Hello -

I've googled like mad and although a few people are reporting "startup" problems, none seem to have my exact problem, so I thought I'd try my luck posting here.

I recently bought the Steam version of DMoMM and, obviously, it won't start (I'm talking single player only). I get no error message, no feedback of any kind. Monitoring task manager, the mm.exe shows up as an active process for 3-6 seconds before disappearing. The screen never flickers, attempts to change resolutions, or anything - I just see my desktop. I installed Steam on my wife's computer just to see if the game would run there, and it does. On my more powerful, modern machine, I get nothing. So far, I have tried the following things to fix it -

1 - redownloaded the entire game from Steam. No change.
2 - checked game cache integrity, comes out fine.
3 - set my wife's graphic settings on the lowest possible (800x600 etc) and copied her game folder over the top of mine. Still no dice.
4 - replaced that bink file with one I found on a forum (possibly this one, I don't remember). No dice.

I've also emailed Steam support and gotten one very useless reply. I'm hoping someone here has an idea.

My wife's computer, that DOES run the game off Steam, is an Athlon64 3800+ running XP SP3 on a GEforce 6800 w/ 1gb RAM. It is running the latest Directx 9.0c. An older rig, but still fairly capable.

My computer, which won't so much as sniff Dark Messiah, is an Intel quad-core 8450 with 2GB RAM and a geforce gtx 260 running xp sp3 and the latest directx 9.0c, along with the latest certified Nvidia display driver. I'll add that it runs just about every 3d accelerated game made in the past 10 years flawlessly (from GLHexen 2 to Crysis) including other Source-engine games like HL2. I can even run directx 6 era games like Requiem, Blood 2, etc just fine, but I can't get Dark Messiah to even make it to a splash screen. It boggles my mind. I keep thinking it has to be some arcane DRM bullcrap, unless Dark Messiah just won't run on Nvidia 200 series cards or on quad-core CPU's (can't imagine that's the case, but those are the two main differences between my wife's PC and mine).

Only one thing about my newer computer stands out in my mind as a possible culprit - I only have about 6-7 gb of free space on my primary drive where the game is installed. This is enough free space for every other game I have to run fine, but maybe Dark Messiah makes a monster 10 gb swap file or something.

What do you guys think?

I'd love to be able to play this game (and $10 on Steam seemed a steal at the time) but my wife's computer gets craptastic frame rates. I hope someone here has an idea.

Ok, no one replied to this, but in case anyone has the same problem I had, here's how I fixed it.

Dark Messiah seems to try to startup in 1024x768 screen resolution on the first attempt. If, for any reason, your monitor or display driver has issues with that resolution, the game may fail to start without giving any error message at all.

If your monitor isn't your standard 15-21 inch LCD or CRT, like mine (I've got a large widescreen DLP television for a computer monitor), 1024x768 may not be a valid mode (at least not at certain refresh rates). Just change the resolution entries in the registry to a supported startup resolution, like 800x600, and the game starts fine. Thanks to Blindnero for help narrowing this down.

i have the same problem. i have an asus PRO50 series laptop with 4Gb RAM and an ATI HD Radeon 512mb VRAM v-card. + good processer and i bought the game off steam. i downloaded it and when i start it a box appears saying "preparing to launch Dark Messiah" and it just stays there and does nothing. it doesnt even start. but i think i know the problem. i thinks its because i have windows vista. but i know other people who have vista and can play it aswell. so pretty much valve/ubi robbed me i can play every game ever made but this one. if anyone knows how to fix this problem please reply.

ok i fixed the problem. before starting the game i put my resolution to 1024x764 or whatever it is then put it to 800x600 THEN put it back to my normal resolution wich is 1280x800 and started the game off steam. it sais preparing to launch just wait a few moments. then that box will disapear, but do not be decieved (dont try to start the game agian it wont work) and just wait. if it doesnt start in 10 mins then...

I have one SORTA similar.. i went and changed my resolution, cause let's face it, the "standard" the game starts in, isnt the greatest.. but alas, i should have listened to it and left well enough alone, now i get the "out of range" and black screen and nothing.. so i am about to REMOVE and reinstall the game.. heres to hoping your problem is fixed, and heres to hoping mine is as well... course if ANYONE has an idea on WHERE to change the settings without having to remove and reinstall.. im allll ears

Wow you have bad style coming here for help at the same time posting a sadistic line at the end.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Valve\Source\mm\Settings]
Change to 1024 x 768:
"ScreenWidth"=dword:00000400
"ScreenHeight"=dword:00000300

I have a problem with starting as well. I had downloaded DMM from direct2drive a while ago and it worked fine. But then i deleted it so i decided to purchase it from steam. It went to my games tab and only downloaded multiplayer. Multi is fully downloaded but whenever i try to INSTALL single player steam just shuts down. I doubt its my computer specs seeing as how it worked perfectly on the direct 2 drive version. Anyone have a solution?

I had this problem too, but as soon as I uninstalled the demo version and an old retail version of the game, it would install and run prefectly. I hope this helps.