Gears Of War (Windows) Official Questions & Answers

[joeGraf]

Q> What operating system do I need to player Gears of War (Windows)?

A. The game runs on both Windows Vista and Windows XP.

Q> Can I play online for free in Gears of War?

A. Of course. You can create a Silver profile for free and play online with it.

Q> Can I play coop games with a Silver profile?

A. Yes. You can host and play online via the new List Play feature.

Q> Can Silver profiles play verus multiplayer matches?

A. Yes, Silver profiles can play Warzone, Assassination, Execution, Annex, and King of the Hill modes are all available via List Play.

Q> Can a Silver profile earn achievements?

A. Yes, Silver profiles can be awarded any of the campaign-based achievements, single player or co-op. Silver profiles cannot earn multiplayer-only achievements as per the Windows Live policy prohibiting Silver profiles from using the Player or Ranked matchmaking system. (http://www.xbox360achievements.org/a...php?gameID=482).

Q> Can anyone play List Play matches?

A. Both Gold and Silver profiles can play in List Play matches.

Q> Can Silver players play with user created mods?

A. Yes, both Silver and Gold profiles can play and host user created content via List Play.

Q> Do I need a Gold account for DX10 support?

A. No. DX10 support is available in Vista regardless of whether you have a Live account or not.

[Pariahman]

Gears of War for Windows requires a personal computer with the following minimum system requirements:
- OS: Windows Vista or Windows XP
- Processor: 2.4+ GHz Intel; 2.0+ Ghz AMD
- RAM: 1 GB
- Hard Drive: 12 GB free hard drive space
- Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 6600+, ATI X700+
- Online Multi-player: Broadband Internet Connection, Games for Windows - LIVE

[Pariahman]

DRIVERS

You must be on a supported driver! We can't emphasize this enough.

http://www.nvidia.com/
NVIDIA ForceWare 163.71

ATI—http://www.amd.com/
ATI Catalyst driver 7.8

[Pariahman]

WHERE ARE MY USER FILES PLACED?

Logs, INI files, and other user data are all written to:
My Documents\My Games\Gears of War for Windows

[Pariahman]

REPORTING AN ISSUE

We need certain information to reproduce problems. Please include this information in your original post, at a minimum:

-Game log - located at My Documents\My Games\Gears of War for Windows\WarGame\Logs
-Description of the problem, as detailled as possible
-Video card and driver version
-OS
-CPU and system memory
-If you had a spontaneous reboot, please also include the newest file in C:\WINDOWS\Minidump

[Pariahman]

DXDIAG INFORMATION

DXDIAG is a diagnostic tool that comes as part of DirectX and helps gather all relevant information about your system and installed drivers. It's usually very helpful to have this information handy and we often ask for it in order to help you out further.

To gather the information, open the "run" menu and enter "dxdiag". After it finishes starting up there should be a "save all information" button you can use to convert the information into text format you can then cut & paste into posts.

[Pariahman]

Windows - LIVE Update!
When you first play Gears of War for Windows, an automatic update to Games for Windows -- LIVE will be downloaded. But after the update is downloaded, you’re put back to the main menu of the game. If you don’t shut down the game, the update won’t complete.

More information, including a link to the standalone update package is here:
http://gamerscoreblog.com/team/archi...06/554274.aspx

[Pariahman]

This is from a Games for Windows Live Dev:

If you are having the issue where after starting Gears of War, play proceeds for about 20-30 seconds before game crashes.

There are presently two known causes of this problem.

First, running from the DVD Autorun menu triggers this. The workaround is simply to run the game either from the Games Explorer (Start Menu->Games) or directly from the game folder in Program Files instead. We know where this is occurring, but are continuing to investigate why it is happening.

Second, some anti-malware programs have incompatibilities with G4W-L. For example, we have seen problems with older versions of Spyware Doctor, Karpensky and ZoneAlarm. Upgrading to the latest versions of this software generally solves these problems. We have found that merely turning off the software doesn't always help (and we would not advise de-activating your anti-malware anyhow), since the software is generally still doing something in the background.

If you are still having trouble beyond these two causes, or have found an incompatibility with anti-malware software we haven't mentioned here, please feel free to reply to this thread http://utforums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=584110. In the latter case, we have been working with these companies to make sure that the G4W-L problem is properly solved.

[Pariahman]

To everyone who has bought Gears for Windows and has logged an issue on the boards - this is the update as of 11/12/07.

We have people at Epic who are actively engaged and logging the issues and reproducing the problems. You may be contacted by someone at Epic in regards to a problem so they can get your logs or more information. The best place to get a response is to post your problems here: http://utforums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=583169. Creating a new thread with your problem will not get you the fastest response.

Microsoft is aware of these problems and is also actively helping. Their post is included above.

Some of the members of the boards have also offered to help out users. A few sample threads are:
http://utforums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=583980
http://utforums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=583480

Thank you for your patience.

[Pariahman]

GOW PC Issues Status as of 11/13/07.

We have logged most of the issues from this and are trying to find commonalites among the issues across the wide range of variables in any PC - video cards, drivers, OS, processors, RAM, motherboards, etc.

If you are a user who has posted from thread 1-450 in http://utforums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=583169 then your issue has been logged. We are working on the remainder.

Thanks for your patience.