics driver, I have even formatted my computer and reinstalled XP... But I cant get Fallout 2 to work. Still "Couldn't find/load text fonts". Is there anyway to fix the problem?!

[Da_venom]

lol

maybe the hardware just isn't made for fallout 2

[Batka 666]

I've got a problem too, but this one differ from the ones you mentioned so far. I've installed Fallout 2 (Humungous installation) andt started to play with it. No problems for approx. half hour, and then suddenly white colors of the picture mixed up with small coloured pixels, which made the whole game ugly, and made the numbers unreadable.
I've applied the 1.02 patch but that doesn't fix the problem either. I've tried all compatibility modes but none of them was useful.
I've got a WinXP Professional with SP2, DirectX 9c, GeForce FX 5900 with the latest driver.
What can I do? PLease help!!

[langst]

I Had the problem of fallout 2 going to the "Please stand by screen" the crashing to desktop i narrowed it down to the running process "Imgicon.Exe" if you use control, alt, delete see if it is running then disable it. works perfect for me. Hope ive helped you guys

[JimiHendrix]

Originally Posted by Badseed

My path is the default:
C:\Program Files\BlackIsle\Fallout2

Ok, let me try and be clearer.

When I run Install, the Progess Bar (showing the 'amount' of installation complete) gets to about 2/3 done, then stops. By this I mean the CD-ROM slows to almost nothing and information stops transferring to the HD (no red HD light on my computer).

I wait 5-10 minutes then a message box comes up saying that the installation is complete and that the BG2 movie is going to run. This message doesn't look right. By this I mean it pops up but the whole message 'description' isn't there. The end is cut off. It is hard to explain, but the colors look off I think. Anyways, I get the meaning of this message and just click OK.

The BG2 movie runs, and I wait for it to finish.

Now I am back to my desktop. I go to my Start Menu and run the game. This is where I get the 'text font' error I explained earlier. The only option it gives me is to hit OK, so I do. At this point, I am still at my desktop as I can't run the game because I get the 'text font' error.

From here I can run AutoRun from the CD and I see that the 'Install' option is still available, and the 'Play' option is not.

I say the Installation did not complete because that is what I THINK happened since the progress bar stopped during the installation process AND the AutoRun still thinks the game needs to be installed. I believe that not all the game information got transferred correctly.

I'm all with you, badseed and da_venom... I've been struggling with the same problem, and guess what? I'm playing

You described it perfectly, badseed, and your idea on incorrectly transferred information brought me on an idea. So I tried putting this game on my drive manually. When I tried to move the master.dat file, an error appeared about 2/3 of the way (called something like CRC or RCR, I forgot). Taking note of this, I then reinstalled the game with the Autoplay menu (humongous install). Once again, the red progress bar didn't finish, I watched the bg2 movie and the "couldn't find/load text fonts" error appeared. Next, I hit "C:/Program Files/BlackIsle/Fallout2" and looked at the master.dat file, which in comparison to the master.dat on the CD, was too small. I thought, that maybe my CD was scratched and that was the reason why the master.dat couldn't transfer. I decided to take the CD out of the DVD drive, and put it in my DVD-RW drive. From there, I managed to move the master.dat to my computer without any problems, played around with the fallout.cfg file so that all the connections were correct, and voilà! This must be like the 7th time I play this game.

[Woozaii]

Wow old post ! I can't help you, sorry, i just wanted to say welcome to Gamebanshee.com .

[xanthre]

First of all,
Complete installation steps via this site...(No Mutants Allowed - Your Post Nuclear News Center!) I installed the humongous install.

Now the particular problem with "couldn't find/load text fonts" is due to a mal .cfg setup. The game needs a reference point for its fonts and audio whether it be from the cd or from your harddrive.

I created a folder on my desktop to keep ALL my fallout 2 stuff organized. Therefore I now have a folder located at c:\documents and settings\"user"\desktop\fallout 2
*note: "user" = whatever your computer recognizes you as... i.e. your name, default user, etc. If you don't know, go to your start menu, click on search, type "desktop" in your text box and click search. You can find your address there.*

When you get your fallout 2 folder filled with the necessities, you are going to have to open up notepad and highlite, copy and paste this next part...

[sound]
music_path1=c:\games\fallout2\data\sound\music\
music_path2=(CDROM):\data\sound\music\

[system]
critter_dat=c:\games\fallout2\critter.dat
critter_patches=c:\games\fallout2\data
master_dat=c:\games\fallout2\master.dat
master_patches=c:\games\fallout2\data

Now... I had to change some text in here.
After each "c:\" I had to change "games" to documents and setings\myname\desktop

Careful... when I installed my game, it created another Fallout 2 folder within my already created fallout 2 folder. So in this case, I had to have two "fallout 2" in my line... thus... i.e. c:\documents and settings\myname\desktop\fallout 2\fallout 2\data\sound\music\

Be sure to type your folder names exactly as spelled... i.e. Fallout 2 not fallout2 or vice versa. Once you are finished, go to file and click on saveas.

save it as fallout2.cfg and save it in your fallout 2 folder

This error should be fixed. Good luck.

Oh yeah, don't forget to read all of the steps on that site I promoted at the top. Get the patch too and save it in your fallout 2 folder.

[Kipi]

xanthre, quoted your solving method to the Technical Problems with Fallout 2? Click here! -thread, as it offers another way to fix the problem.

[1356492]

I purchased the Fallout Collection DVD version which includes F1, F2, and Tactics. Only 1 came patched (God forbid they patch a game ten years after it comes out) and I have not been successful patching 2. I can load the game just fine. It's simply that when I click on the patch it says "couldn't find/load font/text."

I changed my cfg. file to below. I also have installed every size installation. I used to have an original fallout 2 copy and it worked fine. I do have SP2 installed but I have only heard infrequent information as to that being the cause.

Any suggestions? Thanks.

[debug]
mode=environment
output_map_data_info=0
show_load_info=0
show_script_messages=0
show_tile_num=0

[preferences]
brightness=1.000000
combat_difficulty=1
combat_looks=0
combat_messages=1
combat_speed=0
combat_taunts=1
game_difficulty=1
item_highlight=1
language_filter=0
mouse_sensitivity=1.000000
player_speedup=0
running=0
subtitles=0
target_highlight=2
text_base_delay=3.500000
text_line_delay=1.399994
violence_level=3

[sound]
cache_size=448
device=-1
dma=-1
initialize=1
irq=-1
master_volume=22281
music=1
music_path1=C:\Program Files\BlackIsle\Fallout2\sound\music
music_path2=C:\Program Files\BlackIsle\Fallout2\sound\music
music_volume=22281
port=-1
sndfx_volume=22281
sounds=1
speech=1
speech_volume=22281

[system]
art_cache_size=8
color_cycling=1
critter_dat=C:\Program Files\BlackIsle\Fallout2\critter.dat
critter_patches=C:\Program Files\BlackIsle\Fallout2\data
cycle_speed_factor=1
executable=game
free_space=20480
hashing=1
interrupt_walk=1
language=english
master_dat=C:\Program Files\BlackIsle\Fallout2\master.dat
master_patches=C:\Program Files\BlackIsle\Fallout2\data
scroll_lock=0
splash=4
times_run=4

[Kipi]

Did you try methods in this thread?

And, what I've gathered, the DVD version is a bit flawed, especially the Fallout 2 -part...

[sheeppaste]

Hey I had this problem and it was very irritating... I couldnt even complete the humungous installation as it said that it couldn't write the "master.dat" file. I explored the cd and discovered that the master.dat file and critters.dat file were read only and couldnt be changed... so I had to manually copy the entire contents of the cd to my computer... then run the setup again (choosing the directory where i had already copied all the files to) chose the smallest installation and voila! it created all the registry files and shortcuts i needed in about 2 seconds! got round the nasty "master.dat" error wonderfully... i hope this is useful to some people as fallout is so freakin great! gotta share the love

p.s. if you wanna use the patch then do as instructed above, then install the patch and then do the SMALL setup again... from my experience doing the huge install overwrites the master.dat and critter.dat files with copies of no size...i.e. says they are 0kb in size