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PC Format (UK) 113
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PC Format 2000 October - Disc 3.iso
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README.TXT
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1996-01-08
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7KB
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Wide World of Animals for Windows v1.0
-----------------------------------------
Thank you for installing Wide World of Animals. This file
contains tips that can help Wide World of Animals run more
smoothly on your computer.
Do you need to update your video driver?
-----------------------------------------
Wide World of Animals does some remarkable things with
your video card. Sometimes this causes problems with
older video drivers. This is true even if the problem
doesn't seem to be related to how the program looks.
Examples of video driver-related problems are:
"Potentially Fatal Error" or "General Protection Fault,"
especially those that make reference to your video driver
(something.DRV), movies or photos that are black, colors
that don't look right, or even a program crash without
an error message.
If you are encountering a problem like this, the first
step is to upgrade your video driver. For information on
many video card manufacturers, see the end of this file.
If you have a Diamond Speed Star Plus video board
---------------------------------------------------
Diamond no longer supports this video board. If Wide
World of Animals does not run properly on your computer,
contact Diamond at 408-325-7000 for information about
obtaining an upgrade. You may also contact Diamond on
CompuServe at 75300,3673. Please do not contact Creative
Wonders Technical Support regarding your video board.
If you have a Diamond Speed Star Pro video board
---------------------------------------------------
Check the date on your video driver. If it's older than
2/17/94, follow the instructions above to update the driver.
If you have a Diamond Stealth 32 video board
---------------------------------------------------
You may notice problems running Wide World of Animals in
24-bit mode (millions of colors). The program works fine
in other color modes (hundreds or thousands of colors).
If you have a Spider Tarantula Lite video board
---------------------------------------------------
You may notice problems running Wide World of Animals in
800 x 600 or 1280 x 1024 resolution at 256 colors. The
program works fine in all other screen resolutions and
color modes. At the time of production no Win 95 drivers
were available from Spider for testing.
If you have a Paradise Bali video board
---------------------------------------------------
If you are running in 8-bit mode (256 colors), you may
notice some corruption of the screen graphics if you
start Wide World of Animals more than one time without
restarting your computer. This problem does not occur
in 16- or 32-bit depths (thousands or millions of colors).
Wide World of Animals memory requirements
---------------------------------------------------
If you have an 8 megabyte computer and are running
Windows 3.1 or 3.11, Wide World of Animals also requires
a swap file of at least 5 megabytes. This is usually
present in the Windows default setting. If you have very
little disk space left, or you have changed your swap
file size so that it's smaller than 5 megabytes, use the
Virtual Memory applet in the Control Panel to arrange for
a swap file. See your Windows documentation for more
information.
If you are running Windows 95, simply have Windows control
the swap file size, the default setting of Windows 95. To
have Windows control the swap file size, go into Control
Panels, select System and view the 'performance' section
of the control panel. Select the 'virtual memory' button
and verify that Windows is set to control the swap file size.
Printing on a network?
---------------------------------------------------
If you are having trouble printing from Wide World of
Animals and you're running from a network, check your
printer timeout setting. Some of the charts in Wide World
of Animals take quite a long time to print (they're
complicated!), and sometimes the network gives up before
the program is done. We recommend a timeout setting of at
least 75 seconds. See your network documentation for more
information.
Printer memory problems?
---------------------------------------------------
If your printer has less than 3 megabytes installed, you
may run out of printer memory when sending multiple or
large print jobs to it (you may see an 'Error 20' printer
memory overflow message). This does not mean that Wide
World of Animals is incompatible with your printer.
Simply wait for one print job to finish before starting
another or raise the installed printer memory amount for
larger, more complex print jobs, such as some of the
highly detailed and colorful globes present in Wide World
of Animals.
Printing problem with Line Charts and Ranked Lists?
---------------------------------------------------
Some computers have trouble printing the small flags on
the Line Charts and Ranked Lists in the Country Statistics
area of Wide World of Animals. If you are having this
problem, switch to a 256-color (8-bit) video mode and try
again. The problem occurs because of an incompatibility
with some video drivers running in thousands of colors
(16-bit). The print quality is the same whether running
in 256 or thousands of colors.
Experiencing sound dropouts?
---------------------------------------------------
If you are experiencing sound dropouts in Wide World of
Animals, you may need to increase the buffer setting in
the MCI Wave control device. The default is usually 4
seconds, and may need to be raised to 6-9 seconds. You
may experience some slow-down in performance with high
buffer settings (8 or 9 seconds). Follow the directions
below to change your buffer settings :
Windows 3.1 or 3.11 - Open 'Control Panels' in the Main
program group. Open 'Drivers' and select 'MCI Sound,'
then hit 'settings.' This will bring up a slider bar
that will allow you to change the buffer setting.
Windows 95 - Open the 'Multimedia' Control Panel. Go to
the 'Advanced' page and double click on 'Media Control
Devices.' Double click on 'Wave Audio Device (Media
Control)' and hit the 'Settings' button. This will bring
up a slider bar that will allow you to change the buffer
setting.
Contacting video card manufacturers
---------------------------------------------------
For your convenience, we have included a current list of
video card manufacturers along with their phone numbers
on the Wide World of Animals CD. The file is called
'vidcards.txt' and lists popular video card manufacturers,
their main phone number, a toll free number, and bulletin
board number if available.