Alas, after installing and trying to start the game, I get:

General Protection Fault

but nothing after that, not even identification of which program generated the problem. And I thought Microsoft had worthless errors where just a code number was displayed. This is just as worthless. Yep, I've done the search here on "general protection fault" but after a dozen threads I didn't see any good fixes to address this problem.

I actually ran Splinter Cell about about a year ago. I sold it off but got it again when I got a deal getting the Espionage Pack that includes the old Splinter Cell game along with Pandora Tomorrow. Also, I had ran the demo of Splinter Cell just a week prior to getting the game again.

For my specs (rather than spewing out everything from dxdiag.exe):

CPU: AMD Athlon XP 3200+
Memory: 2GB
Motherboard: Abit NF7-S v2 (latest nVidia nForce2 chipset drivers)
Video card: ATI Radeon X850 AGP 8x 256MB (Catalyst 7.9 - latest)
DirectX: 9.0c (latest for WinXP)
Free disk space (after both game installs): 77GB
OS: Windows XP Professional SP-2
User: admin-level account when trying to start game
Desktop video settings: 1024x768, 32-bit color depth

What peeves me is that this same game ran okay many months ago and so did the demo the other week, but the game itself pukes. It is possible when I previously played this game that my old ATI Radeon 9600 non-Pro video card was installed and it was after I stopped playing this game that I then got the ATI X850 (which is a faster video card).

I checked for a patch, found one at Ubi, and installed it but the GPF still occurs. Even rebooted in case there were pending changes from the game install or patch but still got the GPF. There were 2 patches listed at Ubi: a 1.2b patch (11.9MB) and an OEM patch (2.9MB). I had applied the 1.2b patch because this was a retail version of the game, not an OEM version. Well, since the 1.2b patch didn't help, I tried the OEM path (so there would now be 2 patches applied in 1.2b and OEM order). Nope, didn't help. So I reapplied the 1.2b patch so their order would be OEM and then 1.2b patches. Nope, still got the GPF.

I checked the Event Viewer and under the System log found:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: ati2mtag
Event Category: CRT
Event ID: 45062
Date: 10/09/2007
Time: 10:36:06 PM
User: N/A
Computer: ZODIAC
Description:
CRT invalid display type
Data:
0000: 00 00 00 00 01 00 5a 00 ......Z.
0008: 2c 00 00 00 06 b0 00 c0 ,....°.À
0010: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0018: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0020: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........

So the game is causing a GPF with the ati2mtag.sys driver. Apparently it is attempting to select a "CRT type" that is invalid. I don't know what is a "CRT type". I have a CRT, not an LCD monitor but that doesn't matter. It's not like the game cares since that hardware interface is handled by the video card. I cleared the System log in Event Viewer and retried running Splinter Cell to ensure the ati2mtag error was caused by starting the game. Yep, got the ati2mtag error from trying to start the game. I found ATI's KB article at http://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=8...dge&questionID=29385 which seems to indicate the error is bogus; that is, it occurs because I don't have an digital panel connected to the DVI connector on the ATI video card. I have a CRT monitor so it is connected to the VGA connector. So maybe this error has nothing to do with why the game now generates a GPF.

I tried using Compatibility mode (an attribute of the shortcut). When I selected Windows 9x/ME compatibility mode, the game never started. In the Processes tab in Task Manager, I would see a "~e5d141.tmp" process appear for a fraction of a second and then unload (I had to retry starting the game several times to see this process since it is very short-lived). Under Windows 2000 compatibility mode, I get the same GPF.

I saw someone from a Google search suggest (or recited a suggestion) to edit the SplinterCellUser.ini file to change the default resolution from 640x480 to 800x600. Did that. Didn't help. Still got the GPF. Also tried setting EAX_Capable=True to False. No change, still GPF'ed.

Looks like this game is headed for the trashcan. I'm not going to foist crapware onto someone else by reselling it off at eBay. I'll post here an update if Pandora Tomorrow will successfully load.

--- UPDATE ---

Okay, so I tried Pandora Tomorrow. I ran its Configurator and Diag utility and got green checkmarks (OK) on every test so, as far as the utility could figure out, my host was ready to run this game. Nope, when I ran Pandora Tomorrow, it puked and spit me back to the desktop with a dialog window saying:

The launcher of Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow fails in initializing directx. You should upgrade your drivers.

I already have the latest version 9.0c of DirectX that is available for Windows XP (rolls eyes in disgust).

You won't be able to play DA (no Shader 3.0) but the other games should work. There were some GPF problems with Pandora when it came out and the only thing I can remember was one moderator suggesting that the person needed a stronger power supply to drive their video card. The X850 needs more juice than the 9600 does. I have an X800XL with an Antec 400w power supply and the first three games play fine.

Might try NOT updating your DirectX (revert back) and see how it does with the version on the disc. Don't know- just trying to come up with something that hopefully might help.

For the PSU, I had upped it from a 350W when I had the Radeon 9600 to a 500W when I got the Radeon X850.

I found out from the demo and system reqs that Double Agent wouldn't work for me because the X850 only goes up to the ver. 2 shader and DA wants ver. 3. What confounded me was that I had played Splinter Cell before on this same host.

I reinstalled DirectX 9.0c but it did not get rid of the GPF. I booted into Safe Mode to see if something was loading that interferred with the game. Direct3D doesn't work in Safe Mode.

I ran the dxdiag Direct3D test and it failed. I had the Catalyst 7.9 drivers and recalled that it wasn't too long ago when I installed them. I uninstall all ATI software and reverted to 7.1 of Catalyst. The dxdiag test passed and I could run Splinter Cell. I then proceeded to move forward in versions with the following results (I jumped several versions to reduce the number of trials and would halve each range to narrow down which ones worked without having to test them all):

Catalyst 7.9: dxdiag failed, Splinter Cell GPF'ed
Catalyst 7.1: dxdiag passed, Splinter Cell loaded okay
Catalyst 7.6: dxdiag passed, Splinter Cell loaded okay
Catalyst 7.8: dxdiag passed, Splinter Cell loaded okay
Catalyst 7.9: dxdiag failed, Splinter Cell GPF'ed

I started with 7.9. Just in case something got corrupted for Catalyst, I retested a reinstall on 7.9 but that is when dxdiag and Splinter Cell failed. So Catalyst 7.9 has problems. Even the simple dxdiag testing of Direct3D video failed for that version. I could go up to 7.8 to have both dxdiag and Splinter Cell run okay.

So the problem resolution was to revert to an older version of ATI's driver software. I can get Splinter Cell to get past the intro movies and to the menu so now I'll find out if I can play the game. At least, it doesn't puke on a GPF immediately when started.

Hope it works for you.