Chessmaster 10th Edition
Version 1.0.0

Table of Contents:

I.      General Information
II.     Late Breaking Changes to the Documentation
III.	What Problems Still Exist?
IV.     Where to find the Chessmaster FAQ
V.      Technical and Customer Support

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I. *** General Information ***

1. The minimum system requirements for running Chessmaster 10th Edition are:
Supported OS: Windows® 98/ME/XP (Chessmaster 10th Edition does not officially support Windows 2000 or NT)
Tested Service Packs: Win 2000 - Service Pack 4, Win XP - Service Pack 1
Processor: Pentium® III 450 MHz or AMD Duron™ 600MHz
RAM: 128 MB
Video Card: 4Mb  
(For 3D game play, the supported graphic cards are GeForce™ 1/2/3/4/FX Families and ATI Radeon 7500/8000/ 9000 Families)
Minimum Screen Resolution: 1024x768 (lower resolutions not supported, even if most of the game modes should work)
Sound Card: optional but recommended
DirectX® Version: DirectX 9
CD-ROM: 4X CD-ROM or better
Hard Drive Space: 540 MB
Multiplayer:  56 Kbps or better for Internet or LAN play

2. The recommended system requirements for running Chessmaster 10th Edition are:
Supported OS: Windows® 98/ME/XP (Chessmaster 10th Edition does not officially support Windows 2000 or NT)
Tested Service Packs: Win 2000 - Service Pack 4, Win XP - Service Pack 1
Processor: Pentium III 1Gz or more recent
RAM: 512MB
Video Card: ATI Radeon™ 9000 family, GeForce™ FX family
Screen Resolution: 1280x1024
Sound Card: recommended
DirectX® Version: DirectX 9
CD-ROM: 16X CD-ROM
Hard Drive Space: 1650 MB, allowing a full install
Multiplayer:  broadband

3. Chessmaster 10th Edition uses Miles Sound System. Copyright © 1991-2004 by RAD Game Tools, Inc.
Chessmaster 10th Edition uses Bink Video. Copyright (C) 1997-2004 by RAD Game Tools, Inc.

4. Chessmaster 10th Edition uses a "CD Refresh" form of copy protection. The first time you run Chessmaster 10th Edition after installing the program, you will be required to put in one of the Chessmaster 10th Edition CDs. After that time, you may start the program without one of these CDs for a certain length of time before being asked for the CD again. In general, you may use the program for approximately two weeks or approximately two dozen sessions before the program will ask you to put in one of your Chessmaster 10th Edition CDs, verifying that you possess one of them.
  However, if you chose not to install all the sound files, you may still need one or all CDs at any time, depending on which Chessmaster features you use. So it is always a good idea to have your CDs on hand, in case the program requires them.

5. Chessmaster 10th Edition needs up to 20 MB of free hard drive space to run smoothly, due to audio requirements. Along with the needs of other Windows applications that may be running, along with the requirements of Windows' swapfile, we recommend having at least 30 MB free hard drive space on the drive where you installed Chessmaster 10th Edition before launching the program.

6. We strongly recommend to not install Chessmaster into your system's "Windows" folder or in any partition's root (ex: directly on C: or D:).

7. For users of Windows XP or Windows 2000: to install Chessmaster, you must have administrator privileges on your computer system. Otherwise, the installation will fail.

8. If you're using the minimal installation, Chessmaster will usually ask you to insert the CDs for needed files. If your CD/DVD-ROM is low speed, please wait for the drive to initialize before clicking on the Retry button.

8. For low performance computers, we strongly recommend to set up your desktop on the 800x600 resolution, 16 bits, and to select "2D boards only" in the Settings program which appears upon the 1st execution of Chessmaster 10th Edition. You can also find the Settings program in Chessmaster's menu from Windows's Start / Programs menus.

9. The Chessmaster 10th Edition CDs contain an electronic version of the Chessmaster 10th Edition manual in PDF format, in the "Manual" folder of the CD. This file was also copied to your hard drive, in the target folder that you selected for installing Chessmaster 10th Edition. This file's format can be read by the Adobe Acrobat Reader program, and the installation for the Acrobat Reader program is also contained in the "Manual" folder of CD #2. Assuming that you have installed the Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can access the online manual from within Chessmaster 10th Edition at any time by pressing F1.

10. Compatibility Issues

Chessmaster 10th Edition was tested on a wide range of CPUs, as well as over different 30 video cards and over a dozen different sound cards. Following are some of the hardware incompatibilities you may experience:
-- On NVidia GeForce 4 MX 440, when the user starts a game and changes Antialiasing to 1x and switches the Stereo 3D feature ON, the game crashes.

11. Drivers
To avoid any compatibility problems, always update your graphic card drivers to the most recently available versions.
For GeForce cards, go to www.nvidia.com <http://www.nvidia.com>. The latest drivers available at the moment of writing were 56.72 for Windows 2000/XP and 56.64 for Windows 98/ME.
For Radeon cards, go to www.atitech.com  <http://www.atitech.com>. The latest drivers available at the moment of writing were Catalyst 4.5 for Windows 2000/XP and Catalyst 4.3 for Windows 98/ME.

The game was tested successfully on the following card/driver combinations:
NVIDIA GeForce2 Ultra - 52.16
NVIDIA Geforce 3 - 53.04
NVIDIA GeForce 3 TI 200 - 6.14.10.5303
NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440 - 56.64
ATI Radeon 8500 - Catalyst 4.3 (Win98/Me), Catalyst 4.4 (Win2k/XP)
ATI Radeon 9000 - Catalyst 4.3 (Win98/Me), Catalyst 4.4 (Win2k/XP)
ATI Radeon 9000 PRO - Catalyst 4.2
ATI Radeon 9600 - Catalyst 4.2

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II. *** Late Breaking Changes to the Documentation ***

The following features were omitted from the Chessmaster manual. They are explained here in detail.

1. The Mentor Lines and Visual Thinking features were omitted from the manual. Here's how they work:
To use Visual Thinking, choose the Windows/Visual Thinking menu command. Watch the chessboard dynamically update as
CHESSMASTER considers its best line. You can use the VCR controls to move back and forth in the display.
To pause and resume Visual Thinking, use the Hold and Resume buttons.
Visual Thinking is only available in the Training and Set-Up Position game modes.

To use Mentor Lines, choose the Mentor/Mentor Lines command. Watch the window dynamically update as CHESSMASTER considers its best line. The display will show:
a. The time CHESSMASTER takes to predict the moves
b. The number of moves (depth) that CHESSMASTER is thinking about
c. The material and positional advantage (scor e) that would result if all the moves are played out as predicted by CHESSMASTER
Note: A positive score means that White is winning, and a negative number means Black is winning.
Briefly speaking, this window allow you to see "running commentary" by Chessmaster about the position of the current game. This commentary will run indefinitely, until the status of the current game is changed, at which point the commentary will begin again with the new position of the current game. When opened, this window automatically launches a "mentor" engine instance to watch the game. This will, like the Visual Thinking Window, take up as much CPU time as a computer personality that is actually playing the game. 
  The data that is displayed in this window is identical in content and layout to the Thinking Lines window. The "Best Lines" control of this window allows you to view this data in two different ways. If you select 1 (one) best move to be shown, then the window will show the single best move "over time". In other words, as the Chessmaster engine searches deeper, the most recent "best move" will be replaced by a newer one AT THE BOTTOM OF THE LIST. This is very important to remember -- if "Best Moves" equals one, then the best move is always at the BOTTOM of the list. If "Best Moves" is greater than one, then the Mentor Lines window will show a number of lines equal to the number of best moves that you have asked for. These moves will be sorted by score FROM THE TOP DOWN. So, if "Best Moves" is greater than one, then the best move is always at the TOP of the list.
Mentor Lines is only available in the Training and Set-Up Position game modes.

2. The AI personalities rating displayed in the Set Up Personality window is the base rating for that player. The actual rating (displayed in the Select Personality window) is affected by the power of your CPU, so differences might exist.

3. In Tournament mode, games can't be saved individually. After the tournament ends, all the games in that tournament can be saved as a big PGN file.

4. The BMP format recognized by the Wallpaper feature is 256 colors or more. Also, the preview pane of the "File Open" window will display only a part of the larger bitmap wallpapers.

5. Chessmaster 10th Edition includes support for Endgame Databases, which are files that can tell Chessmaster exactly how to play any ending that has few enough pieces on the board. Chessmaster 10th Edition automatically installs all 4-man endgame database (note that the two kings are always included in the total number of pieces, or "men", on the board). If you chose to install the endgame database as well, then several of the most useful 5-man files were also installed on your computer. The Chessmaster personality, and all Grandmaster personalities, will automatically use the endgame databases for play, much in the same way that an opening book is used. None of the other computer personalities that ship with the game will use the endgame databases, but any personality that you create can use them if you select the "Endgame Databases" option in the "Set Up Personality" dialog.
  Additionally, the "Advice" tab of the "Current Situation Report" window will show additional data if the current position of the game has few enough pieces. For example, if one side in the current game has a King and a Queen, and the other side has a King and a Rook, the Coach window will show all of the legal moves for the current position, and how many moves it is to checkmate or draw for each of them.
[to verify this]
  For more information about Endgame Databases, including the tool which will allow you to generate the complete set of 5-man (and even 6-man!) database files, just go to www.chessmaster.com.

6. The Engine Preferences dialog, which is only available in Training Mode via "Preferences -> Engine", contains two settings for certain mentor features. "Mentor Transposition Table Memory" lets you modify how much memory Chessmaster will allocate whenever a mentor engine instance is launched. Mentor engine features include: Advice, Game Analysis, Quick Hint, Solve for Mate, and the Visual Thinking and Mentor Lines windows. Note that using too high a setting here can cause your computer to slow down considerably, if you tell it to allocate more memory than is currently available on your computer. Therefore, it is strongly recommended that you do not use more than 32 MB of memory unless you are comfortable that your computer is able to successfully handle larger values. Note that if you change this value, it will not take affect until a new mentor engine is launched.
  The "Blunder Alert Threshold" setting allows you to specify the sensitivity at which the "Blunder Alert" feature will notify you that you have made a potentially bad move. The LOWER the value, the MORE LIKELY that you will receive an alert. Basically, this value is equal to the number of points of material (or positional considerations) you are likely to lose due to your last move. So, if you raise the value to its maximum of 3.0, then you will only be notified if you make a blunder that loses a piece.

7. The "Playback Move" menuitem, available in most game modes, plays back the audio for the most recently made move in the game. This feature is intended for those who are playing a game blindfolded, or are visually impaired. This menuitem also is activated by pressing CTRL+V.

8. There is a "Copy Contents" feature available via right-clicking on either the Thinking Lines or the Mentor Lines window. Simply put, selecting this menuitem will copy the contents of this window to the Windows clipboard.

9. The Tournament game mode contains a menu group under the "Actions" menu called "Adjudicate". These menu items allow you to declare the result of a tournament game (White Wins, Black Wins or Draw) between two computer personalities without having to wait for the game to finish.

The following clarifications to Chessmaster 10th Edition features and/or modifications of features took place after the manual was completed:

1. While the Chessmaster Development and Quality Assurance teams have done their outmost to ensure that Chessmaster 10th Edition is as free of bugs as possible, there is a statistical likelihood that some bugs have made it through all rigorous testing procedures only to be found by YOU. 

  Unfortunately, every once in a while a bug can cause a program to "crash", shutting it down immediately. Because Chessmaster 10th Edition now uses the Winboard protocol for all of its chess engines, these engines are actually SEPARATE programs that constantly communicate with the Chessmaster main program. While Chessmaster automatically closes all the King instances upon crashing, there are still very rare instances when these engine processes may still be running "in the background," and may still be churning away on the current game, taking up your computer's memory and CPU time. The only way to shut these engines down is to access the Windows Task Manager (usually by pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL) and looking for the name of the chess engine program that is still running. Chessmaster 10th Edition's engine is called "TheKing". You would then highlight any entry in the program list that is called "TheKing", and press the "End Task" button.
  Also, if you happen to close Chessmaster by using the Windows Task Manager, be aware that the King's engine will NOT be removed automatically. You have to look for any entry in the program list that is called "TheKing", and press the "End Task" button.

2. If you are concerned about optimizing the performance of the Chessmaster engine, be sure to follow these guidelines:
-- Run as few other programs as possible while you are running Chessmaster.
-- Use as few child windows as possible. Some of these windows (most notably Chess Coach, Mentor Lines, Thinking Lines and Visual Thinking) can take up a decent amount of CPU time due to either their visual updates or because they might cause a mentor engine instance to be launched.
-- Do not activate the Blunder Alert feature in the Training Mode. This feature will also launch a mentor engine instance to watch your game.
-- Do not switch to other game modes, or access other game features or dialogs while running a game, and try to avoid adjusting game settings (such as the players or the time control) in the middle of a game. Some of these features/dialogs will actually restart any chess engines that may be associated with the current game, causing any memory that these engines has allocated (used to "look ahead," among other things) to be destroyed. This, of course, will lower the quality of play.
-- In the "Piece Movement" tab of the Sound dialog, select "No Sounds." This will prevent the program from taking up a significant portion of time queuing up and playing piece movement sounds.
-- Be wary when modifying the default engine values in the Engine Settings window. The default values are: Win98,Me,XP - Engine 1, Blunder 2; Win 2000 - Engine 1; Blunder 1

3. If you are concerned about optimizing the framerate for the 3D chess sets, we suggest the following:
-- Go to "Preferences -> Board Settings" and turn off reflections, shadows, transitions, bump mapping, antialiasing and glare. Realistic shadows cause the biggest dip in performance, followed by complex shadows, reflections, glare, simple shadows and then bump mapping. Antialiasing also eats a lot of your processor's ressources. 
-- Run Windows in a 16-bit display mode instead of a 32-bit mode. For significantly older cards, this could cause a very noticeable performance increase.

4. Chessmaster automatically considers your graphic card's performance and alters the default settings accordingly. The default values are: Shadows - Complex, Reflections - OFF, Bump Mapping - ON, Transitions - ON. If you want to change any of these settings, just go to "Preferences -> Board Settings".

5. Chessmaster uses a third engine instance (called the "Mentor" engine) for all "mentor" features, such as Advice, Game Analysis, Hint and Solve for Mate (as well as providing data for the Post Game Analysis, Mentor Lines and Visual Thinking windows). Unfortunately, starting up any of these features will restart the Mentor engine and any analysis data that is currently in the Mentor Lines or Visual Thinking windows will be lost.

6. You may notice that computer players sometimes make their moves very quickly (usually during the opening moves of a game), and that other audio/visual aspects of the program (such as piece movement audio and the updating of the board and child windows) seem to lag behind or even get lost in the speed of the consecutive moves. This is because the actual moves themselves are given the highest priority in Chessmaster. The engine, in a nutshell, gets to do what it wants, WHEN it wants. For example, making the engine wait to move so that the audio for the previous move can finish playing could possibly cause the engine to lose a game by running out of time when it normally would not have done so. 
  So, let's assume that you are watching a game between two computer players. If this game starts with a flurry of opening book moves on both sides, you may not hear or see anything, other than the moves being made on the board, until all of the moves have been made and one of the engines starts thinking (out of opening book). After a short time, all of the windows will be updated with the current data, but much of the piece movement audio may be lost.

7. If you experience choppy audio in Tutorials or Natural Language Advice/Analysis, it could be caused by one of several problems:
-- You might need to update your drivers for your sound card and/or CD-ROM drive. Chessmaster "streams" its audio and sometimes requires several megabytes of compressed audio data, assuming that the CD-ROM will be ready to retrieve the data when asked. If your CD-ROM is lagging behind (either because it is too slow, needs updated drivers, or Windows is generally slow), then you may hear the audio skip and jump.
-- Another possible cause is not having enough free hard drive space. Chessmaster sometimes uses your hard drive as temporary storage for large quantities of audio. If your hard drive is full, and it cannot accommodate the space requirement, then Chessmaster has to search for other means of storing the data. This can cause the audio to stop and start. Freeing up hard drive space is the way to solve this cause of the problem.
-- Your machine speed is just too slow to successfully pull all of the audio from the CD, for any of several reasons. The best way to solve this problem is to use the Full installation option and copy the large audio files to your hard drive. This will maximize the speed at which the audio can be handled, but does require an additional 770 megabytes of hard drive space for all three large data files.

8. Although you can play Rated Games against user-created personalities and imported Winboard engines, we recommend that you refrain from doing so. It is very difficult to accurately determine the rating of a personality that you create, or to accurately calculate how well an imported engine will play on your computer. Therefore, although you may play Rated Games against these types of personalities, it is possible, and perhaps quite easy, to make your overall rating less accurate when you do so. The ratings for the personalities in Chessmaster were tested over many thousands of games, a large portion of which were played against rated human players. The ratings for these personalities is believed to be accurate to within 50 points of their "real world" equivalent. Only playing Rated Games against these personalities will keep your rating as accurate as possible.

9. Using the LAN game mode requires that your computer have the IPX protocol installed.

10. For the Online game mode to function properly, the ports that need to be opened are:
	TCP: 668, 40000 - 42999
	UDP: 41006, 44000, 45000, 45001
for the ubi.com matchmaking services and
	UDP: 17110
for the game communication. The game was designed to facilitate connectivity even if the computer is connected through a NAT to the internet (but keep in mind that not all router/NAT combinations work). If you can't connect to the matchmaking services or to a game server, please contact your network administrator and provide him this information.

11. During Online play, the ladders, tournaments and simul games are not rated. 

12. During ladders, tournaments and simul games, every victory is worth one point and every draw is worth 0.5 points.

13. To be able to create tournaments, simul games or ladders, a player must have played at least 50 rated games.

14. Players can play a scheduled tournament game even before the scheduled time, if both of them agree upon this and join the game. However, there is a time limit - you can join a scheduled game with at most 3 hours before the scheduled hour. This can speed up tournaments, if all players are present and willing to play this way.

15. 
The Global Reward System 

The Online play contains a hidden reward system based on the GRP - the global reward points. To put it simply, each game offer players reward points; new game modes or add-ons to the personal profile are unlocked according to the number of points gained.
The amount of reward points gained by playing is as follows:

Unrated Games
-	defeat: 1 point
-	draw against a weaker player, rating difference >200: 1 point
-	draw against a weaker player, rating difference (50,200): 1 point
-	draw against a weaker player, rating difference (0,50): 1 points
-	draw against a stronger player, rating difference (0,50): 1 points
-	draw against a stronger player, rating difference (50,200): 2 points
-	draw against a stronger player, rating difference >200: 2 points
-	victory against a weaker player, rating difference >200: 2 points
-	victory against a weaker player, rating difference (50,200): 3 points
-	victory against a weaker player, rating difference (0,50): 3 points
-	victory against a stronger player, rating difference (0,50): 4 points
-	victory against a stronger player, rating difference (50,200): 5 points
-	victory against a stronger player, rating difference >200: 7 points

Rated Games:
-	defeat: 1 point
-	draw against a weaker player, rating difference >200: 1 point
-	draw against a weaker player, rating difference (50,200): 1 point
-	draw against a weaker player, rating difference (0,50): 3 points
-	draw against a stronger player, rating difference (0,50): 3 points
-	draw against a stronger player, rating difference (50,200): 5 points
-	draw against a stronger player, rating difference >200: 7 points
-	victory against a weaker player, rating difference >200: 5 points
-	victory against a weaker player, rating difference (50,200): 7 points
-	victory against a weaker player, rating difference (0,50): 9 points
-	victory against a stronger player, rating difference (0,50): 10 points
-	victory against a stronger player, rating difference (50,200): 12 points
-	victory against a stronger player, rating difference >200: 15 points

Simultaneous Exhibitions:
The games are considered rated and the host receives a double reward for each draw or victory.

Clan Membership:
Joining a clan gives 5 reward points. 
Being the clan founder gives 5 reward points.
Being the clan champion (best player) gives 2 reward points at any time (if a player falls back then returns to the top it gets the 2 points again)

To prevent cheating, a player can't create more than one clan/ladder every week and one tournament every day. 

The amount of points needed to advance a star (there are four star shapes and three colors for each shape; the stars are visible in the Player List, next to the player's name):
20 points initial increment increasing by 15 for each level (so you can get a star at 20, 55, 105, 160, 225, 300, etc)

The amount of points needed to increase in title (titles are visible in the player's profile):
10 points initial increment increasing by 10 for each level (so you can get a title at 10, 30, 60, 100, 150, 210, 280, 360, 450, 550, etc). Max title obtained at 2320 points.

16. When watching a Simultaneous Game, you'll be sent to the first game in the simul. If that game is finished, the board is inactive. Use the Simltaneous Game window to switch between games.

17. If you disconnect FOR ANY REASON (or just simply close Chessmaster 10th Edition) while playing a Rated Game in Online mode, you will automatically resign the game.

18. During the Openings game mode, when trying to build a new Opening Book, you can't promote your pawns to any other piece except the queen.

19. The Switch Sides function, located in the Training Mode, will rotate the board 180 degrees and also switch players (i.e. the player who was playing the White pieces will now be playing Black, and vice versa). Note, however, that the White and Black players will NOT switch clocks and time controls.

20. When editing a personality that is currently participating in a game, the personality's new settings will not take effect until a new game is begun with that personality.

21. If you find that, for some reason, the chessboard seems to have "disappeared" from the game (either due to a change in screen resolution or in window position/size), don't panic. You can always safely get the board back by going to "Preferences -> Chess Set" and selecting a new board and/or piece set. If you find that other windows are also not appearing when and/or where they should, then you can restore all windows back to their default position and visibility settings by loading one of the default layouts that came with Chessmaster 10th Edition. Of course, that's possible only if you haven't overwritten the default layouts files with a badly-saved layout of your own...

22. Depending on the speed of your system, you may not see the introductory video. Chessmaster makes a determination of your computer's speed to see if your machine can play the videos without audio or video distortion, and then plays the videos if your machine passes the test.

23. Certain video cards may cause Chessmaster to have visual problems if you have "Large Fonts" selected in your video properties. If text in menus and dialogs appears "wrong" to you, or some text or buttons appears to extend past the boundaries of a window, you might check to see if you have "Large Fonts" selected, and change it to the Windows default setting, which is "Small Fonts". You can check this setting by going to "Control Panel -> Display -> Settings Tab" and pressing the "Advanced" button. There will be a combobox entitled "Font Size", where you can see your system's current setting.

24. If you play MP3 audio files on your computer, you may find that Chessmaster 10th Edition and programs that play these types of files (such as WinAmp and Windows Media Player) will not work properly with each other. This is because BOTH programs try to "take control" of the MP3 audio drivers, and this causes a conflict in your computer's sound card. Usually, this problem only occurs with older sound cards, the most popular of these being the Soundblaster AWE64. Some people, though, have reported that starting up Chessmaster FIRST, and THEN starting up the MP3 player, will allow both programs to work fairly well (as long as Chessmaster does not try to play any audio).
  So, if you enjoy MP3 music on your computer and you don't mind running Chessmaster with no sounds, then this procedure should allow you to do both. Just don't try to access advice, game analysis, tutorials or Josh Waitzkin Annotated Games, because the audio for these features is also in MP3 format.

25. To define your own sound effects set that will override the sounds played by the "Thematic Sounds" option, you can go to the "Sounds" option in the Windows "Control Panel". There you will find a "Chessmaster" group of sound effects to which you can assign any valid sound file that is in wave format (usually with a "WAV" extension).


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III. *** What Problems Still Exist? ***

The other bugs that have been reported, but are either not fixed or not confirmed, are:

1. Only on some Win 98 hardware configurations - In the Database game mode, when the user left-clicks on the Database window, the window remains attached to the cursor and moves with it until the user makes another left click.

2. On older/weaker computers, using the Fairy Tale chess set may lead to temporary "freezing" of the animations during the time when the AI opponent is thinking.

3. Only on Win 98 and Win ME - When the user selects Preferences/Wallpaper/Use Bitmap/Browse... then chooses a drive from File Open/Look in, the refresh period might take as long as 3 seconds. During this time, the content of the chosen drive won't be displayed properly.

4. On older/weaker computers, using "Spoken Move Announcements" and letting two AI personalities play each other might lead to looping sounds, IF the game is minimized (visible only as an icon on the task bar).

5. A very rare bug in the Fun/Learn section leads to Chessmaster quitting to the desktop.

6. Another rare bug happens in the Fun/Learn area. Sometimes information displayed onscreen disappears - the Drills tree, a pop-up window's content or various options.

7. When a modal window is opened and the user switchs to another application using the Alt+Tab key combination, the Chessmaster icon will no longer appear in the task selection window until the modal window is clicked on.

8. On Win 98 AND older/weaker computers, the install program might sometimes crash.

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IV. *** Where to Find the Chessmaster FAQ ***

The Chessmaster FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) is regularly updated with answers to many of the most popular questions that users ask when they are troubleshooting. You can find a FAQ dedicated to each version of Chessmaster at our website:

www.chessmaster.com

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V. *** Technical and Customer Support ***

Technical Support

Before contacting Ubisoft’s Technical Support Department, please first read through this file and the game's manual (the printed version and/or the electronic version available on the game CDs). Also browse through our FAQ listings or search our support database at our website, http://www.ubireg.com/uk/. Here you will find the most recently updated information since the game’s release.

Also please make sure that your computer meets the minimum system requirements, as our support representatives will be unable to assist customers whose computers do not meet these criteria.

Whenever you contact the Technical Support Department, please include the following information or have it available if you are calling:

·	Complete product title (including version number).
·	Exact error message reported (if applicable) and a brief description of the problem you’re encountering.
·	Processor speed and manufacturer. 
·	Amount of RAM. 
·	Operating system.
·	Video card that you are using and amount of RAM it has.
·	Maker and speed of your CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive.
·	Type of sound card you are using.

Support Over the Internet
This is the best way to find answers to common issues seen with our games. Our Frequently Asked Questions list is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and contains the most up-to-date Technical Support information available, including patches that can be downloaded free of charge. We update the Support pages on a daily basis, so please check here first for solutions to your problems: http://www.ubireg.com/uk/

Contact Us by Webmail
Due to high volumes of spam, viruses, and other non-support-related contacts, we no longer offer support via standard email. However, we do provide something better, webmail. By taking your questions directly through our website, we have completely eliminated all spam contacts. As a result, we are able to respond to your questions much quicker than we could through standard email. To send us a webmail simply log into our site at http://www.ubireg.com/uk/.

From this site, you will be able to enter the Ubisoft Solution Center, where you can browse through our lists of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), search our database of known problems and solutions, and send in a request for personal assistance from a Technical Support representative by using the Ask a Question feature on the Frequently Asked Questions page.

Most webmail contacts are responded to within two business days. 

Contact Us by Phone
You can also contact us by phone by calling 0905-482-0109 (30p per min) (9am-7pm Mon-Fri) 

Contact Us by Standard Mail  
If all else fails, you can write to us at:

Customer Services 
Ubisoft Entertainment Ltd 
Chantrey Court 
Minorca Road 
Weybridge 
Surrey 
KT13 8DU

Return Policy
Please do not send any game returns directly to Ubisoft before contacting Technical Support. It is our policy that game returns must be dealt with by the retailer or online site where you purchased the product. If you have a damaged or scratched CD, please visit the FAQ listing for your game and get the latest replacement policy and pricing. We will not accept unsolicited returns/exchanges without prior approval and an RMA (Return Materials Authorization) number from a support representative.




(c) 2004 Ubisoft Entertainment. All Rights Reserved. Chessmaster is a registered trademark and Ubisoft, ubi.com, and the Ubisoft logo are trademarks of Ubisoft Entertainment in the U.S. and/or other countries. Uses Miles Sound System and Bink Video Technology. Copyright (c) 1997-2004 by RAD Game Tools, Inc.
