When starting European Air War the game appears to load but a 7271 Error occurs and the game will not start. The computer is a Hewlett-Packard 500 MHz with 64 MB RAM. Can you help?

The error you are experiencing (7271) occurs when the initialisation of the DirectDraw surface for the games main screen has failed. This can happen if your video card does not support 8-bit (i.e., 256) colour rendering. Before going any further, we need to identify the type of video adapter that is installed in the computer. Go to the ‘Start’ menu > ‘Settings’ > ‘Control Panel’ and open the ‘System’ control panel. In the System options, click the ‘Device Manager’ tab and in the device list, expand ‘Display adapters’. Note the name of your display adapter, then check whether your display adapter is one of the Intel Graphics Controllers listed under ‘This applies to:’ at support.intel.com/support/graphics/intel810/sb/CS-003934-prd798.htm because if it is listed, then unfortunately, you are out of luck - the game will not work with the display adapter you have installed (there is some information on this situation at www.atarisupport.com/faq/eaw_pc.asp).

If your video card is not one of the listed incompatible cards, then before starting the game you should decrease the resolution and colour depth. Go to the ‘Start’ menu > ‘Settings’ > ‘Control Panel’ and open the ‘Display’ control panel. In the Display options window, click the ‘Settings’ tab. Set ‘Colors’ to ‘256 colour’ and the ‘Screen area’ to either ‘640 by 480 pixels’. Click OK. Now try running the game. If still no luck, go back into the display settings and set the ‘Screen area’ to ‘800 by 600 pixels’. Click OK, and run the game.

If the problem persists, we need to narrow down the problem to either the video card itself or the game. As the problem could relate to DirectDraw, we can test DirectDraw using DXDIAG. Be aware that this test will not be conclusive, since European Air War attempts to create the surface in 8-bit colour mode, and I am unsure if DirectX Diagnostics (DXDIAG) tests use 8-bit mode or 16-bit mode. For example, if your video card only supports 16-bit mode, it may seem as if the test is successful and the problem lies with the game itself, whereas the problem may actually be that your video card does not support 8-bit mode (as is the case with the earlier mentioned Intel Graphics Controllers). However, it will signal if there is a major problem with Direct Draw. Go to the ‘Start’ menu > ‘Run’ and type ‘dxdiag’ (without the quotes) and click OK. Click the ‘Display’ tab and then click ‘Test DirectDraw’. After that test you may also want to click ‘Test Direct3D’. If you encounter any errors or problems with the test, please contact me with specific details.

Otherwise, let us assume that your computer passed the DirectDraw and Direct3D tests. In this case, the problem is either that your video card does not support 8-bit colour surface rendering or there is something wrong with the game. Please contact me again if you have reached this stage.