GTA Vice City Minimizing problem

[oliversion]

Heyo,
I know, I know "but we've posted that game to death!" but I need help. VC ran fine the first time I opened it. Today is the next day, and it opens, then minimizes to desktop. I've opened it about 40 times, one of which it worked in, I was so happy (I assumed that dxdiag.exe had magically done something, and alt-tabbed the game to close this window, since "I wont be needing to post" and when I tried to go back, it was broke again. I'm not willin to open the game 40 times each time to run it. Whats wrong?

toshiba satellite, xp, geforce 4 (mx), 2.something intel celeron.

note: I did fiddle with settings while in game that time it worked, but it kept running after that so i assume it was fine. if i want to restore defaults, but cant get into the game, how do i do that? (dont want to re-install, but am willing if its the only way)
thanks!

p.s. it ran smoothly in game, no glitches or stickiness

[sixf00t4]

i am not sure if you are still having problems???

sometimes just restarting will help. what version of directx do you have installed? if you want to do a system restore to restore to an earlier point in xp, go to start, all programs, accessories, system tools, system restore.

[oliversion]

still have the problem. its not every time, just most of the time. directx was 6 (the game installs 6 on top of what i had) so i upgraded to 9 and it still does it.

the problem is it immediately minimizes its self, as if i had alt-tabbed as soon as i open it, and i can never maximize it.
it never happens mid-game.

[super gerbil]

what about drivers or maybe check for patches

[oliversion]

I'm trying to find drivers, but I just read that vc will "refuse to open" in the readme.txt if the video card has less than 32 mb of its own memory, and mine has 16 according to dxdiag (geforce 4 420 go laptop card) but it has run before, so wtf? also i dont get a message saying "Insufficient memory bla bla" It just minimizes and runs (I can hear/see it when I maximize it for a split second, before it hides again)

[TheWraith517]

Thats an Infected Exe File Origionaly From Kazza And Is floating round WinMX Grab a clean Game Exe From gamecopyworld.com also nVidia Have released an updated detanator driver wich fixes bugs in vice city and midnight club only other thing is if you have nvidia nview running exit it before opening the game
Theres a special 3rd Cd {un-official} been made for vice city and theres a dvd version in the making aswell check out screen shots of the cd rom and the upcomming dvd in to pages here
http://groups.msn.com/THEWRAITH517/shoebox.msnw
under the cd rom version info is the HASH> code to find it on winmx aswell
have fun