Index ⇒ Games Support ⇒ A few tutorials on how to run old games on Win 10

[Wastrel]

This text is a part of my large dump of files, but I thought that someone could use it by itself.
https://www.legendsworld.net/webroot/ph ... 447#p94447

I made these tutorials for myself so don't expect flawless wording.
Run older games on Windows 10 (some harder cases).txt



01. Install the game as you normally would.
02. Install the official patch.
03. On Thandor.exe, set the following compatibility options: Win98 / ME, Run as administrator.
04. Download DGVoodoo, and in the Directx tab, set the following: Resolution: anything you want (the game supports some widescreen resolutions by default, first try setting the desired resolution within the game), Antialiasing and Anisotropic filtering can be forced. Uncheck the "Dgvoodoo watermark" option.
05. Play, and have fun!


01. From the CD, copy the FILM directory to the game's main directory.
02. Run Regedit, and navigate here: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Planet4\Thandor
03. Change the path within the "CD" key from D: to Thandor's install directory.

Known issues:
- The game stutters everytime you move the mouse. This is a known issue with "hardware cursor" rendering on Windows 10, and many other games produce this issue, but in most games, hardware cursor can be turned off. In Thandor, there's no option to do that.
- The game will still crash when alt-tabbing out of the game or pressing the Windows key.

I have noticed that Thandor only works with az older version of DGVoodoo version like 2.64. Running it on new version (2.78) just makes the game crash.

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This game may produce bouncing framerates from the 80s range to single digits. To fix this problem, you need to do two things:
- Set the compatibility mode to Windows XP (SP3).
- In the game options, disable hardware cursor. This will make the mouse movements less smooth, but the framerate will be fixed.

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01. Copy the contents of first CD to the hard drive, except the Cine directory. Copy the 32 bit Installshield 5 exe to the folder on hard drive, overwriting the original setup.exe. Install the game.
02. Run the patch installer (single file). Wait until an error message appears. Don't close the installer when the error message appears, instead navigate to the following directory: users/<username>/appdata/local/temp. There should be two folders with a recent date and stupid names. Copy the one which has a setup exe to a new temporary dirctory on your HD (apart from the original temp folder). Close the patch intaller.
03. Overwrite the patch folder's install.exe with the 32 bit one, and choose to run it in win98 compatibility mode. Install the patch.
04. Run dominion.exe with the following settings: Compatibiliy: Win XP SP2, Run as administrator. No wrapper required.

Known Issues:
- The game crashes from time to time. These crashes are infrequent and not tied to any action, they may occur in a few minutes minutes of after many-many hours of gameplay. Ironically, I didn't experience any more crash after the first crash occured until I rebooted Windows (sleep mode doesn't count).
- When playing the two campaigns from the second CD, and when the game asks for the disc, you have to press the Windows key and switch Disc1 with Disc2 in Daemon tools. After returning to the game, it may produce the horrible rainbow colors known in Windows 7 (but apparently fixed in 10). The only workaround I could use for this is to start a new game with any of the two campaigns residing on CD2, and create a savegame with a name that will be the last save everytime (like naming the save as "zzzz" or something similar). When playing from CD2, you have to navigate in the load game menu to this last save, load it (the menus will be barely readable so you better remember what's where), and after the scenario loads, you can load your last save from the campaign as the menu will again become readable (until you press Windows key again). Launching the game with CD2 mounted is not an option, as it will always ask for CD1 first, even when you want to play campaigns from the second CD.
- The Soundtrack may get stuck in few second loops even when using indirectsound to play back CD audio (this issue seems to be more or less fixed by some summer 2020 Windows update?). Apparantly there exists a wrapper where you have to grab the game's soundtrack in MP3 format, and it will play the music for you, but I haven't tried it when playing through the game.
- The second CD may not play music at all even when audio tracks are on the CD.

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01. Copy the contents of the CD to a new folder on the hard drive. Copy the 32 bit Installshield 5 setup.exe to this folder (overwrite the original setup.exe). Install the game.
02. Set wargames.exe to run as administrator.
03. Launch the game. You may experience game crash, freeze or other problems when playing the intro movie.
04. download and copy a newer version of smackw32.dll to the game's folder, overwriting the original one. https://www.dll-files.com/smackw32.dll.html
05. Copy DgVoodoo (D3D) files and the DGVoodoo Setup Utility with the config file to the game's directory. Run the setup, and in the Directx tab, modify the following: Vram - 32 Mb; Filtering: Force Anisotropic 16x (optional), anti-aliasing: Force 4x (optional); Resolution: your monitor's native resolution (mine is 1366x768); check force vsync and uncheck DGVoodoo Watermark
06. Play the game.

Known issues:
01. The game crashes when the full screen map panel is opened, then closed. No known solution to this. Don't open the full screen map view, it's not necessary for the gameplay.
02. There exists a patch with no changelog. Installing this patch has no benefits to the game (it's only for the now dead multiplayer), in fact it makes the game impossible to launch on Windows 10. Don't install the patch.
03. After some time, the game may crash every time you send an engineer to neutral buildings. Sometimes capturing these buildings is vital to the given mission. The only known workaround is to switch back to software rendering in the game's display setup. Unfortunately, as many levels will have these buildings and contain important upgrades & money, you may need to play through the game using the software renderer, which has inferior graphics to the D3D one.

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01. Install the game, then install the Expansion (optional). DON'T INSTALL THE 1.02 PATCH!!!
02. In the america.ini file, modify the following: ScreenXsize: your monitor's width; screenYsize: your monitor's height. Don't use any witdh of height higher than about 1400. 1366x768 is the highest widescreen resolution on which the game runs stable.
03. Download WineD3D for Windows and copy the following files to the game's directory: ddraw.dll, libwine.dll, wined3d.dll (on newest WineD3d version, the libwine.dll is missing, so you only have to copy the two other files)
04. Run the game.

Known issues:
01. The 1.02 patch makes the game to crash instantly or to give black screen. Don't install the patch, although it may fix some irritating problems with the game like impossible missions...
02. DGVoodoo makes the frame rate plummet. WineD3d works well with this game. Some graphical artifacts may remain here and there, but they won't affect the gameplay.

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The zealous programmers wrote an unavoidable checking algorhythm, which simply refuses to let you run the game if your GPU type doesn't match the available and predefined ones from the era the game was written. To circumvent this problem, do the following:
01. Install the game and apply the patch.
02. Download and extract DGVoodoo to the game's directory. Run dgvoodoocpl.exe, and set the following under the directx tab: Video Card: Geforce FX 5700 Ultra, optionally custom resolution, anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering. Uncheck the DGVoodoo Watermark.
03. Start the game. It should work very well, with smooth 60 fps on newer generation Intel HD chips. If you experience framerate problems, set compatibility mode to Windows XP SP3. If you have an older, low performance Intel HD chipset, don't force anti-aliasing through the DGVoodoo config.

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01. Install the game as usual. Don't run it yet, but install the 1.21 update, and then the 1.22 update, which removes disc check and copy protection.
02. Run the game. Notice if the game runs perfectly for you, or it produces severe slowdowns, bad framerate, and sound stuttering.
03. If the game runs unplayably show, press CTRL + ALT + DEL and arrange processes by CPU usage. A process related to Windows Firewall may eat up all the CPU resources. In this scenario, you can do two things: either disable the whole Windows networking when running this game (not recommended), or if you have a Windows firewall GUI modification like Tinywall, simply enable the process (dirt.exe) unconstrained traffic (the game's update server is dead long ago). Now the game should run fine.
04. Choose to run Dirt.exe as administrator. No other performance tweak (like compatibility mode) is needed.
05. Optional tweak: If you miss 3D sounds, downloading Indirectsound and extracting it to the game's main directory restores 3D sounds and Eax reverb.
06. Optinal tweak: you can further refine performance and unlock some graphics options you can't access in the options menu. Tweaking these is only recommended for high end graphics cards, or better performing integrated graphics chipsets like the Intel HD 4600+ or Iris Graphics, which at the time of the game's release weren't available. Navigate to the following directory: C:\Programdata\Documents\Codemasters\Dirt\hardwaresettings (run the game at least once, and modify all graphics settings in the options menu to your liking and run a test lap before doing this). In the hardware_settings_config.xml, the following parameters can be modified for some extra eye-candy (you can modify everything else in the options menu): Resolution width, height, aspect for running the game in unsupported resolutions (modifying aspect ratio outside 4:3, 16:10 and 16:9 may not work), textures lod can be set to -1 for sharper textures in distance, graphics detail level should be ultra, tree distance can be highened, in the particles row, particle density and its physics can be further improved; finally the shadow resolution can be set up top 4096 samples, while the default maximum is 2048 samples. After finishing tweaking, set the file to read only, and never modify these options ingame.

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The following may cause crash in the game: electro anomaly in the swamp / red forest levels (enhanced DX9 / 10 renderers). Workaround: Switch back to DX8 renderer while having something to do in the given areas, then switch back to the renderer you were using previously when you leave that area.

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- Install Game
- Reinstall the Physx Legacy driver, as the game's installer seems to overwrite the legacy driver
- Apply Crack (The Game will never work without it because of the Starforce Protection)
- Replace audiere.dll with the newest version
- Optional: Apply lightmap shader fix from Stalin Subway (may not be needed)
- Install English Translation Patch (see directions.txt within the rar file)
- Optional: Install English translation fix
- Intel HD required fix: ALT+ENTER on island.exe file, compatibility tab --> Disable full screen optimalizations --> apply (with this on, the game will stutter heavily or screen tearing will occur, both of them rendering the game unplayable)
- Run config.exe --> Set resolution, performance options and turn individual settings on or off based on your preference --> OK, don't run the banchmarks yet
- Run Island.exe --> Wait up until 2 mins for the game to boot --> Options (set your controls, etc. as usual) --> Start New Game --> Load first level (there are at least 3 animations before). Check if there are any graphical errors

- If the whole sky and ground becomes black, exit game --> config.exe. Now you'll have two options to work around this issue, any of them shall work:
- You either turn turn depth of field off, and apply anti-aliasing
- Or you turn anti-aliasing off and depth of field on.
- You can also disable both, but not apply both of them at once since this causes the issue.
I personally prefer turning DoF off and apply anti-aliasing, because the DoF effect in this game is horrible anyway, so it looks much better with AA than with DoF.

- The game by default doesn't support widescreen resolutions and I can't seem to find a workaround to this, since the game's config file is encoded and cannot be edited with a text editor. You may experiment with DGVoodoo but it may severely affect the game's performance.


With these settings, the game runs with a smooth 30 FPS on average with 4X AA, even on Intel HD. Without AA and with DoF, the performance is around 40 fps. This means almost every dedicated GPU on the market can run this game with 60+ fps with everything maxed out, and it looks pretty.

Another solution for pros: rewrite the DoF shader to work properly with AA (it's a plain text file )

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Surpsisingly, this game can be run on Win10 x64, maybe the oldest game ever published with Win10 compatibility. Don't expect smooth gameplay though, as the game speed will most likely be unplayably high.
Mount or insert CD. Copy the following files to a new directory on your hard drive: havoc.exe, objects.ff, sound.ff, strdata.dat. Set the following compatibility modes on havoc.exe: Win95 compatibility, run as administrator. Download ddrawcompat and copy its ddraw.dll to the game's directory. Run the game. It may play too fast, so you also have to use a cpu killer.
Another workaround for fixing game speed is to set CPU performance in Windows 10's power setting to the lowest possible level (1%), but it may still be too fast for playing this game at correct speed.

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1. Install the game. Copy the legorr.icd from the cd/exe directory to the game's install directory.
2. Download unsafedisc and copy the exe file somewhere outside the game's directory. Run it as administrator. Select legorr.icd from the install directory. Your reward shall be a fully cracked .exe file, allowing the game to run on Windows 10. There are other cracked exe-s on the internet, which won't work on Win10 as they most likely contain stubs from the copy protection, therefore Windows 10 prevents them from running.
3. Set the following compatibility on the new exe: Windows XP Sp3, Run as administrator, register for restart.
4. Download DgVoodoo, and put all files from its ms/x86 directory to the game's main directory. Also copy dgvoodoo.conf and dgvoodoocpl.exe the same way.
5. Run DGVoodoocpl.exe. Under the Directx tab, set the following: Vram: 64 Mb, Anisotropic filtering: 16x, Anti-aliasing: 4x. These options may introduce minor graphical corruptions on the fonts, but otherwise make the game much nicer. Set the resolution to your monitor's native resolution, and uncheck the dgvoodoo watermark option. Close the utility.
6. Run the game.

Known issues remaining: Choosing to run the game on widescreen resolution, the mouse handling of lower hud and message box may become corrupted, resulting in slipped buttons (you have to click elsewhere than where the buttons are being displayed). It's irritating, but you can get used to it.

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This game is notorius for it's corrupted graphics on any card newer than the game's written for.
Solution (works even for Intel HD): WineD3D fixes all the game's issues. Choose to run the game in Windows XP Sp3 mode and as administrator. I could play through the game without a single issue.
The game's config file contains some options (like bloom effect) which most likely can't be enabled from the game's options menu. You can activate them through this config file. You can also experiment with custom resolution and anti-aliasing.

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[Wastrel]

War Times may throw a spanish error at startup, saying some textures are not in dimension of power of two.
To be able to run this game on newer systems, do the following:
Download the unofficial fixes pack:
https://www.4shared.com/zip/3Ahw33ghiq/ ... _pack.html?

1. Install tha game as you normally would.
2. Install the 1.02 patch, then copy the cracked files to the game's directory.
3. From the crashfix, copy the images directory to the game's directory and overwrite all files there. If you want to restore the original texture files, just copy th images_backup directory to the images directory.
4. Now the game should run fine. If not, run the game with the following compatibility settings: Win XP SP3, Ru nas administrator, Disable full screen optimizations.

Issues remaining after fixing the game:
Widescreen resolutions are not supported and you cannot set any custom resolution outside the predefined options.
Using DGVoodoo or WineD3d won't fix the problem. DGVoodoo gives black screen with movies, plus it fails to run this game in widescreen. WineD3D works but it might make the framerate unplayably low (worth a try if you have a reactor category computer at home).

[Wastrel]

Download the unofficial fixes pack:
https://www.4shared.com/zip/3Ahw33ghiq/ ... _pack.html?

PLEASE READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS CAREFULLY BEFORE DOING ANYTHING, SINCE INSTALLING THIS GAME UNDER WINDOWS 10 MAY CORRUPT YOUR SYSTEM IF YOU DON'T DO EVERYTHING AS TOLD.

On Windows 10 (x64), the game produces the following problems:
- Because of the Starforce protection, the game won't run at all and there is no legal way to make this product work on Win 10 without using "black hat" methods. The game also wasn't re-released digitally as of january 2021.
- Also thanks to Starforce, installing the game on Windows 10 may result in infinite BSOD (blue screen of death).
- If you make the game run using a crack, it won't prevent your Windows from dying.
- The graphics will become corrupted on newer graphics cards after the first two levels, making the game impossible to play further.
- The framerate will drop down constantly to unplayable levels until you restart the game.
- You will lose essential sound effects like speech and gunshots.
We will fix all these issues.

How to Install and run Gene Troopers without infinite BSOD (Windows 10 64 bit), and infinite framerate slowdown:

PREPARATION: Don't reboot Windows or shut down your computer until you've done all the steps listed below, as you may wake up to a nasty surprise. So only begin fixing the game if you have at least 30-60 minutes of free time at once. Don't even begin installing the game if you don't have administrator privileges on your Windows profile, and you don't know some basic file operations, like detecting and deleting hidden or system files.

01. Install Gene Troopers from the original disc or image as you normally would.
02. Extract the the unofficial patch (Genetroopers renderfix) to the game's main directory, overwriting original files. The unofficial fix was made by an unknown russian hacker, and it also applies the NOCD crack. Running this game on Windows 10 without crack is impossible.
03. WARNING!!!! Now comes the nasty part. Windows 10 will prevent the isntallation of Starforce drivers for most games, but not this one (the same problem applies to World Racing 2, published at the same time by the same developer). Navigate to the following directory (x64): C:\Windows\System32\drivers. You should see 3-4 .sys files starting with sf*, dated late 2005. Delete all these files (permanently). You will need to have administrator privileges to do this, and you will also need to see hidden & system files (Total Commander heavily recommended for this operation).
04. Modify gt.exe to run with the following parameters: Compatibility: Windows XP SP3; Disable full screen optimizations; run as administrator.
05. Download indirectsound and copy its files to the game's folder (restores ingame speech and solves the framerate problem).
06. The game now should run correctly. It supports some widescreen resolutions by default.

Optional: Using DGVoodoo may fix the remaining graphics errors like straight lines coming out from the player's crosshair (which hurt the aesthetic of the game but at least won't affect the gameplay seriously), but also introduces new problems. Run the game at least once, and set up your graphics & control options as you like. Start a new game and see if the game is working. Then exit the game, and Copy files from DGVoodoo.zip to the game's directory (MS/X86/*.dll), dgvoodoo.conf, dgvoodoocpl.exe. Run dgvoodoocpl.exe in the game's directory, navigate to the Directx tab, set resolution to whatever your monitor's native resolution is if it wasn't listed in the game's graphics options, otherwise leave it as it is. You can force anti-aliasing (up to 8x), and anisotropic filtering (up to 16x). Using anisotropic filtering may introduce black dots on weapon models and interactive objects, so if you experience this problem, leave anisotropic filtering on app driven. Uncheck the "DGVoodoo watermark" option. If the game runs at too high framerate (100+) and you experience weird things like physics errors or other anomalies, also check the "force vsync" option in the DGVoodoo options for limiting your framerate.

If your Windows already produces infinite BSOD, you can solve the problem without having to reinstall your system. On the maintenance screen given after the crash, choose ro run Windows in Safe mode with command prompt (even normal safe mode may throw BSOD). Run Total Commander from the command line (just navigate to its directory and type "totalcmd" or "totalcmd64"), and follow the previously mentioned method to delete the Starforce Driver files (C:\Windows\System32\Drivers). Reboot Windows in normal mode.
If you don't have Total commander, use the old school DOS commands to obtain the same result. Navigate to your Windows directory (cd c:\windows\system32\drivers), list the files (dir/p), and delete the Starforce driver files one by one ("del" command). Then reboot Windows in normal mode.




Below are the instructions to run the 2009 City Interactive re-release of the game on Windows 10.
This process is not as convoluted as making the original Starforce release work on newer systems.

Changes from the original (2005) release:
- The game has been patched to some degree, but no idea what's been updated since there is no changelog provided with the game files. The only clue is the two update folders and different file size for the game's binaries compared with the 1.0 retail release. Also none of the game's original compatibility problems (Eax and graphics corruption) have been fixed.
- Starforce copy protection has been removed (what a relief!)

Instructions:
- Install the game.
- Right click on the executable, and set the following options under the compatibility tab: OS: Windows XP Sp3, Run as Administrator, Disable full screen optimizations.
- Unpack Indirectsound to the game's main directory (restores missing sound effects and solves the infinite framerate slowdown problem).
- Unpack WineD3D to the game's directory (solves graphics errors starting with the third level which essentially render the game unplayable). Alternatively, you can use DGVoodoo (but not both at once), which lets you choose your custom resolution and anti-aliasing, although it may produce other kinds of visual artifacts when enabling anisotropic filtering as well.
- I haven't tried it, but you should not use the unofficial Renderfix as it was made for the original 1.0 release. WineD3D or DGVoodoo is enough, and Starforce is not a hinder anymore.

[Wastrel]

1. Install The Game and apply crack (the unprotected re-release doesn't need a crack).
2. Set The Following Compatibility: Win XP SP3, disable full screen optimizations.
3. Apply the AMD renderfix (removes the now corrupted blue screen effect)
4. Apply thw widescreen fix,
5. Copy the old version of openal.dll to the game's directory (provided with the unprotected ISO I uploaded).
6. ???
7. Profit!




1. Install the game. Choose full install!
2. Apply the latest patch, then the patched crack.

3. Improve draw distance:

Go to the "EAGL" folder in the game directory.
Open the "LOD" file with notepad.
In the "[max]" section, increase the values for "worldParticle.farFadeIn" and "worldParticle.farFadeOut". It can go to values as high as 999, but keep "worldParticle.farFadeIn" slightly lower than "worldParticle.farFadeOut".

4. Improve resolution:

Go to C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\My files\EA Games\Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2\rendercaps.ini
Set LimitResolution=1 to LimitResolution=0
Resolutions higher than width = 1280 can be now set in the options menu.

5. Apply the Directinput 8 fps Fix
https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/file ... t-fps-fix/

6. Apply the DX8 to DX9 wrapper:
https://github.com/crosire/d3d8to9/releases

7. Set the following compatibility mode: XPSP2, Admin
8. Play!

[Wastrel]

These games require Win98/ME compatibility mode and administrator rights despite being released in the era of Windows XP SP2.

You may also experience graphical corruption so using DGVoodoo is also recommended, which enables widescreen resolutions and anti-aliasing.

Jetfighter 2015 (or Jet Storm) didn't work for me at all despite being based on the same engine.
COmbat Wings from 2005 also requires these fixes, but the latest two titles using CI's internal engine (Wings of Honour: Battle for the Red Baron and Combat Wings: Battle for Britain) seem to work fine with Win XP SP3 compatibility. Unfortunately, performance may be much lower on new systems than when these games were out.

Another games using this same engine, but I haven't tried them: Wings of Honour (the original), WWII: Battle for the Pacific, Project Freedom (aka. Starmageddon 2).

[Scaryfun]

for collecting all this info! I'll link to these posts from the game entries.

[Ali Akbar]

How is Windows 11's backward compatibility compared with Windows 10, does it further decrease/reduce compatibility with old games, or does it increase/improve it, or is it the same as Windows 10. In other words, are these fixes needed when playing these games on Windows 11; will they even work on Windows 11?

[Supernova]

[Scaryfun]

[Ali Akbar]

, although windows 11 broke compatibility with Jurassic World: Evolution, a lot of people said that upgrading to windows 11 prevented the game from launching, but rolling back to windows 10 seems to fix the issue. Still, this is just one game, no issues with any other game I've played so far.

[myloch]

1. Set Win95 compatibility setting and japanese locale to install the game.

2. Get latest dgvoodoo2 and copy files from the MS directory in the game main folder, set dgvoodoo2 as you prefer.

3. Rename / remove winmm.dll and get a different (newer) 32bit one from dll-files.com
(use the newest one that supports video files correctly)

4. Run the game with WinXP compatibility setting and 16bit color mode.

5. Catch a gamepad!

6. Framecapping fps to 30 is not mandatory but highly suggested!

[hfric]

[Ali Akbar]

[Wastrel]

[annoyment]