Windows2000: D5 won’t start (colors, videodrivers, …)

> I use Win 2000 and tried to install Delphi 5 enterprise
> but everytime I try to start Delphi, it hangs (without any
> error occuring). I tried to reinstall it for several times, but
> nothing worked so far
>
> Any ideas?

There is a bug in some video card drivers in the way they handle the ImageList
API. When an ImageList is being built in memory that cards will freeze the
computer or corrupt the images when they have to swap the ImageList back out to
main memory to complete the building on large imagelist’s like the 180+ image
component pallete list. The S3 chipset has been particularly problematic (Win98
is even worse).

Try these

1) Get the latest driver (www.s3.com or your vendor if your vendors
doesn’t work, try the S3 as they tend to be more compliant)
2) Start Delphi with the -ns switch
3) Under the [display] section of the SYSTEM.INI file
add the following line
BusThrottle=1 (reboot afterwards)
4) Reboot in safe mode and start Delphi. Goto the properties of the
component pallet and hide all the controls that you rarely use. This
will reduce the imagelist that is getting built and might get you under
the threshold.
5) reduce the hardware acceleration for the card.
(display->properties->settings->advances->performance)
6) play with color depth/resolution 1024×768 in 16 bit color seems the
worse (particularly with Delphi 3).
7) Get the latest DirectX drivers.

Also Delphi 5 can not run in Win98 under 16 color mode. You must be at
least at 256 colors.

PS. If the BusThrottle works for you this is by far the
best solution. All it does is instruct the driver that it must give a
little time slice to the OS so affects on performance are not noticable
(so far no one has reported back to me that they can even tell a
difference between using and not using the BusThrottle setting except
that Delphi runs). Unfortunately not all drivers respect this setting.

Jeff Overcash (TeamB)