The GS plugin failed to open/initialize

[Majour]

That's the message I get every time I try to start a game from my DVD rom drive.

My system configuration looks like this (let me know if you need more info):
Intel Centrino Duo Core 2 Duo T7400 @ 2.16GHz
2GB RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon X1700
Windows Vista Home Premium 32-Bit
DirectX 10 (freshly updated, all .dll in the system32-folder)

This is the text of my emulog:

PCSX2 0.9.6 - compiled on Feb 27 2009
Savestate version: 8b400004
x86Init:
CPU vendor name = GenuineIntel
FamilyID = 6
x86Family = Intel® Core™2 CPU T7400 @ 2.16GHz
CPU speed = 2.163 Ghz
Cores = 2 physical [2 logical]
x86PType = Standard OEM
x86Flags = bfebfbff 0000e3bd
x86EFlags = 20100000

Features:
Detected MMX
Detected SSE
Detected SSE2
Detected SSE3
Detected SSSE3
Not Detected SSE4.1

Hotkeys:
F1 - save state
(Shift +) F2 - cycle states
F3 - load state
Resetting...
Ready
Bios Version 2.0



**************
rom1 NOT FOUND
**************






**************
rom2 NOT FOUND
**************






**************
erom NOT FOUND
**************



Framelimiter rate updated (UpdateVSyncRate): 59.94 fps
MTGS > Thread Started, Opening GS Plugin...
MTGS > GSopen Finished, return code: 0xffffffff

The error message I get goes like this:

An unhandled or unrecoverable exception occured, with the message:

The GS plugin failed to open/initialize.

Pcsx2 will now close. More details may be available via the emuLog.txt file.

After all of this, I went and read a couple of similar posts in this forum, where I found the mention of running the application in administrator mode. So I opened the folder, right-clicked the pcsx2 0.9.6.exe, clicked properties and checked the option to run the application as administrator on the compatibility-tab, but that did not solve the problem either.

Now I am clueless. Does anybody know what else I can do?

[LuisR14]

try running this
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/detai...layLang=en

[refraction]

do you get any other errors?

[jesalvein]

did you update your directx to march 2009 ?

EDIT : Luis is just a sharp shooter

[TheWozA]

try updating ur video card drivers ATI drivers aint the most reliable when it comes to dx10

[Majour]

Well, I already wrote that I had DirectX freshly updated in my original post, but... it appears that even though the setup doesn't prompt you to reboot your system after the installation finished, you still have to do so in order for it to work properly.

At least that's what happened - once I rebooted my system, the problem was gone.

But now that I got it working, I tried three different games, and neither of them would work as I would like them to. Maybe my CPU/GPU are too weak though.

The games I tested were Xenosaga I, Xenosaga II and Persona 4.

Xenosaga I didn't even start - after loading for a moment, all I ever got was a black screen, and shortly after the dvd rom drive would come to a stop.

Xenosaga II booted correctly, but whenever there were any 3D graphics on-screen (so basically most of the time), the framerate would be 4fps at best.

Persona 4 yielded the best results so far, I was getting something between 30 and 40 fps, but the sound was quite slow and jumpy.

One of my main problems is this stupid ATI Mobility Radeon X1700 for which I can't find a more recent official driver. AMD/ATI stopped supporting notebook drivers for VISTA 32-bit and redirect customers to their respective notebook manufacturer, in my case ASUS.

The only catalyst driver I found on the official ASUS site was from April 2007.

Anyway, would be nice if any of you could give some feedback on whether my system configuration should be strong enough to run PCSX2 smoothly once I had all drivers updated and optimized the configuration of PCSX2. Or let me know if it's a complete waste of time with what hardware I got at the moment.

[skoreanime]

You just answered your own question.

Even with the best possible driver and configuration, a laptop is a laptop. Mobile processors just don't cut it PCSX2, especially for games like Xenosaga. If you spend the money and buy one of those extreme mobile processors, like Intel X9100, you'd see a definite boost in performance. But with that kinda money, you could easily build a desktop PC that can easily meet the requirements of the emulator.