starfleet command 3 will run intro movies then display error message

[medic1985uk]

hi guys and girls,

i have windows vista home premium and recently purchased the above game. loaded it onto my laptop which all went fine and dandy. when i came to run it however i experienced a problem. after all the intro movies had run through, the program closed itself down and came up with an error message saying directx 8.1 was not installed. please install directx 8.1 or later.

i duely went onto the microsoft website and downloaded the most up to date directx software directx 10.0 onto my laptop and tried again. unfortunately the same message came up.

i've tried every avenue to try and resolve this but need yours help.

cheers

[AlDaja]

I experienced something similar a few years back when I installed SFC III on Windows XP for the first time, my mistake, installing Direct X 10. The problem if I recall is with Direct X 10. The tech I spoke to at the time said there was some problems with Direct X 10 on older gaming platforms like SFC III. I had to uninstall all of the Direct X software and make a change in my registry (don't recall what exactly), however; make sure Direct X and related software is removed from your computer's registry.

Reinstall SFC III. DO NOT install Direct X 8.1 or Game Spy. Go to the FileFront SFCIII homepage and install the SFC III patch sfc3 beta patch v534_b ( all languages), Starfleet Command III Downloads, Starfleet Command III SFC3 which includes Direct X 9.0 C

Once installed, check the properites of SFC III and see if "Disable visual themes" is checked, if not check it.

This should correct the problem and allow the game to work (assuming Vista is not the problem).