is it possible?

hello Glitches people, can a game or game disk go corrupt suddenly? i am talking about Syberia, which i have played two or three times without any problem until it went all strange on me in the middle of a game session. the screen went all 'blocky' in places. i was able to repeat this 'blockiness' by replaying that particular part of the game but not resolve the problem. can a disk be too old to replay and can i recover from this? thanks, robert.

Highly unlikely a disk would go bad. It is possible it acquired new scratches since the last time you played.The first thing I would try is to use a disk cleanner solution on the disk and a cd/dvd player cleanner on the disk player.

Besides what Geo stated...

It's also possible that the problem has to do with using different video card drivers than the ones you used the previous times you played it.

It could also be due to one of the files from the game not installing properly.

CD's and DVD's do "wear out" over time because the dye slowly diffuses and loses the distinction between 1's and 0's in the data on the disc. DVD's normally "wear out" quicker because the data is closer together on the disc, so diffusion of the dye has greater effect. But Syberia isn't that old a game and this is unlikely to have happened unless the disc was subjected to extreme heat.

Another possibility is that the disc always had a "marginal" area on it, and that your DVD player is starting to wear out and have more difficulty reading the "marginal" areas.

One thing -- is the game reading from the disc at the time the screen is going blocky? or was the game installed to the hard drive. Unless it's reading from the disc at the time you see blockiness, the bad file is already on your hard drive and you'd have to reinstall the game to see a difference.

Might be "too much information" here.

hi Jenny100. the disk is installed to the hard disc when it went 'funny' on me. you have to see this for yourself as it is hard to describe. i know not much help, eh? robert.

It sounds more like a driver issue to me (that or your video card is on its last leg). Have you tried running an older set of drivers?

hello, how do you obtain and run an older set of drivers? robert.

You go to either the Nvidia or the ATI website, depending on which video card you have, and look in their driver archive for older drivers.
What video card do you have?

hi Jenny100, i have a radeon 5450 video card but when i go to the ATI site, they ask for $29.00! i don't think i have the correct site. can you direct me to the right ATI site please? robert.

Drivers are free.
You either went to the wrong site or clicked on the wrong link.

Are you using 64-bit Windows 7 or XP or ?

Here's the driver archive for XP
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/previous/Pages/radeonaiw_xp.aspx

Here's the archive for 64-bit Vista (some also for Win7)
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/previous/Pages/radeonaiw_vista64.aspx

i have the 64 bit Win7 card. how do i navigate this ATI maze? robert.

If you drill down a couple of pages more from the Link that Jenny100 gave you, you can download their Auto Detect software:

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/auto_detect.aspx

The ***ATI Catalyst 9.11 drivers from 11/17/2009*** seem to be the oldest drivers they list as working for Windows 7. So the 9.11 drivers or anything newer from the ***Previous ATI drivers page for Vista and Win7*** should be OK. You may have to uninstall your current drivers before installing the older ones though.

When going back to earlier drivers, you sometimes have to try quite a few to find the ones that work best with your game and your particular video card. Also, just get the driver and not the "software suite" or "Catalyst Control Center."

hi Starcom. after downloading the ATI driver, i get a language preference screen which prevents me from actually installing the driver as i cannot move the screen out of the way. can you help? Robert.

Does it allow you to select a language?

See if this how-to helps. In this example, there is a dropdown box for the language, and then you click "Next."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlxIvc16vQg

It's also possible there is a UAC prompt (User Access Control) hiding behind the window you're looking at, so if you see no way to choose or accept the language, try dragging the window around and see if there's anything hiding behind it.

If you need to uninstall the current ATI drivers, this video shows how to completely remove the current drivers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihVEGWrk5E4

None of this will help if the problem is with the card itself rather than the drivers.

i have downloaded the ATI driver software for the umpteenth time and each time i got the language screen but no 'next' prompt. i think i am destined to NEVER install the driver. robert.

As you not being able to see the Next to prompt, this might be just a stab in the dark but worth a try since this happened to me several times, because of my Screen Resolutions default , many times I cannot see the Next or Accept or Print function because it is at the very bottom of the Screen and it is not visible, and the Only work around is to Right Click on the Taskbar, choose Properties and then choose Auto Hide the Taskbar, doing this would give me more Real estate on my screen and would allow me to see these hidden functions.

Best of luck and I hope you find a solution.

thanks, Starcom, i was able to access the 'next' button. robert.

hi Jenny100. i got so fed up with the problem i experienced playing Syberia1 i so decided to unstall and try again. now Syberia1 will not re-install. it is the same disk i am using. what do i have to do to re-install in Win7? it used to be so easy with XP. robert.

Have you tried using ccleaner to "Scan for Issues?"
http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/tour/registry-cleaner

Ccleaner should be able to find and delete anything the game uninstall left behind.

Download from
http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download/standard

hi Jenny100. i downloaded and used Ccleaner. it did not work as used. now i'm stuck with a Syberia disk i cannot load. robert.

Did you run Ccleaner more than once?
You have to run it and "fix issues" and rerun it until there are no more issues.

Also make sure the Syberia folder is deleted before you use Ccleaner. It probably installed to C:\Program Files (or C:\Program Files(x86) if you have 64-bit Windows) so look for it there. If it's there, delete it manually. It's probably in a subfolder of C:\Program Files that's named after the publisher -- possibly
C:\Program Files\Microids\Syberia

Also, make sure you click on Registry and run CCleaner on the registry too. I've had bits of a programs left in the registry cause a reinstall to not work.

Yes, as Draclvr says, make sure you're running the Registry cleaner which is marked "Registry." The thing that's marked "Cleaner" only clears temporary files, which won't do you any good. What keeps games from reinstalling is garbage left in the Registry, not temporary files.

hi Jenny100. i don't see anything called 'registry'. how do i get to it? robert.

Robert, when you open up CCleaner, there are 4 "icons" on the left. The top one is Cleaner, the next one is Registry, and the last two are Tools and Options. Click on the Registry one and run it.

Look at the picture on the website I linked to above in Post #857585 (7 posts up from this one)
http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/tour/registry-cleaner

See how the second icon down on the left is named "Registry?"

hi Jenny100. hooray, i got Syberia to install again! now to start over but that's o.k. THANKS TO EVERYONE. robert.

I'm curious, Robert... was the reason it worked because you ran CCleaner on the Registry?

i think so, Draclvr. i followed your and Jenny100's steps after downloading Ccleaner. robert.

That's good to know. Thanks, Robert, and have fun!