Can't Launch STALKER

Just bought and installed STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl. Pre-installation check passed my system and the install completed.
However, when I try to run the game nothing happens. The mouse turns to an eggtimer for a second or two and then... nothing.

Pentium 4: 3.0Ghz
Radeon 9800PRO
2GB RAM

Anyone else having this problem?

Any suggestions?

 

Did you update the game to the newest version by downloading the patch? Also your video card isn't the greatest by any means but do you have the latest drivers from AMD/ATI?

 

Cheers for the reply. Yeah I downloaded and updated the game with the latest patch and also donwloaded the latest patches for graphics card, sound card, mainboard and firmware for DVD drive.

I know my graphics card isn't the best compared to what is out there today, but it meets the requirements and I can play Oblivion with it with absolutely no problems. Also, if it was just because the graphics card wasn't the best it should still launch and maybe give problems after that.
That's what has me worried.

Don't want to have wasted €50 on this without being able to play it.
Any other ideas?

Cheers

 

Hum, I was thinking that the game might have checked your system before starting and cut out when it saw your graphics card. However, you're right about it meeting the requirements so I'm not really sure what is going on. You can try to reinstall the game, and maybe disable any firewalls (i.e. ZoneAlarm) that you might have running. Sometimes a game needs to connect to the internet before starting and if a firewall is blocking it, it won't start up.

 

Thanks again for your reply. I was onto THQ about it and after a couple of things it finally turned out that all I had to do was install the following fix for windows XP: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/924867/

The game is running perfectly now.

Cheers