WC3 and WinME... my oh my

S

SiN

Spaceman
Well, as you may have guessed this is a question about WC3 on a Win ME platform.

anyways... system specs:
Celeron 500
192 ram
Radeon 32 meg sdr pci

Is there any way for me to run WC3 on my comp? A buddy of mine gave it to my a while ago, and I only tried to see what I could do briefly, but didn't put too much time into seeing what I could do. anyone out there have any ideas? Or better yet, experience
 
Oops.. My Bad.

Basically.. it simply won't run. I try to run the program out of the Dos Prompt and it'll try to start, screen will go black, then it'll just shut down the program and go right back to where I was. or it'll just freeze up the comp.
 
Are you restarting the computer in dos mode? Or are you using the comand prompt terminal in windows???

Cause If you are runing the game in dos just try to run it straight out of windows. Set the file settings so dos programs don't detect windows running in background. Your system should be plenty fast enough to handle it (i was doing it on a 486 133mhz with only 28 megs of ram, smooth as silk).

I have never had any problems runing WC3 in windows 9x this way. You just need to make sure you set up the sound card correctly otherwise the video freezes and you dont get to watch the cut scenes
 
I haven't tried WC3 in WinME... tried 4 with no probs, though. I sat there for 9 hours straight, showing my bro the game beginning to end.

AD, there is no pure DOS beyond Win98, and he's not using Win9x.

Run the setup by using the wc3 -i command line option. Try setting up the sound and video. They might be improperly configured.

Doesn't this belong in tech support?
 
Originally posted by Saturnyne
AD, there is no pure DOS beyond Win98, and he's not using Win9x.
Click to expand...
Win95 and Win98 don't really have a "pure" DOS either, but a stripped-down version for backwards compatibility mode. WinMe has much the same thing, it's just more difficult to get into it. And FWIW, WinMe is considered part of the Win9x line.

That said...

WCIII will install and run straight from Windows without any problems. Ignore the readings that the installation gives you for your CD-ROM drive, and set up your sound card manually. Once installation is done, create a shortcut to the executable, and play away.

No need to worry about setting the game to not detect Windows, BTW. That was necessary for Privateer 2, but not WCIII or WCIV.
 
Originally posted by OriginalPhoenix

Win95 and Win98 don't really have a "pure" DOS either, but a stripped-down version for backwards compatibility mode. WinMe has much the same thing, it's just more difficult to get into it. And FWIW, WinMe is considered part of the Win9x line.
Click to expand...
Not entirely accurate. Windows 95/98(SE) do contain a pure DOS. MS-DOS 7.0 and 7.1 respectively. These dosses(?) are no less DOS than MS-DOS 6 was. They can be booted on their own, don't need any part of Windows to run. Windows just doesn't bring all the old DOS utils anymore, but the DOS is still the same (with added support for MFAT and FAT32 of course, and probably some other new stuff as well).
While Windows 95 relied on the MS-DOS command interpreter (command.com) to run, Windows 98+ do not, but they still use the MS-DOS bootstrapper and kernel contained in IO.SYS.
Windows Me also contains a "pure" DOS (MS-DOS 8.0). But they changed IO.SYS so it was no longer possible to boot it in real mode. The version of IO.SYS that ends up on WinME boot disks of course does allow this.
Windows NT/2000/XP were never build on DOS to begin with. They contain a command.com (which calls itself Microsoft Windows DOS when you start it manually) which gets started automatically when you run a real mode MS-DOS 16-bit program from CMD.EXE. Command.com in WinNT is not real DOS, just a command interpreter that exhibits behaviour closer to MS-DOS than cmd.exe provides. Behaviour that MS-DOS programs expect. Most notably it runs inside the NTVDM.EXE to provide old fashioned MS-DOS interrupt call support, and in Windows XP also gives (lousy) Sound Blaster emulation. The MS-DOS kernel (IO.SYS) is nowhere to be found in NT.
So in summary: Win9x/Me runs on the MS-DOS kernel but starting Win98 doesn't require command.com anymore other than to provide console services. WinNT/2000/XP doesn't run on any other kernel than the ntkernel itself (which was written from scratch, and not based on MS-DOS in any way) and provides MS-DOS compatibility through NTVDM.
I think MS altered WinME to make MS-DOS impossible to start to prepare people for the switch to XP and the phasing out of MS-DOS altogether.
 
Right now the site is a little messed but If you go to origins site(http://www.origin.ea.com) and click on customer service, and then on "all other origin products" it takes you to

ea support

If you type in "wing commander" it will come up with a list of wc games. And clicking on each brings up a list of related issues. Most games the first on on the list is "does this game work under windows 2000" or 9x or Me or Xp... Anyway if you keep checking back, one day clicking on that question might actually bring up an answer... (unless it is just my computer:D)
 
I've been rebulding an old computer with DOS 6.22 to play Privateer and some other games on a "pure" DOS box. I've swung by the EA site several times in the last week, and I keep getting page not found errors. EA/Origin still has the links to support pages for the games, but the pages aren't loading. Figured out the problem I was having, so it isn't a big deal for me, and you have to figure at some point they will stop supporting a game. However, it may just be a mistake they haven't caught yet.
 
You might want to try setting up a shortcut that specifies full-screen mode (default was windowed, apparently). Sounds silly, I know, but I couldn't get WC3 to work on my computer until I did that, and my symptoms sound similar to yours.
On the down side, I suspect that my problems may be tied in to my specific video card (Voodoo 3), so there's a good chance it won't help you.
 
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