I know this has been mentioned before, but I'll post up this email anyway, as it mentions how to uninstall directx, something which may be of interest to you.

Hello

Grim Fandango -

I managed to get both sound and text going in the cutscenes, after having neither since installing (and re-installing) the game and the patch umpteen times!

It was - surprise oh gee what a surprise - a DIRECTX problem.

DirectX 8.1 DOES NOT WORK WITH GRIM FANDANGO!! It just DOESN'T. This despite MS's claims of "backward compatibility" oh yeah right.

DX 8.1 will allow neither sound nor text in the cutscenes (text installed from the GFUPDATE patch of course).

The solution was (with GF installed and the GFUPDATE patch):

Remove DirectX 8.1 (I used the DXRemove.inf file that Russian dude wrote, its findable on any search engine. This is easier than reinstalling 'doze.)

Install DirectX 7.0a - this was the last version I believe before they made sweeping changes to the DX API.

(At this point had sound but it was very broken up in cutscenes and in the game).

Reinstall sound drivers.

Make sure sound devices in Control Panel -> System -> Devices had DirectSound ON.

Make sure using dxdiag that Direct3D was Enabled so that the hardware video acceleration could work.


Then it worked like a charm!

(Only reason I had 8.1 installed in the first place was to play Project Eden, one of the most boring games ever written anyway).


Hope this info is of use to you!

Best

Jon Holdsworth

Unfortunately, the statement that DirectX 8.1 and GF are incompatible is just wrong. Sure, maybe on this person's computer they didn't get along, but that's a long way from genuine incompatibility. I say that because I've run GF with every version of DirectX from 6 through 9 and haven't had a hitch. Which is, of course, a long way from saying that GF and any version of DirectX is a match made in heaven. The point being that it isn't enough for A not to get along with B to determine that A and B can't get along. There is more to the behavior of a computer than surface symptoms, such as the machine's overall 'health'.

This helped me. For the record, I'm on Win2000, Service Pack 3, 700 Athlon, nVidia TNT2.

I removed DirectX 8.1 with the *.inf that came with this (http://www.ebrink.com/dxun/index.html) tool, and re-installed DirectX from the disc.

It didn't agree that DirectX had been installed though, and I couldn't access Grim from the splash menu that loads when you stick the disc in - I had to run the .exe file, then Grim would load fine.

Then, I experienced another nice little problem. It cuts out every five minutes or so, straight to desktop. I can run about fine for a while, but then it just 'stops'. It does this whether I switch 3D acceleration (Direct3D) on or off.

Are there some settings I should tamper with in DXDiag - eg DirectSound acceleration?

I downloaded this programme and didnt get a chance to back my files up, its now taken down direct X completely from my computer and i simply cannot get it back, every version and every method i try of installing direct X my computer won't have it. So now its not just grim fandango that i cant play. Its all my games..