Gabriel Knight in Windows XP

Thanks to this site, I am now able to play the original Gabriel Knight (the Windows CD version) on Windows XP! And in fullscreen, too, voices and everything...beautiful!

Red Alert In Windows XP

I had more luck running Red Alert (one of the early Command and Conquer games, doncha know?) in XP than I did with Bad Mojo. It takes a bit of work, but it is worth it since it lets you play one of the true classics among strategy games, or so I hope ;) I thought I'd make a note of how I got it to work, in case I need to do it again - these are not my own ideas, of course, and are paraphrased from here.

Assuming you've uninstalled any previous versions of Red Alert, first, you need to install it via the SETUP95 folder, not via the autoplay system. In the SETUP95 folder, set the compatibility settings for INSTALL.exe to run in Windows 95 Compatibility mode, and then install the game. I did not install DirectX 3.0, but I did install Westwood Chat (which you might be able to do without, but I don't think it hurts).

Next, in the folder where the files have been installed, you need to make all exe files run under Windows 95 Compatibility mode. Just sort the files by type, and select all files which are labelled Application in the Details view (for me, there were 11 such files).

Now select the RA95.exe file, and change its Compatibility settings to "Run in 640x480", "Disable visual themes", and "Turn off advanced text services". This is the main game executable file, but we can't run it just yet! The game needs to be patched first - there are two patches that are needed.

The first patch, C&CRA_Patch.zip can be found here, and you just need to overwrite the THIPX32.DLL file in your install directory. The second patch, RA108USP.exe, can be found here, and you need to run it once to extract the file PATCH.exe, which you then run (this has to be in your installation directory!) to patch Red Alert to v1.08.

Now after all this, running RA95.exe should start the game! No dwwin.exe errors or anything...simple as that ;)

After getting frustrated at being unable to make Bad Mojo run on my XP machine, despite all manner of combinations of settings and QuickTime installations, I gave thought to installing Windows 98 on a separate partition. A quick search revealed, however, that installing 98 on an existing XP machine is not an entirely straightforward manner. A bright idea from S, however, gave me hope - why not use VM software?

A good idea, but I was still hestitant seeing as how I'd never tried anything like this before. I had no idea what products were "good", how they worked...nothing! I was quite happy then when it turned out that Microsoft themselves have a free program, Virtual PC, which lets one do all the basics of VM management, including creating a new VM. It seemed simple enough from the positive reviews, and indeed it was quite simple (if time consuming) to install 98 on my machine - I was quite impressed with the ease of use.

However, the game is more adamant than I imagined; while it now runs, it still crashes on occasion. The problem is again with videos I think, for it seems to stuff up only when I get to a cutscene. I don't have any idea what else to try!

But I am still impressed with Virtual PC!

I also tried to install FreeDOS in hopes of playing Ultima 8, but alas, no luck there either - I get an "Exception 14" error, or something like that. It probably has to do with the editing of the config files, but maybe I'll just wait for the Pentagram project to finish.