I see others have had issues getting the game to work, so have I.

Going to give it up for the time being, there is certainly something in my system it doesn't like.

I've closed down firewall, lowered resolution and quality settings, updated drivers.

Nothing seems to get it running properly.

So whilst what little of the game I saw looked interesting I'll try it out again after the next patch, or if I get another new driver.

This is only the second game I've not been able to get working on Vista, the other was a five year old demo; its the third piece of software in total since I got vista earlier this year. Always hated XP so cant revert, nor do I wish to go back to W2K.

Everquest, worked great which was something of a surprise.

Hope to see you all soon(ish).

what errors does it give when you launch vo?

Errors:

Windows 6.00.6001 (platform 2) Service Pack 1
Mon Oct 13 19:00:03 2008
archive returned 0
[10/13/08 19:00:03] Found driver: "Windows Sound (WAV) driver". Type 1, Version 8.1. Load @0x002e0000
[10/13/08 19:00:03] Instantiate address: 002E2450
[10/13/08 19:00:03] Found driver: "DirectX8.1 GKGL driver". Type 5, Version 70.1. Load @0x00690000
[10/13/08 19:00:03] Instantiate address: 00693710
[10/13/08 19:00:03] Found driver: "DirectX9 GKGL driver". Type 5, Version 70.0. Load @0x02bd0000
[10/13/08 19:00:03] Instantiate address: 02BD3900
[10/13/08 19:00:03] Found driver: "OpenGL Reference GKGL driver". Type 5, Version 70.0. Load @0x003a0000
[10/13/08 19:00:03] Instantiate address: 003B0440
[10/13/08 19:00:03] Found driver: "Vista Sound driver". Type 1, Version 8.0. Load @0x00320000
[10/13/08 19:00:03] Instantiate address: 003217EC
Input driver initialized.
[10/13/08 19:00:11] Flight-Assist mode enabled.
[10/13/08 19:00:11] Auto-Aim enabled.
Welcome to Vendetta Online.

[10/13/08 19:00:22] Welcome to Vendetta Online.

[10/13/08 19:00:22] Welcome to Vendetta Online.
[10/13/08 19:00:27] [100] *** Channel 100 is active.
[10/13/08 19:00:27] You are entering Dau L-11
[10/13/08 19:00:28] *** You have used 0h 48m of your 8-hour trial.
[10/13/08 19:00:36] [100] <Jewells Nallorin> Right Ret... Smurffette
[10/13/08 19:00:41] [100] <Jewells Nallorin> hehe
Welcome to Vendetta Online.

[10/13/08 19:04:19] Welcome to Vendetta Online.

[10/13/08 19:04:19] Welcome to Vendetta Online.
[10/13/08 19:04:25] [100] *** Channel 100 is active.
[10/13/08 19:04:25] You are entering Dau L-11
[10/13/08 19:04:25] *** You have used 0h 51m of your 8-hour trial.
[10/13/08 19:04:38] [100] <yodaofborg> it moves the distance bar and info down to the bottom of the screen, where it belongs.

Where it shows the welcome, all I was seeing was the black screen and the 'loading screen..., cancel' box

You know, to be honest, I would have expected you to have used more than 51 minutes of your trial, after all the incredibly snarky and banal comments and "suggestions" you've posted. I guess that's what I get for assuming people aren't utter newbs if they pretend not to be.

Anyway, as you can probably tell from the error log you've posted the game starts up fine and even connects to the server and receives chat, but has trouble loading the sector. Could be the sector's down, or your computer freaks out trying to load the graphics, or that you're not quite patient enough. In any of these cases, the way to deal with it is not thinking "I'll come back after the next patch in the hopes that the problem I've barely told anyone anything about will be fixed by sheer stroke of luck." You would would be helping yourself and the developers if you didn't just give up and wandered off.
Which is also, if you notice, the one of the reasons the "I quit if you don't change this!" argument isn't an actual argument.

We run it on a Vista64 machine at the office, for testing purposes. What sort of videocard do you have? We've experienced no problems with it on an Nvidia 8600, and we have a number of other users/guides (Firemage, etc) who have been running it on Vista64 for some time.

My if you're an example of the type of person that 'lives' here I am mighty glad to be going.

Which bit of 'the screen shows black' were you having a problem with?

So yeh, the graphics displaying seems to be a problem. I have posted, I did it under the Windows section, which is where I figured that sort of thing got done - at least so the other posts led me to believe.

I wonder if u have ever had the explanation of assume?

I was posting an opinion about "I quit if you don't change this!", it wasn't meant to be an argument.

I've spent a few hours trying to get it to work, it usually doesn't; twice it did, but only for a few minutes. I decided I had expended enough time, and posted what I thought was a polite post (I blamed my setup/system you might notice), you chose to be rude. Being rude is easy: Are you one of those pirates who is concerned over the size of his epenis?

@ incarnate

Saphire Radeon HD4970. I can post a Dxdiag if required.

Hmm. We don't have any late-model Radeons at the office. Obvious question, but have you upgraded to the latest drivers from AMD?

Yes. Did it before I actually tried VO, been considering trying previous drivers, would hardly be the first time the latest driver wasn't the best.

Might try it tomorrow, only problem is that the previous driver crashed when running a specific piece of software, seems to be ok in the new one. Ah well.

1 thing I reckon could be causing this is (maybe) the latest ATI's drivers DX 9 emulation (thats a DX 10 card). One thing you could try to do to get it working for now, is manually change VO's DX mode to 8.1. To do this, goto the directory that VO is installed in, and find the file config.ini, open it with notepad (or whatever) and find the line

VideoDriver=DirectX9 GKGL driver

Change it so it reads

VideoDriver=DirectX8.1 GKGL driver

save the file and launch VO, if this works, it will no doubt be fixed by ATI in up-coming driver releases, if it does not, I am wrong, and you can feel free to call me names.

Oh yeah, and Genka is one of VO's comedians, I am one of those pirates with a problem about the size of his epenis, its hard to find etrousers that fit!

A couple of other things to try:
Since you are able to get to the login screen, go to Options and then Video Options and then Click on Change Driver... and try either DirectX 8.1 or OpenGL.
If neither one of those work, then there certainly is something strange.

When you start up VO, do you see a spinning station behind the login menu?

opengl works the best, not enough to be playable, but tantalisingly close.

lowest/minimum settings and resolution seems to little or no effect.

directx 8.1 didn't seem to make any difference.

Stopping the station showing when docked also seems to have helped; it doesn't, however, cure things, but does make a difference.

Actually, the very lowest settings seem to have some effect, doesn't matter on resolution though.

But cant get it working well enough to play properly, often problems loading, and jumping between systems or within system give me a black screen (Jumping when it doesn;t work gives me just the chat window except for the black screen)

If it doesn't work in OpenGL, that's pretty bizarre. That basically implies something drastically wrong with the videocard drivers. Or with the card itself.

By the "lowest settings", are you using the Visual Quality settings? I think the lowest is 16MB or some such, which disables practically everything. Or, you can just disable everything yourself (including anti-aliasing and the like).

Have you run anything other than EverQuest on this system? Like, maybe.. Doom3 or the Crysis demo or some such?

I don't play many games, have been using warhammer online; 8,8 gave me frequent problems, not had any with 8.9 - so far. Again, not tried warhammer with 8.7.

I've run crysis demo on decent settings, although not since I used v8.7, using 8.9 now, 8,8 did actually seem less reliable than 8.9. Might try 8.7

Will have to give crysis a go on latest drivers.

Actually, something that would probably be helpful at this point would be a screenshot of what you have displayed in-game. Right now, it sounds like your system is trying to preform a lot of the functions in software instead of hardware, but dxdiag's tests would have highlighted that case. There are also individual logfiles for each of VO's video drivers, which may be helpful- here's my directx9.log for comparison:

[10/15/08 14:47:05] Initializing D3D9...success!
[10/15/08 14:47:05] Setting up Mode List
Found 'NVDD32.DLL', 'NVIDIA GeForce FX 5500' driver version 4.14.10.8198
[10/15/08 14:47:14] Setting test mode 0
[10/15/08 14:47:14] SetMode(0, "");
HAL (mixed vp)
Creating D3DDevice (window, 800, 600, format = D3DFMT_X8R8G8B8, depth = D3DFMT_D24X8, aatype = 0, aaquality = 0)...success.
Initializing Device Objects...success.
Restoring Device Objects...
success.
Reloading Textures...done.
[10/15/08 14:47:14] Device has 264241152 bytes total.
[10/15/08 14:47:15] D3D9 is valid.
[10/15/08 14:47:15] SetMode(13, "Vendetta");
HAL (mixed vp)
Creating D3DDevice (window, 1024, 768, format = D3DFMT_X8R8G8B8, depth = D3DFMT_D24X8, aatype = 0, aaquality = 0)...success.
Initializing Device Objects...success.
Restoring Device Objects...
success.
Reloading Textures...done.
Switching to fullscreen, 1024, 768, format = D3DFMT_X8R8G8B8, depth = D3DFMT_D24X8, aatype = 0, aaquality = 0.
Restoring Device Objects...
Switching to window, 1024, 768, format = D3DFMT_X8R8G8B8, depth = D3DFMT_D24X8, aatype = 0, aaquality = 0.
Restoring Device Objects...

You aren't, by chance, trying to run the game in a window with a different color depth than your desktop? On a different note, nearly all graphics cards these days come with a configuration/utility program, usually auto-loaded or accessible through Window's Control Panel- go there and poke around, setting as many options as you can to "Application controlled". That way, it won't be forcing certain actions or effects onto your programs, some of which can be highly detrimental (or, conversely, highly beneficial. If, say, the program has a lot of jagged edges, you can force antialiasing to always be on and smooth those out).

Thx IRS I'll check that out.

New drivers v8.10 were released two days ago, so I'll check those out then see what ways I'm slackin'. :D

And there is the try out 8.7 option I keep thinking of doing., but shall keep that option for 'last resort'.

It is amazing how quick 8.10 drivers were released after 8.9

Maybe yer gripe is with Microsoft, and the devs not having a 64bit doze client, but I tested the game today with the same videocard you have, but in a 32bit vista, and all ran fine, so it is not a video card issue, its a vista 64 bit one.

You must be a newb if you think running any version of Windows though is the norm, and thinking people run a 64bit OS besides linux with no problems in games? Well, yeah, like you say, you might not play many, but many folks with your OS and your GFX card cannot even run Crysis at all.

[edit]

Microsoft Office has bugs in Vista 64bit, and you expect a none MS product not to?

Vista64 runs 32bit apps just fine.

Tried new drivers, still no joy.

I've actually loaded the latest drivers in linux and downloaded VO for linux and tried it out. Works well, mostly; looks like lag of some description, not necessarily internet lag, but gives that impression; will try and get a couple of screenies tomorrow.