Launching Games in Invalid Format?

[D-A-C]

Hey guys.

Recently Steam plays games that I previously had no trouble running such as Europa Universalis IV, Football Manager 14, Civilization V in a way that whenever they start my monitor immediately switches to invalid format.

Any ideas how to find out what's going on?


Edit

The aspect my computer is set to is 1280 x 960 btw.

[76561193857876471]

Sounds like maybe a resolution issue. This article has a section on forcing a working video mode:
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=1216-JMTZ-0860

[D-A-C]

Thanks for the help, but so far no luck.

I actually tried, uninstalling all 5 games I currently had on my PC, and uninstalling/reinstalling steam to see if that helped. No luck there.

I also tried several of the launch commands suggested in that link with FM14 but so far still no luck, any other suggestions?

[76561193857876471]

Well, if your monitor is giving the error, it could also be the refresh rate the game is trying to use.

[D-A-C]

No luck with that either, I tried the -refresh <rate> command and set it to my screens of 60.

I mean, I can play games, for example, EUIV works fine now, FTL works straight away, but in order to fix EUIV to begin with I had to go into start/EuropaUnversalis/Settings etc and tinker around with it and now I have done all the reinstalls I think its just kept my changes, and so works.

But at the moment Football Manager just doesn't want to load, everything I try it's straight to invalid format. As I said, I have played the game recently, so not sure what has changed.

The only thing I can think of is I had to do a bit of tinkering when I loaded Civilization V as it wouldn't play in DirectX 11 mode, giving that problem of 'invalid format' problem, and I tried a few recommended fixes so unless that knocked something off?

But I can't really think of what I altered for universal settings, and not just Civ V settings when working on it.