Quake 4 Texture compression problem.

[Chuck]

This one has beaten me severly about the head & sholders.
Doom 3 runs ok, and uses the same engine as Quake (So I'm told). Quake 4 and
Quake 3 used to run on the same P/C several video cards and dirver versions
ago, with XP SP1a. Doom 3 did not run after windows and Nvidia driver video
card updates, until SP3 and video drivers were updated. Now, Quake 4 gives
me the infamous texture compression error. There is obviously something odd
concerning OpenGl, but I haven't been able to find it.
It looks like the GL-ARB library is at the heart of the problem, and I
cannot find enough info to begin to chase various DLL's that might be
involved.

One faint possibility goes back to the P/C, in that it had an older ATI
video card in the past. (Two or three Video cards ago.)
I suppose it's remotely possible that one of the older DLL's from this card
might be involved.
There is also a possibility that an older Nvidia driver made a registry
entry (that I haven't found) that somehow blocks the dll with GL-ARB calls.

The Quake diagnostic message Texture compression unavailable is followed
by:
....unloading OpenAL DLL
sound: STEREO
X..GL_ARB_multitexture not found
X..GL_ARB_texture_env_combine not found
X..GL_ARB_texture_cube_map not found
X..GL_ARB_texture_env_dot3 not found
X..GL_ARB_texture_env_add not found
X..GL_ARB_texture_non_power_of_two not found
X..GL_NV_blend_square not found
X..GL_ARB_texture_compression not found
Fatal Error: Texture compression unavailable
Shutting down OpenGL subsystem
....wglMakeCurrent( NULL, NULL ): success
....deleting GL context: success
....releasing DC: success
....destroying window
....resetting display
....shutting down QGL
....unloading OpenGL DLL
--------------- BSE Shutdown ----------------
---------------------------------------------
Shutting down sound hardware
idRenderSystem::Shutdown()
Texture compression unavailable

Crysis and Far Cry work, haven't tried some of the older URU family games
recently.
The P/C uses AGP, (older MSI MBD, and an AMD X2 processor at ~2GHZ)

Going thru the painful process of reinstalling XP and all the other apps
just isn't worth the time & effort for one game.

 

[Chuck]

Whatever the problem was, an NVidia developer tool kit install solved it!
(PerfKit_x86_XP_6.00.0624.1248.exe 0
Interestingly enough, the install claimed I had older drivers, and installed
unnamed drivers, even though the previous drivers were the latest version
listed for the video card on the NVidia web site. ????

 

[Chuck]

Another oddity. Although Quake 4 now runs and is playable, the same texture
compression error will/may occur if game "cheat" commands are included at
the end of the "C:\Program Files\id Software\Quake 4\quake4.exe"?? These
used to work on earlier Quake 4 revs.
Realtek VR OpenGL viewer 3.0 indicates that there are still some driver
anomalies with various open gl function entry points support. Naturally, one
is in the texture area.

What a bag of worms!