Spider Solitaire Problem

Question

Hi all...I know this is not a highly technical question but my folks are addicted to this game and I can't get it to work on their computer.  I was down there over the weekend and installed some more memory to their computer.  All worked fine and I even played a couple games of solitaire to make sure all was working fine.  My grandson then played a few rounds of Pinball and then my dad played Spider on Sat. night and Sunday morning.  When they got home on Sunday evening, they could not get the Spider Solitaire to come up on the desktop.  It would come up as a button on the taskbar but when they clicked on it, it would not load on the desktop.  If they did a right click and selected close, it would ask them if they wanted to save the game (even though they had not played it yet).  I told her to say no and it closed but when they tried to open it again, it did the same thing.  I then told her to say yes and try it that way, but it didn't do any good. I then talked them though the steps to remove it from the windows components and even had them shut the computer down and restart before we added the game back with the add/remove programs, etc.   Each time it would do exactly the same as before, except now when she would click on it in programs, it would only bring up the window where you chose the difficulty level and when she would chose, it would close that window but no spider would be on the desktop.  The only thing that was changed on this computer was the upgrade from 128mb of ram to 1 gig which was the max I could put into her system.  No programs had been added or removed and they are not online and never have been.  They are running Windows XP Home Edition. Would anyone have any idea of something else I can try to fix this or point me in the right direction for a fix.  I have to do this over the phone as we live 200 miles away from each other. Thanks in advance for all your assistance. Mary

Alexandra_P · Answer

EDIT:  Sorry, posted too slow.

tgsmith · Answer

Ladyups,

What screen resolution is running on the system? I've seen weird things happen with games, including those from Microsoft. Somehow or other the screen resolution gets dropped to a level that will not allow a game to display. A couple of years ago there was a problem with McAfee Viruscan that would disable features in games such as Solitaire and FreeCell. McAfee incorrectly recognized the scoring counter and clock timer as harmful background tasks.

Have them attempt to play a game of FreeCell. The original FreeCell was written to test correct addressing of memory. If FreeCell won't work then you definitely have a video addressing problem of some sort.

Let us know what you find.

Tony

ladyups · Answer

Thank you, Tony, for getting back to me so quick. I called mom this morning and her screen resolution is still set to 1024 x 768 and her color is set to high color at 32 bit. Freecell displays and plays fine. I tried lowering her hardware acceleration by two drops but that didn't help it either. When she starts the Spider game she still only gets the little window that ask her what difficulty level she wants to play and no game shows. If she closes the button in the taskbar with a right click, it ask if she wants to save and then it closes.

Any other suggestions? I've got to leave for work now and won't be home till after 5 but will check the forum then. I know this sounds trivial but they live on their computer and only with Solitaire. In fact, she thinks they just wore it out...:emotion-43:

Mary

ladyups · Answer

Just letting everyone know that I fixed this problem. I was starting to pull my hair out trying to figure this one out. It finally dawned on me that the program was opening but we could not see the open program. I did some research and found out that I could right click on the taskbar button for the Solitaire and chose move from the context menu. Then I used the arrow keys on my keyboard to move the window and moved it back on screen. My folks think I'm a genius! LOL...

Thanks to all who helped me out...

Mary

tgsmith · Answer

Mary, I think your folks know a genius when they see one.   Congratulations.  Thanks for posting the solution to the problem.  It helps everyone reading these posts with a similar problem. Tony

Windows General

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