Special Force slash Soldier Front

Up to now, I'm still getting hits about the Soldier Front (locally known as Special Force) error message "cannot run multiple instances of soldier front" and I can't believe I haven't blogged yet about my analysis on the problem (I kind of did, but it's chopped into multiple posts).

Back to the problem: Soldier Front (or Special Force) will only run on monitors with the screen resolution of 1024 x 768 or higher. And higher means both horizontal (at least 1024) and vertical (at least 768). Like in my case, I used to play on a 17-inch widescreen Samsung with a maximum resolution of 1440 x 720 and I couldn't run Soldier Front on it. I believed it wasn't my CPU cuz it's still kinda new. So I searched the net for solutions and did what most of them said - install the latest video card driver. I did that despite the fact that my shop computers could run Soldier Front even on old video card driver. And just like what I expected, the "latest driver" thing didn't work.

Until instinct told me to test the game on an old 17-inch CRT monitor (AOC) which has a resolution of 1024 x 768. So I connected the old CRT to my cpu, adjusted the resolution to 1024 x 768 (since it's still trying to display via the 1440 x 720 resolution that my desktop was set to), and after restarting the PC, lo and behold! Soldier Front worked! Just to make sure, I changed the CRT's resolution to a lower one (800 x 600), and yes I was right, the game wouldn't work on a lower resolution.

Right now, I use a 19-inch widescreen LG with the max resolution of 1440 x 990. It cost me a new monitor to play the game, and somehow it is worth it. I don't just play SF, anyway. Cabal and Crazy Kart also looks great on the new LG.


PS: For Windows XP users, if your computer restarts itself upon entering SF, make sure to install a security update from the Microsoft website (or you can Google the file) called WindowsXP-KB926255-x86-ENU.exe...