Enough of this....

[MP36PH3S]

As sniper requested here are the system specs.
Computer model: HP Pavilion dm4t-1000
CPU: Intel(R) 1st generation Core(R) i5 2.2 GHz (4 CPUs)
RAM:2 GB
Operating Systems: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit, Ubuntu 11.10
Graphics: Intel(R) HD Graphics
Hard Drive: 446 GB
Antivirus softwares:
Malwarebyte's Antimalware database 911122101
Sophos Endpoint Security and Control

[sniper297]

Win7 I dunno if it's the same, but XP and all previous versions, lower left corner of the desktop, Start, Run, type DXDIAG in the box.



First window in DX diagnostics gives you your processor and RAM amount,



click the Display tab;



To get the video card.

[MP36PH3S]

Is there a way to tell what OR is looking for as it launches the simulator?
Not getting RAM and CPU info. I'm beginning to speculate the problems are related.

[derekmorton]

I use Process Monitor from sysinternals for debugging these sort of things.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645

Cheers

[sniper297]

You telling me DXDIAG no longer works in Windows 7? This should be dead simple;

Graphics - 256MB video RAM with Pixel Shader 2.0; Recommended 512MB dedicated video RAM (Pixel Shader 3.0 will deliver better visual performance)

That's the requirements for Open Rails, what we need to find out is what kind of video card you have so we can look at the specs and see if it does support pixel shader 2.0 or not.

EDIT: Here's your problem;

http://computershopper.com/laptops/reviews/hp-pavilion-dm4t

Should have mentioned this is a laptop in the first place, it has no video card and probably doesn't meet the minimum requirements for Open Rails.

[derekmorton]

Dxdiag works fine on w7 here?

Cheers

[sniper297]

Well, I think we found the answer here;

http://software.intel.com/en-us/arti...nce-analyzers/

Instead of an actual video card or integrated graphics chip on the motherboard, it appears that this laptop has some kind of CPU that does all the graphics processing in the CPU itself. It's possible you could buy and install an actual video card in that computer, or find some way to tweak the graphics in the CPU, but there's really nothing the OR team can do to ensure compatibility with oddball laptop systems or strange combinations like Linux emulating Windows ME on an Apple IIG or whatever. Any laptop computer is usually gonna be a gamble for game compatibility.

[MP36PH3S]

No DXDIAG works-I cannot obtain details on the CPU or RAM with it though.
Sniper can you explain a little more? You are leading me to believe with that post that the operating system has something to do with this.

[sniper297]

No, the "operating system" is the software that makes the hardware run, your problem is most likely the hardware.

http://computershopper.com/laptops/reviews/hp-pavilion-dm4t

A "real" computer designed for games is optimized for speed and power, a laptop / notebook computer is optimized for portability. To make it portable it has to be small and light weight, which means the battery can't be really heavy, which means all the stuff the battery powers has to compromise performance for the sake of low power consumption, along with weight and size restrictions. A desktop computer isn't intended to be carried around, so it doesn't have to have all those compromises. Therefore any given model desktop will run games much better than the equivalent laptop simply because it doesn't have to sacrifice performance.

If you want to run modern games on a laptop, you need to at least double the hardware requirements it specifies, and it's best if the laptop has some kind of real video card instead of integrated graphics that shares system RAM, or as in your case no dedicated graphics at all, near as I can tell your computer processes all the video in the CPU.

Scroll about halfway down that page I linked to;

On the upside, you can solve the graphics issue in the dm4t; all you'll need is money. The dm4t is available with an optional, dedicated ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5450 graphics chip with 512MB ($100) or 1GB ($200) of its own memory. Either option should bring the graphics performance closer to what you see on the IdeaPad Y460, if not quite, as the Y460 still sported a slightly better graphics processor.

If you can buy and install an actual video card in that computer, it might possibly run Open Rails. Without an actual video card it's unlikely you'll ever be able to run it, or any other modern game.

[MP36PH3S]

Are you sure? I was able to run Open Rails up until last month.
I know I already asked but just so the developers see it in case they missed it the first time: Is there a way to tell what Open Rails is accessing as it runs the activity?

[twpol]

I know I already asked but just so the developers see it in case they missed it the first time: Is there a way to tell what Open Rails is accessing as it runs the activity?

As I said before, this is not an error accessing a file, it's a system API/function and it's broken on your machine. Sorry, but OR will not run without it.