Loading problem

[Topiaz]

Wow. Bioshock has got me guessing, what have the developers worked on for so long, to then release a game so incredibly bugged out? Or did they just optimize and test it on one machine? Oh well, here goes my problem:

A while ago, I was able to play Bioshock pretty normally, many crashes, low graphic settings, because otherwise it'll crash for no reason, I lived with that. Today I upgrade my graphics card driver, I'm thinking, hey, maybe Bioshock works better now. So i start it. Menu and everything looks fine, what surprised me was that the DirectX10 Button was no longer grayed out, seeing as how I've always had a DX10 Graphicscard, I blame it on the old driver. Now, however, no matter what I do, I've tried about all the fixes in this forum and others, turning off this and that in the graphics settings etc., and now the game will simply freeze while loading. Doesn't matter what I load, it just freezes. The game displayes the load screen, or starts, but instead of fully blending it into view it stops shortly after starting to blend, making it seem dark and grayed out. I waited for 5 minutes for change, nothing happened. Only thing I can do is Task Manager and End Process.

I have Win. Vista 32bit, Intel Core 2 Duo T7500, GeForce 8600M GS, 2gigs of RAM.

Any ideas? As I mentioned, it worked before, not great, not fine, it worked barely, with bugs here and there, as well as models not being completely rendered mid-game, etc, but now it just refuses to load/start a game.

Thank you all in advance.

[maf]

Ahh. You have discovered the infamous slow game loading bug. Another user has confirmed this to be at least partly video card dependent. I myself have found that if I Alt-tab out of the game and use the positioning of the audio to guide me, I can make it past the parts in the game that make it crash while staring at the Windows desktop and then Alt-Tab back into the game and save quickly (graphics are highly over-rated anyway). I also hear that if you don't look at the Big Daddies you can avoid random crashes as well.

[Topiaz]

Slow Game Loading Bug... the bugs just keep on coming. I thought with the new Driver and all, seeing as how the button previously grayed out was now available, I'd be able to play this game like it was meant to.

Your saying, however, that you can continue playing the game while Alt-Tabbed, yet as soon as I Alt-Tab I get nothing. As I said, it just freezes: 'Task is not responding.' Maybe I have found a combination of a load-crash bug and a slow-load-bug? Golly gosh, go me!?

[Topiaz]

Hah! I figured it out! Sort of. I disabled the Tablet Driver I have, and that did it. I don't know how that influences the game's engine, but I suppose its good to know for all games using the new Unreal Engine. A big thank you to this forum for all the good hints etc.!