Colin McRae Rally 2005 - forcing windowed mode causes "No compatible 3D cards detedted!" error

[barteks2x]

I haven't been able to get the game working in windowed mode, no matter what I tried. I was once able to get something that looked like it almost worked, but there was no display from the game and after restarting the game, it didn't work again, probably because at that time I didn't realize that "try it" doesn't actually use changed settings until I switch tabs.

[gho]

Ok, I'll start hunting the resources to try fixing it.
BTW do you have the same problems with the game demo? It would be perhaps easier for me to make testing on this smaller game pack.

update:
A preliminary test on the demo shows that the executable is obfuscated, so it needs "Hook / Hot patch" flag. In addition, the game probably requires to access at the native video card features, so move the "Video / Screen resolution" selector to "Native".
Also this way, the game crashes probably because of a recursion caused by the hot patching.
I saw that there is a GOG game release. I think it's better to make tests with the right target, please tell me what release od the game you have: GOG or DVD and if you're using any cracked exe.

[gho]

Quite a better situation with GOG full game: this one is not obfuscated, it was enough to move the "Video / Screen resolution" selector to "Native" and the game run prefectly.
Too bad the game disables the printscreen feature, no nice screenshots to show righ now.
I also had some problem to enter the player's name (strange!), but the driving control seemed ok.