Okay, so I just bought Master of Orion 3 off Amazon (for $4, WOO HOO!). I installed it and everything seemed to be working fine. The intro movie started up and ran okay, the menu screen started up and worked okay. But when I went to actually play the game, everything loaded and then my screen went black and in the middle of it, it read "DirectX Surface Unavailable." What does that mean? I have played this game before on my comp and it ran fine. Of course that was nearly a year ago, but no mods have been made to my pieceofcrap (<---pet name for my computer). The game came with Directx 8.1 and I installed it successfully. For further technical detail. I have a 350mHz Pentium II, w/ 128mb RAM, and a 16mb STB Velocity graphics card. And now for the defense of myself and the game and my computer. Yes, yes, yes, I know....my computer is like 8 years old and it sucks really really bad, but its my only computer and it has never died on me. Master of Orion 3 was a crappy game to most people, but I rather enjoy it. And lastly, yes....I'm a big dumb animal. So, now help me please!

Okay, so I found a forum that said to install the latest driver for my video card. Problem #1: STB is no longer in business. Problem #2: I found a driver update from 10-31-2001. Problem #3: I have no idea how to install it. I extracted the files, but there is no read me file or anything, and I can't locate my video drivers on my comp. Problem #4: I'm plain retarded.

dont be so hard on yourself man go to settings/control panel/display/settings/advanced/adapter and click on change then click next> then check the option that says "display a list of all the drivers in a specific location, so you can choose the one you want" and click next> then click Have disk... direct the computer to the place where you extracted the files and proceed from there if that doesnt work DO NOT GIVE UP! post back asking for more help common sense isn't very common

Is it possible that his video card doesnt support DX8.1 ? -------------------- Asus P4P800S mb P4 2.4Ghz (800Mhz) 1Gb DDR3200 Ram Asus Geforce FX 5600 128mb

that's something to consider, I've never heard of the company STB then again my geforce 3 doesn't support dx9.0c but when i go to play tribes vengeance i dont have any problems installing that new driver then reinstalling the game is the best bet for now common sense isn't very common

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;195480 see if this helps and try this, if that does not work. What you have to do if you encounter that problem is : a. update your directX drivers to the last version (9.0c, ithink, but 9.0b is also ok) b. after you'e done that, uninstall the game c. reinstall the game d. update your game via the multiplayer option You can be amused by the simplest of things. The smartest people in the world, over-look the smallest objects. War does not determine who is right, only who is left.