Really big head-scratcher here.

that sounds strange because i am using a 9800 gt and everything works ok also windows7 home premium i have 64 bit i have no problems. of course i get the first warning i disregard it and play.

Drifter061 wrote:
Yeah I always flip right past the not recognized, then I added the string into the config so it would.

Every time I went in through it still saaid that my card is not a 3d card.

I’ve got Battlezone II running with no problems, and this, a more modern game, won’t work…

If i’m right you can mark “Don’t ask again” something like that.

what mod are you using if any. because i could play freelancer on a gforce 200 and i dont think thats a 3d card.

vorontsov’s bloom libraries require one of several hardware to function. on my laptop eg with a simple chipset the game cannot start with any bloom effects activated on mods while it works just fine without.

I have a similiar problem, vanilla Fl has ramdom crashes and doesnt recon my graph card. ATI RADEON 9250.
Even with all the patches and everyting updated.

But somehow it doesnt happens in mods , well, some mods still has ramdom crashes.

Still looking a way to play Fl w/o crashing

JFLP’s database file already contains that card (as 8500; 0x0401 and 0x0402 are listed as 8600). It’s in the same section as my card (5200FX; yes, I’m outdated), so it should have worked fine. Unless you installed 1.0c after JFLP, thus replacing JFLP’s definition. Try installing JFLP again.

JFLP (and 1.0c) also contains the 9250, so it should be recognised, but I can’t help with the crashes.

General Video Issues:

“Freelancer Does Not Recognize Your 3D Video Card…” Error Message
When you start Freelancer, you may receive the following error message:
Freelancer does not recognize your 3D video card. Freelancer may have trouble running. Would you like to continue?
This error occurs because the Freelancer video adapter database does not have an entry for the video adapter in your computer. To resolve this issue, click Yes to continue or click to clear the Perform this check every time the application runs? check box. However, if you have an old video adapter, graphics problems or other problems may result. If you have a recent video adapter, Freelancer will likely run without issue.

“Freelancer Has Detected that Your Video Card Is Running an Older Driver Version…” Error Message
When you start Freelancer, you may receive the following error message:
Freelancer has detected that your video card is running an older driver version. If you happen to experience any issues while running the game, please contact your video card manufacturer to find the latest driver for your card. Would you like to continue?
To work around this issue, click Yes to continue. However, graphical glitches or other problems may result. To resolve this issue, contact your video card hardware manufacturer to obtain and install the latest version of the driver for your video card. For information about how to contact the manufacturer of your video card, see the “References” section of this article.

“Freelancer Detected an Unsupported 3D Video Card…” Error Message
When you start Freelancer, you may receive the following error message:
Freelancer detected an unsupported 3D video card. Freelancer may have trouble running. Would you like to continue?
To work around this issue, click Yes to continue. However, graphical glitches or other problems may result. To resolve this issue, you must purchase and install a video card that is supported by Freelancer. For assistance with purchasing or installing a video card, contact your computer manufacturer.

“Freelancer Did Not Detect a 3D Capable Video Adapter in Your System” Error Message
When you try to start Freelancer, you may receive an error message that is similar to the following:
Freelancer did not detect a 3D capable video adapter in your system. If you have a 3D capable video adapter installed please try rebooting. You may need to reinstall the game.
To resolve this issue, use one or more of the following methods in the order that they appear.
Method 1: Verify That Your Adapter Meets the Minimum System Requirements
Click Start, and then click Run.
In the Open box, type dxdiag, and then click OK.
On the Display tab, verify that the Approx. Total Memory is 16.0 megabytes (MB) or more. The video adapter must have 16.0 MB for Freelancer to function correctly. If it does not, upgrade your video adapter hardware.

Note Because of video memory that may be in use when you run the DirectX Diagnostic Tool (DXDiag), this value may be a little lower than the actual total.
Method 2: Download and Install the Latest Drivers for Your Video Adapter
Contact the manufacturer of your video adapter for information about how to download and install the latest drivers for your video adapter.
Method 3: Enable Direct3D
Click Start, and then click Run.
In the Open box, type dxdiag, and then click OK.
In the DirectX Diagnostic Tool dialog box, click the Display tab or the Display 1 tab.
Click Enable next to Direct3D Acceleration, and then click Exit.
Method 4: Update DirectX
To obtain the most current version of DirectX, visit the following Microsoft Web site:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/directx/default.mspx (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/directx/default.mspx)
For additional information about how to troubleshoot display-related issues, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
263039 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/263039/ ) Games: How to Troubleshoot Display Issues

Hardware-Specific Video Issues

ATI
The following issues occur with various ATI video adapters.

To download and install the latest ATI adapter drivers, visit the following ATI Web site:
http://ati.amd.com/ (http://ati.amd.com/)
When you try to play Freelancer with an ATI Rage Fury video adapter, you may see graphical corruption.
When you try to play Freelancer with an ATI Xpert 128 PCI video adapter, the explosion effects from the Freeport 7 introduction may be missing, and you may see other graphical corruption.
When you try to start Freelancer with an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro video adapter, the title screen appears, and then the game may stop responding.
When you try to play Freelancer with an ATI Radeon Text video adapter on a Microsoft Windows XP-based computer, you may see graphical corruption and slow menu display. To work around this issue, adjust the hardware acceleration setting:
Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
Double-click Display.
Click the Settings tab, and then click Advanced.
Click the Troubleshoot tab.
Drag the Hardware acceleration slider bar one step to the left to lower the acceleration level.
Continue to lower the Hardware acceleration setting until the issue no longer occurs.
When you try to start Freelancer with the ATI Radeon VE video adapter or the ATI Radeon 8500 video adapter, a black screen may appear at startup. To resolve this issue, download and install the latest drivers for this video adapter.
When you try to play Freelancer with the ATI Radeon 7000 video adapter, some asteroids and other images may appear incomplete. To resolve this issue, download and install the latest drivers for this video adapter.
When you try to play Freelancer with the ATI Rage Fury PRO VIVO video adapter, the text is not stationary but appears to jump to different areas of the game window. To resolve this issue, download and install the latest drivers for this video adapter.
When you try to play Freelancer with the ATI Radeon DDR video adapter, Freelancer stops responding or you may see graphical corruption of objects. This issue may occur when Freelancer is installed on a Microsoft Windows 2000-based computer with the color setting set to 32-bit color. To resolve this issue, download and install the latest drivers for this video adapter.
When you try to play Freelancer with the ATI All-In-Wonder 128 video adapter, you may see graphical corruption of ships. You may also see black textures appear in unexpected places. To resolve this issue, download and install the latest drivers for this video adapter.

Matrox
The following issues occur with various Matrox video adapters.

To download and install the latest Matrox adapter drivers, visit the following Matrox Web site:
http://www.matrox.com (http://www.matrox.com)
When you try to play Freelancer with the Matrox Marvel G400 video adapter, the Manhattan city skyline may appear black. To resolve this issue, download and install the latest video drivers for this video adapter.
When you try to play Freelancer with the Millennium G550 video adapter, the interior view of certain rooms may appear orange. Or, when you try to start Freelancer, a black screen appears, and then the game stops responding. To resolve these issues, download and install the latest drivers for this adapter.
The following issues occur with the Matrox G400 video adapter.
When you try to play Freelancer with the Matrox G400 video adapter, you may see that many objects are missing from the city skylines. You may also see that some of the characters appear to be floating. To resolve this issue, download and install the latest drivers for this video adapter.
When you try to change the game window resolution setting on a Windows 2000-based or Windows XP-based computer, you may experience graphical corruption. To work around this issue, restart the game after you make changes to the resolution setting. To resolve this issue, download and install the latest drivers for this video adapter.
When you try to play Freelancer with the Matrox G400, you may see the same text rendering problems that have been reported with ATI Radeon adapters. (See previous text.)
The following issues occur with the Matrox G450 video adapter.
When you try to play Freelancer with the Matrox G450 video adapter and retail drivers, the menus may unexpectedly appear with a white background. To resolve this issue, download and install the latest drivers for this video adapter.
When you try to change the window resolution setting on a Windows 2000-based or Windows XP-based computer, you may see graphical corruption. To work around this issue, restart the game after you make changes to the resolution setting. To resolve this issue, download and install the latest drivers for this video adapter.
When you try to play Freelancer with the Matrox G400 or Matrox G450 video adapters, you may see that the color setting in the game is 16-bit color mode. This issue occurs because the Matrox video adapters have dual head display capabilities. This disables the 32-bit color depth functionality. When two monitors are connected to both VGA outputs, the distribution of memory will change. When Freelancer checks onboard video memory, it will only detect less than 32 megabytes (MB) and only support 16-bit color mode.
When you try to play Freelancer with the Matrox Millennium G-200 video adapter, many rooms may appear orange. To resolve this issue, download and install the latest drivers for this video adapter.
When you try to play Freelancer with the Matrox Parhelia video adapter, you may see a black background behind all text with capital letters, instead of the expected transparent background.
When you try to change the game window resolution in Freelancer with the Matrox Millennium G-550 video adapter on a Windows 2000-based or Windows XP-based computer, you may experience graphical corruption. To work around this issue, change the game window resolution, and then restart the game. To resolve this issue, download and install the latest drivers for this video adapter.

NVIDIA
The following issues occur with various NVIDIA video adapters.

To download and install the latest NVIDIA adapter drivers, visit the following NVIDIA Web site:
http://www.nvidia.com (http://www.nvidia.com)
When you start the game and you are using an NVIDIA Geforce FX video adapter, you receive the following message:
Freelancer does not recognize your 3D video card. Freelancer may have trouble running. Would you like to continue?
This error occurs because the Freelancer video adapter database does not have an entry for NVIDIA Geforce FX. Some video adapters were released after the game, so the game video adapter database does not include the entry for new video card. To resolve this issue, click Yes to continue or click to clear the Perform this check every time the application runs? check box. The game should run fine after that.
When you try to play Freelancer with the NVIDIA Diamond Viper V550 video adapter, you may see blue triangles appear in the game window and other graphical corruption. To resolve this issue, download and install the latest drivers for this video adapter.
When you try to start Freelancer with the TNT2 Vanta video adapter, the game stops responding at startup. To resolve this issue, download and install the latest Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL)-certified drivers.
When you try to play Freelancer with the ASUS V7700 DDR video adapter on a Microsoft Windows 98-based computer, the game may stop responding.
When you try to start Freelancer with the ASUS V6800 video adapter, the game stops responding after the startup screen appears. To resolve this issue, download and install the latest drivers for this video adapter.
The following issues occur with the NVIDIA TNT video adapter.
When you try to play Freelancer with the NVIDIA TNT video adapter, some menus may appear with a white background, instead of the expected transparent background. To resolve this issue, download and install the latest WHQL-certified drivers for this video adapter.
When you try to change the game window resolution, you may experience game instability. To resolve this issue, download and install the latest WHQL-certified drivers for this video adapter.
When you try to start Freelancer with the Maxi Gamer Xentor video adapter, the game may stop responding. This issue may occur when the game window resolution is set to 1024 x 768. To resolve this issue, download and install the latest drivers for this video adapter.
When you try to play Freelancer with the Elsa Gladiac 920 video adapter, the game may temporarily stop responding during space flight. To resolve this issue, download and install the latest drivers for this video adapter.
When you try to start Freelancer with the Winfast Geforce DDR, the title screen appears, and then the game may stop responding. To resolve this issue, download and install the latest drivers for this video adapter.
When you try to play Freelancer with the Elsa Erazor III video adapter, the textures may be missing. For example, the main graphical objects in the game appear as silhouettes. To resolve this issue, download and install the latest Detonator drivers for this video adapter.
Other Video Hardware
When you try to play Freelancer with the Maxi Gamer Cougar video adapter, some graphical objects may appear as white squares. To resolve this issue, download and install the latest drivers for this video adapter.
When you try to play Freelancer with the 3Dfx Voodoo 3 video adapter, you may see that no text or textures appear in the user interface or on graphical objects (such as signs, job boards, and dialog boxes) and that no textures appear on the graphical objects. To resolve this issue, download and install the latest drivers for this video adapter.

Note Windows 2000 and Windows XP do not support Voodoo 3 video adapters.
The following issues occur with the PowerVR Kyro II video adapter.
When you try to play Freelancer with the PowerVR Kyro II video adapter, the Manhattan city skyline may appear without textures, and many other buildings appear in black. To resolve this issue, download and install the latest Sis 315 drivers for this video adapter.
When you press ALT+TAB to switch windows, Freelancer may stop responding. This issue may occur if you use Freelancer on a Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Me)-based computer. To resolve this issue, download and install the latest drivers for this video adapter.
When you try to play Freelancer with the Hercules 3D Prophet 4000 XT video adapter, you may see graphical corruption with the cityscape launch pads. To resolve this issue, download and install the latest drivers for this video adapter.
When you play Freelancer with the Intel 82845G/GL video adapter, no fog appears in the main menu. There is currently no resolution for this issue.
When you use the Intel 810/815 video adapter, you may experience corruption of text on buttons in the Freelancer game interface. But the game installs and operates with no further issues. To troubleshoot this issue, follow these steps:
Locate the program directory in Freelancer. By default, the location is:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Freelancer
Use Notepad to open the FLConfigDatabase.txt file.
Scroll to the Intel section that is located towards the bottom of the document. Alternatively, you can search by using “0x8086” (without the quotation marks).
Locate the “810” and “815” section. This will look similar to the following:
0x7121 = “810” 0x7123 = “810” 0x7124 = “810e” 0x7125 = “810e” 0x7126 = “810” 0x7127 = “810” 0x1132 = “815” Bad8888 NoMipMap ForceSquareTextures LimitTextureSize
Edit this section by removing the “ForceSquareTextures” line. This will look similar to the following:
0x7121 = “810” 0x7123 = “810” 0x7124 = “810e” 0x7125 = “810e” 0x7126 = “810” 0x7127 = “810” 0x1132 = “815” Bad8888 NoMipMap LimitTextureSize
Save any changes that you made to the file, and then close the file.
When you try to play Freelancer with the Trident BladeXP video adapter and you click to preview a ship in the Dealer Ships pane, the ships do not appear on the Preview (center) pane of the Ship Dealer dialog box.
When you try to access various shortcut menus in Freelancer with the Compaq Presario 1100 video adapter, the menus may appear distorted. Also, the planetary rings may not appear.
When you try to play Freelancer with the Trident Video Accelerator XP4, you may experience text corruption.

Timmy did his best to try to help.

However, I have a memory of latest drivers causing this problem too, not curing it.

Drifter if you can get older drivers for your card then try them, it has solved a 3D accelerator recognition problem before for someone as I remember.

But - there is a chance your card is just too recent for FL. If you have an older card you could try it if you have the patience.

I also believe if my memory is not failing me completely that the latest DirectX release also caused someone else to not be able to run FL on his graphics card.

So - all round, we can’t always win by being up to date.

As for me - I’m way behind and loving it! rofl

All the bullshit blah, blah is just what is written on the microsoft help site, if it doesn’t help by all means scream at me, but it will not change anything.

Latest drivers are fine, I’m running a GTX260 which is much newer than your card and I’m doing it on win7 64.

For the hell of it, why not try this.

Uninstall Freelancer completely, save games, preferences, the lot. Uninstall your graphics driver. Power down your computer, pull the power cable out of the back. Take the graphics card out of the pcie slot and then push it back in again. Plug the power cable back in. Reboot your computer and it should go through the bullshit blah, blah as you put it business of detecting your graphics hardware as if it were for the first time. Let it do it’s business then install the latest Nvidia drivers.

Once you’ve done that, make sure you’re running as administrator then install freelancer again, don’t run it just exit to desktop once the setup is complete. Right click the freelancer shortcut on the desktop, click properties, shortcut, advanced then tick the box that says run as administrator, okay it, apply it, then click on compatibility, under privilege level click run as administator again and apply it.

Run the game and see what hapens. Stop freaking out, it won’t get you anywhere, and try something else instead.

Guys - I have a cheap solution for everyone who continues to have these frustrations.

You can now buy a desktop tower up to 2GHz with good sized disk and reasonable graphics card for less than £30 +delivery on e-bay.

Go get one for FL only, and rest your eyes and heart and spend your free time with your friends in Freelancer. Life is too short.

Use your new-fangly PC for the latest games that need it.