DosFreak

Try installing in 32bit XP, then export the registry entries with regedit. Boot back in Win64. Surf to where the game is installed and try to play it. If it doesn't work then try to merge the exported registry from 32bit Windows. If it still doesn't work then I don't know. I haven't had a chance to test AOE in 64bit Windows yet. (Doesn't help that I don't like the game either )

Just copy all the files off of it. Reformat it to FAT32 and copy the files back.....or use whatever software that came with it to reformat or "reset" it and copy your files back.

NT3.x/4/2000/XP/2003/Vista all use NTVDM (an emulator that Windows uses so that your 16bit DOS/Windows programs will work in Windows). Only in WindowsXP/2003/Vista does the NTVDM offer sound emulation. (Extremly crappy sound emulation but at least it works). To get sound emulation in Windows 2000 your going to need to use VDMSound. The latest beta version (don't worry it's been tested thoroughly since 2003), can be found at http://vogons.zetafleet.com. It's also suggested to use VDMSOUND in XP and 2003 since there sound emulation isn't that great. and finally VDMSound was discontinued long ago. VDMSound only offers sound emulation and cannot fix many of the things that NTVDM breaks. The only solution to this is a full emulation product called http://dosbox.sourceforge.net DOSBOX. The VDMSound code was integrated in DosBox a long time ago so it has the same great sound quality. Only problem with DosBox is that since it's a full emulator then if you have an old computer you probably will not have enough processing power to play your games in the emulator.

Using Linux is no more difficult than using Windows. (Assuming your using a comparable distro....). For instance: Using Ubuntu or Suse 10 are really no more harder to use than Windows. It's just that you are used to Windows and how to do things there and are not used to Linux. With that said alot of things in Linux make more sense than Windows and some things are even easier to use. For instance just yesterday a user had a hard drive with bad sectors. I tried everything with my BartPE disc and all of it's HD fixing/imaging tools. Nothing was able to recover the files....heck windows wouldn't even let me view the partition! Not even Acronis or Ghost could do anything since as soon as it hit those bad sectors either Ghost would crash or Acronis would hang for hours. Heck, I even tried SpinRite 6! I left it running for days! (Yeah, I know all about proper data recovery but according to the user the data wasn't that important and I wanted to test out Spinrite). Finally I booted up the latest Ubuntu Live CD. Mounted the NTFS parition. Simply opened up a window viewing all of the files on the filesystem. Opened up another Window to a fileshare on my Windows server. Copied over the files and I'm done! Now why couldn't I do that using Windows with all of the tons of utilities I've accumulated over the years? Truth is those utilities still have to rely on the underlying OS......and that was the problem right there. As for Learning Linux Books. I can't really help ya there. Just segment off a block of time and dig right in there with some Ubuntu/Slackware/Suse/Fedora CD/DVD's.

The crack is needed because the copy protection used by the game is a buggy POS. You can either update the copy protection drivers or use a CD crack. (Or make an image of your CD and use Daemon Tools). Most expert games use CD images, those without the resources or time to use CD images use CD cracks (or if they don't care), and finally at the end of the scale those scared to crack their games update their copy protection drivers.

Quote: Things have become a little stagnant here Understatement of the century!

Describe the exact problem. Does the game freeze at the beginning?

Interesting.... I had a chance to play with a friends OSX laptop the other day. I was pretty impressed. Still I would never get a MAC for my home PC but I'm definetly considering one for a laptop (especially since I'll be able to put Windows/Linux on it). This would get me to add OSX to my PC Game Compatibility List. It's up to 2500 games now!.....and still on an excel spreadsheet..... The horror!

heh. I always wondered why you had two especially since some parts of the forum were already sharing some parts. (Slack Space, Buy/Sell, Moderator forum). Sounds good to me. It's also a PITA to have to surf 2 different forums.....

Yes, patch without D3D, it worked when I tried it 4 years ago. VPC does not support D3D at all. (Well software D3D for some older games....but not Mercenaries).

Basically your LCD (your screen) doesn't support the resolution (the size of the screen the game wants), usually computers have options to make it so that your computer will "stretch" the game window to the size of your LCD screen. (I've just simplified alot of stuff that is making me wince even typing it but the above is the basic idea). If your reboot your computer, before windows starts there should be an option to press the DELETE key or F2 or some other key to access your BIOS. (Computer setup screen). In there, in decent laptops anyway, is an option to "stretch" or not to "strech" your screen. I cannot help you any more than that because BIOS's are different among computers. You'll just have to use your own brain and try to figure it our for yourself or cross your fingers, and hope that the company you bought your laptop from knows what I'm talking about.

Open dosbox.conf and change cycles= to cycles=auto and core=normal to core=dynamic. Read the readme as well!

http://dosbox.sourceforge.net

Try copying the CD to your hard drive and running from there.

Use DosBox. Http://dosbox.sourceforge.net

Increasing resolution shouldn't damage a monitor. Increasing refresh rate past your monitor's capabilities can though. As for driver's, if you've already checked S3's website then I can't really help ya except to say search google.....oh and go buy a decent video card. Something for $50 will be alot better than what you have right now.

Can you post your solution, in case someone else has the same problem?

Hmmm, your RAM is pretty low. (Assuming your using a default DELL install then your probably already using all of that memory and a little more). It would be nice if you could get 512m or even 1gb of memory. As for the video card there are tons of options. You can get an ATI Radeon 9800, ATI Radeon X800+. Those should be pretty cheap nowadays. or even a Nvidia Geforce FX or Nvidia Geforce 6800 video card. These video cards are light years ahead of what you have which is pretty much just a GF2.

If you are using Windows 2000 then "EmulateSlowCPU" isn't encluded in the App Compat database included with Windows 200. (It's only in XP/2003) Unless your are privy to internal Microsoft App Database tools then no, you cannot get that option in Windows 2000. The good news is that "EmulateSlowCPU" isn't required in Windows 2000 because I've played DK/DK2 in Windows 2000 plenty of times.

Read this: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315223&product=winxp

Hard to say. We have no idea what kind of computer you have. The fact that your using a GF4 MX definetly doesn't bode well.... Click on the link that he posted and give us your system specifications.

Hmmm, try copying the files off of the CD's\DVD's to your computer and then installing from there. So copy CD1 to a CD1 folder on your copy. Copy CD2 to CD2 on your computer etc. Then run setup from CD1 and when it asks for CD2 then point to the CD2 folder on your computer.

Check your laptop BIOS for something to do with your laptop screen.

IIRC with SpearHead I had to use the other OpenGL ICD included with the ATI drivers because ATI driver developers are too lazy to write just one OGL ICD. I don't have my machine in front of me right now but if you go to your SYSTEM32 directory and search for atio*.dll you should see 2 OGL drivers. Rename one of them to DRIVERNAME.BAK and the other to the name of the other driver. or you could try copying the .dll to the game directory instead and that may work. I wish I had the driver filenames but I'll have to look them up. This is one of the many reasons why my next card will be an Nvidia card......

I've been debating wether I should test or nor but the fact that Vista is still in beta holds me back. I also fear that compatibility testing will be more of a chore on Vista than it has been on previous MS OS's. Also I still need to finish my 2003 (32bit), and XP/2003 (64bit), Linux, and NT4 compatibility lists.....so I probably won't be testing Vista for quite awhile.