Generic Information
1. Max Payne requires Administrator privileges to install or uninstall
on Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
2. Max Payne requires the game CD to be in the CD Drive that you installed
from during the start of the game. Max Payne utilizes Macrovision SafeDisc
to prevent software piracy, and copies of the game CD will not work.
3. If you have done the minimum install (not recommended) and the drive
letter of your CD-ROM changes after installing Max Payne,
you will need to uninstall the game and reinstall it with the new
drive letter, or manually edit the "cd.ini" file in your Max Payne
installation folder.
Q: I get a "The InstallShield Engine (iKernel.exe) could not be
installed" error message?
A complete list of possible causes and ways
to correct the problem is at Installshield Knowledge Base article Q104985.
Q: I get a CRC error during installation OR
Q: The system crashes during the installation with the error "the file c:\program files\max payne\x_level2.ras doesn't match the file in the setup's cab file. The medium from which you are running the setup may be corrupted: contact your software vendor."
Try disabling DMA on your CD-ROM drive. Here is how:
- Go to Start\Settings\Control Panel
- Double-click the System icon in the System Properties dialog box.
- Select the Device Manager tab. Click the + plus sign next to the cd-rom icon.
- Double-click the icon for your cd-rom drive.
- Click the Settings tab and de-select the DMA check box in the Options panel. Click Ok twice.
- You probably will have to restart your computer after doing this.
For the CRC errors, alternate option is to mark down the file names which have CRC errors, click
Ignore during installation and copy the files manually from the CD-ROM to the game folder on your
hard drive.
Q: I'm getting an R_MemoryFile error
You may need to re-install the game, doing a full install (the 830MB option). You can also try
deleting the 3 x_level.ras files from the Max Payne folder on your hard drive and copying them
back to the same location manually from the CD-ROM. If neither of these helps, disable the
DMA (see above) from your CD-ROM drive and re-install the game (again with the Full Install option).
Q: Max Payne never makes it beyond the splash screen
The Tech Support Department has had success having people uninstall their cd-burning software
(Nero Imager in particular), drivers and copy protection decryptors such as Daemon Tools and
Unsafe Disc. Please try this as it has worked for some. An alternate option is to try to
use a slower DVD-ROM, CD-ROM or CD-RW drive if possible.
Q: Max Payne crashes upon exiting
In your Control Panel, Double-click on Multimedia icon. Click the Advanced Properties
button for both Playback and Recording devices and change both to "Game Compatible".
Reduce the hardware acceleration for your soundcard to none.
Drivers
You should first upgrade the latest drivers to your graphics card. Here is a list of
links to a few of the most common graphics card manufacturers' web sites:
Max Payne requires a DirectX 8 compatible 3D accelerator. If there are
no DirectX 8 compatible drivers for your graphics card, it is still possible
that Max Payne will run, but we can not guarantee functionality.
Common Graphics Card Problems
If you get an error message saying "Max Payne requires a DirectX 8 compatible graphics card",
but you have a supported 3D accelerator, latest drivers and DirectX 8 installed, check that
your Direct3D works in other games, or by using "DXDiag" application that comes with your
system (Run->dxdiag; select Display tab, click on "Test Direct3D". You should get a
"Direct3D test results: All tests were successful." message). If Direct3D does not work,
there is something wrong in your system configuration. We recommend you reinstall latest DirectX
and graphics card drivers and try again. If you still can't start Max Payne, make sure
your desktop is in 16-bit color mode.
If some textures seem to be missing, please lower the texture color depth and detail
settings. Also increasing AGP Aperture Size to 128MB in your BIOS may help.
If the game crashes randomly on a Windows 2000 computer that has a motherboard with
a VIA chipset, please install Windows 2000 Service Pack 2 or later
(more information).
The screen may flash white during the loading of the game or a level. This is a
driver texture management problem, but may not affect game play. Upgrading drivers
may help.
If you have multiple display adapters in your PC, Max Payne may not display all of
them in the startup dialog. Primary display adapter should always be displayed and
we recommend it is used for game play.
If you have problems with Max Payne and Windows XP, please upgrade your
display drivers, as they may not be very mature at the time the operating
system is released.
Full Scene Anti-Aliasing (FSAA) is in theory supported by 3dfx Voodoo5, NVIDIA GeForce
cards, ATI Radeons and ST/PowerVR KYRO. Still, the FSAA setting may not be selectable
from the Options menu, may not work or may cause visual artifacts or otherwise strange
behavior in the game. We have seen:
- Screen flashing in different ways
- Only partial screen is rendered
- Out of video memory errors
- FSAA does not get enabled even though it's selected
These are all driver problems. Possible solutions are:
- Update display drivers
- Enable "Application Preference" in display driver's FSAA control panel
- Lower resolution and/or FSAA setting in Max Payne
If the above do not work, enable FSAA from driver's control panel or do not use FSAA.
Note: FSAA will significantly reduce performance in most cases!
If the game crashes when loading a level, this is most probably because of a
texture management problem in the driver. We recommend that you downgrade your
texture color depth, detail settings and/or resolution and screen buffering mode.
If you are running in high resolutions or with FSAA enabled and experience random
freezing with the game, please lower your resolution and/or disable FSAA. Many 3D accelerators
simply run out of resources when running the game in high resolution.
3dfx graphics cards
Voodoo3: If you get a "Insufficient Video Memory" error, make sure you have
Double Buffering selected from the Options menu. Triple Buffering may not work.
Graphic novels will look blurred as Voodoo3 supports only 256x256 resolution textures.
Voodoo5: The screen may flicker with Triple Buffering, thus it is
recommended that double buffering is used with Voodoo5. Make sure you have
Double Buffering selected from the Options menu.
ATI graphics cards
General:
ATI Radeon based cards don't support the in-game Gamma control. You should
adjust gamma from ATI Radeon's display driver control panel if needed.
People have experienced problems with the Windows 9x driver version 4.13.7075.
Please upgrade your drivers if you have this version.
Radeon/Radeon DDR:
We recommend that the D3D Hardware T&L setting is used.
If running with Software T&L, please see Radeon VE problems below.
Radeon VE:
In Windows 9x/ME there may be some visual problems with weapon and object textures, or some
objects / characters may occasionally disappear partly or in full. We recommend updating to
latest ATI drivers to see if this driver problem has been solved.
Save games may have a black screen instead of a screen shot of the save game
position. This is a display driver issue and we recommend updating to latest drivers to
see if this problem has been solved.
ST/PowerVR KYRO graphics cards
There may be some screen corruption in some locations of the game environment. We recommend
updating to latest drivers to see if this problem has been solved.
Technical support for Max Payne is provided by Talonsoft.
If the Max Payne manual or this troubleshooting information did not
solve your problem, please visit
http://www.talonsoft.com for up to date troubleshooting information.
If you still experience problems with Max Payne, feel free to contact technical support by:
- Telephone: (410) 933-9191. Technical support operating hours are 9am to 5pm EST, Monday - Friday.
- E-mail: support@talonsoft.com