Tough week. Lots of driving to and from the bleak, industrial North. Lots of head scratching, pouring over computers and log files, talking to different people, all working together to try to fix a difficult, long standing, non-reproducible, high-profile problem.
Arrive home. After the emotional reunions, hugs and tears, I am immediately asked to fix a difficult problem that is (thankfully) reproducible. Son took advantage of my absence to buy another PC game. Game launches splash screen and immediately crashes.
PC meets minimum spec. Graphics card meets minimum spec. Lots of people have similar problems. Maybe they can’t read books. Read FAQ. Upgrade graphics card to latest Nvidia drivers. That should do it. Still no joy.
Uninstall and reinstall game completely. Read interesting snippet in README that is presented post-installation.
The 4 year old GeForce2 MX400 card does not support Pixel Shader 1.1 (silly me) so this graphics card does not actually meet the minimum requirements.
Sigh. Uninstall game again. Turn off computer. Pray that son doesn’t ask about the possibility of upgrading the graphics card.