The technology used to deliver the game online essentially tricks your computer into believing the game is already installed and the CD is in your drive. Please reboot your computer and try playing the game again. If this problem persists, please contact our technical support.

There are several things you can try to fix this problem:

1. Shut down any other applications that you may have running on your system such as screen savers, virus scanners, etc.
2. If you are using a processor which is faster than a Pentium 233, you may need to turn down your video hardware acceleration. (See the next question below on "Turning down Windows' video hardware acceleration")
3. Update your video card drivers.

Windows video hardware acceleration may need to be turned down if the game you are playing uses some other form of acceleration, such as DirectX. To turn down Windows' video hardware acceleration:

1. Right-click on the My Computer icon on your desktop
2. Click on the Performance tab
3. Click on Graphics
4. Move the slider bar one notch to the left
5. Click on OK
6. Click on OK once more to exit the system properties panel

Now try your game. If you still have problems, repeat this process until the game works, or you can't turn acceleration down any further. If you have video hardware acceleration turned all the way down, and the game still won't run, you may need to turn off DirectX acceleration instead.

The most frequent reason for freezing and crashing in the games action phase is outdated or incorrect drivers. Please see our updating drivers section for help with updating your video card drivers.

You will most likely have better luck using the drivers for the chipset on that video card.

This can cause problems when the Video Card Company creates drivers that overwrite and change the drivers created for the chipset. Because there are so many different video cards available, and only a few different chipsets, it is easiest and often most reliable to create software that works best with the chipset. This allows for our games to play well on most all video cards that have these chipsets.

If you experience freezes or crashes, or if you are having any video problems, we recommend that you first try updating the drivers to the most recently available from the manufacturer video card. If you continue to experience these problems, contact your Video Card manufacturer for information on your video card's chipset, and contact that company for updated chipset drivers, often called reference drivers.

Note: We cannot provide support for updating drivers. Most drivers include instructions in the form of a web page or a readme file that should help you with the installation. If you have questions about the installation of drivers, you should contact the component's manufacturer.

If you don't hear any sound, chances are that you just need to turn up the volume knob on your speakers, or by using the Windows volume control panel. To use the Windows volume controls, just double click on the little yellow speaker icon on your taskbar. Make sure that the "mute" check box isn't selected.

If you are sure that your volume controls are already turned up, then make sure that you don't have any other programs running that may be using the sound card.

This can be caused by problems with your Sound Card (please refer to the updating drivers section) or by latency in your network connection, which is determined by several factors:

1. Your 'cyber distance' (the path of servers or 'hops' your data takes to get to its destination on the Internet) to game servers
2. Volume of traffic on the Internet
3. Planned or unforeseen regional or national network outages on the Internet
4. Your modem speed Another important factor that affects the quality of your connection is 'lost packets' -- data that gets lost during transmission over the Internet.

This can be caused by latency. It may also be caused by the performance of your computer system (please refer to the System Requirements section for more information on computing requirements).

good way to improve speed is to obtain the latest drivers for your video card. Video card manufacturers are constantly improving the software drivers that run their video cards to fix problems and improve performance. If you have not updated your drivers recently, a newer, faster driver is probably available.

Slow or choppy gameplay speed - If you notice slow or choppy gameplay, or if you move your mouse and a few moments later you get an on-screen response, the problem is either of two situations. If your system does not have a supported 3D accelerator, then you may experience poor or choppy performance. The best solution for this is to replace the card in your system.

General graphical issue: Anything from strange colors to no color, static effects to blurry images. Any graphics related glitches or peculiarities that appear on the screen during the game are video card related. Updating video card drivers most often solves these issues. See our updating drivers section for more information on updating video card drivers for your system.

These errors occur when Windows encounters a problem that it can't fix. Quite often, the problem is the result of a conflict between the game and some other program that you have running on your computer. The best solution is to shut down any other applications that you may have running before you play any games

This is caused by the date/time being incorrect on your computer. To change the date, simply double click on the time displayed at the bottom right hand corner of your monitor and click the correct day on the calendar. Or - Open Date/Time in Control Panel and to change the day, click the correct day on the calendar.

Sound problems are most often related to either outdated or incorrectly loaded sound card drivers, or incompatibilities between sound cards and DirectX. Please see our updating drivers section below.