I own the game Need For Speed: High Stakes and it normally works well on our computer (running Windows 98) with no glitches. A while ago I stopped playing and recently, since I tried to play it again, it has a problem. The auto-start screen which opens whenever I put in the CD worked fine, but when I start the program, the screen goes completely blank (black). All the sound works fine, and the demos that happen normally when you don’t do anything are audible but I can’t see anything on the screen, and the brightness control on the screen has no effect. The actual program is working properly because I can use the keyboard to enter all the menus and everything, and hear the sounds from them, and I can exit the program with the keyboard, but the screen is completely blank until the program is closed, when everything returns to normal. We have reinstalled the program, but it makes no difference. No other programs have experienced any problems like this. If you can offer any suggestions of things to check, it would be very much appreciated.

This is an interesting problem which appears to be related to a video issue as it only occurs once the game application has started. A possible reason for this problem occurring could be due to a problem with DirectX. DirectX is used by games in order to access hardware features without the programmers needing to write code specifically for the hardware. Go to www.microsoft.com/directx/ and download and install the latest version of DirectX, which at the time of writing was DirectX 8.1. If this doesn’t fix the problem, then it may be related to the resolution and colour depth at which you are running your display. Before running the game go to the ‘Start’ menu > ‘Settings’ > ‘Control Panel’ and open the ‘Display’ control panel. Click the ‘Settings’ tab and set the resolution to 640 x 480 at 256 colours. If you are still having problems, go to the ‘Start’ menu > ‘Programs’ > ‘Electronic Arts’ > ‘Need for Speed High Stakes’ and open the ‘3D Device Setup’ application. Ensure that you have the correct settings in here for your specific video card. There seem to be a few issues with the Voodoo3 video card and the Need for Speed High Stakes. If you have a Voodoo3, I suggest that you have a look at the following articles from EA (Electronic Arts) Support which deal with these issues. Firstly, ‘I cannot see the dashboard with my Voodoo3 card’ at techsupport.ea.com/issue_detail.cfm?id=20256&game_id=16648&category_num=7&issue_category=-1. Secondly, ‘Why does my game freeze or lockup randomly (I have a Voodoo3 or Voodoo Banshee)’ at techsupport.ea.com/issue_detail.cfm?id=21161&game_id=16648&category_num=7&issue_category=-1.