Warhammer 40k Chaos Gate on XP - help?

[Olga 0]

I just recently got the Warhammer 40k Chaos Gate game from a friend after waiting for 2 years, and getting a new computer in the meantime, which runs on Windows XP professional.

 

After installing the game and trying to play it, the screen went black for a few seconds and returned to the original desktop screen. The readme file states it's most likely a problem with the drivers, so I update and downloaded the newest version of DirectX (mistake?)...it's still doing the same thing.

 

Help? Anybody know how to fix this problem?

[Tyrius 0]

Bad news: There isn't a fix.

 

I have been playing WH40k:CG since it came out for the PC, oh 5 years ago or so. Being a fan of the tabletop game, I found this a great fix for my 40k addiction when no one was around to play the real thing.

 

While the game had always been buggy, I had found most the time a good reboot would get it running right again. Additionally, the last patch made by Random Games (version 1.2) seemed to right alot of wrongs. In fact, I had it loaded on a couple PCs in my home that were on a network, and played some Multiplay with a couple friends and some family. It was a glorious day for the world of 40k computer games!

 

All good things come to an end though...

 

In late 2002 I repartitioned my HDD and reloaded it with WinXP Pro. I immediately started reinstalling all my favorite games. Of course, one of the first to get loaded was Chaos Gate.

 

I started a new campaign, arranged my Tac squad, equipped them, and jumped into the first mission, the 'artifact recovery at the forest temple' mission.

 

I moved my squad around to my liking, put them in overwatch, then hit the "End Turn" button. The evil Chaos Cultists started moving in, while getting blistered by a hail of bolter-fire. One of the Cultists made it to within firing range of his Laspistol, then the unthinkable happened.... a screen refresh with no error message and I was staring at my desktop.

 

Thinking this was just some random buggyness I started up the game again and went through all the motions I just did. Once again, when a Cultist came within range of his Pistol and opened fire, I was taken bounced back to the desktop.

 

Thus began my quest to get Chaos Gate to work on Windows XP. I have tried the following with NO success:

-Rebooting

 

-Uninstalling/Reinstalling countless times.

 

-Running the basic install at version 1.0.

 

-Running patch version 1.1 only.

 

-Patching to version 1.2.

 

-Running in Compatibility mode for Windows NT/95/98/ME/2000 (none worked).

 

-Looking for NT compatible patches (there are none).

 

-Scouring message boards and support channels/websites.

 

I did find out some things though. SSI has been bought by Ubisoft. Ubisoft doesn't even acknowledge the existence of Chaos Gate. Random Games isn't even on the radar anymore. Forget getting any offical support.

 

About 6 months ago someone put some info on a web message board basically stating that the game was not designed to work with the NT Kernel, and had known issues with NT 4.0 and Win 2000 (they had some programming background from the content of the message). The kernel for XP and 2000 are very similar, and upon reading this, my hopes were dashed.

 

But all was not lost...

 

About a month ago, I bought a new computer desk, and setup an older machine to do some studying with. As part of the computer's setup, I installed XP and as a shot in the dark, I installed Chaos Gate. It seemed to work! I was delighted to no end, and after my studying was complete, I began a new campaign in earnest.

 

I got all the way to Kimmera IV (I think), where you can choose to pursue secondary objectives. One of the side objectives is to attack a machine world to secure some supplies. The map is set in an Industrial setting, randomized with about 4 Chaos squads to contend with. Then the crashing started again. It was the same thing, as soon as a Cultist got within pistol range and fired, I was dumped, with no warning or error, to my desktop.

 

I tried reloading the game, but the same thing persisted. When a Cultist shoots a pistol on a industrial setting map, the game crashed.

 

Well, having come this far, I took some drastic measures. I deleted the existing partition on the old computer's HDD, partitioned the disk in half with FAT32, and loaded Windows 98SE. I got all the drivers for the machine, loaded Chaos Gate, and have only a few missions to go before I finish the game. It still locks up from time to time, but as I mentioned earlier, on Win98, a reboot fixes all ailments. Eventually, I will partition the other half of the Hard Disk with another FAT32 partition, and dual boot WinXP Pro on the second partition.

 

Like I said, pretty drastic. I work on computers for a living, so this is stuff that I can do easily to get this game to work right. For a less literate computer user, who has XP and can't downgrade because their new computer has no backwards compatibility, playing Warhammer 40,000:Chaos Gate is not an option.

[K-Duke 0]

I just installed Warhammer 40k again since some months! First time it was running fine! No crash no errors. But in one Mission my Favourite and most experienced squad was eleminated.

The bad thing: I had no earlier Savegames. Therefore I decided to start from the beginning and then the crashing began! I wonder if there is a setting in XP which prevents the machine to produce the Laser Graphics of that cultists' pistol! Or maybe its a DX setting. (There are games which have problems with new DirectX Versions!)

Furthermore maybe we can fix the game by finding its source code and modifying it!

 

All who want to help me my ICQ# is 165-311-519

[Hate2Lose 0]

Here's something you can try, I know it works with Windows 2000, have yet to try it on XP but I think it should work(I got this from another site, Warlorders.com I believe). Search your PC for slayerui.dll. It should be in your Systems folder if you have the latest patches. If its not on your PC, search for it on google and download it. Then go into your the command prompt (cmd at the run prompt or its under accessories) and register it as follows.

 

Open a MS-DOS prompt (aka: Command Prompt) session

type in "regsvr32 %systempath%\slayerui.dll" (without the quotes) where

...%systempath% = the ENTIRE path to your SYSTEM32 directory, usually "C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32" (I think it might be C:\Windows\ in XP)

 

After that right click on the shortcut icon for chaos gate (or any shortcut icon) and you'll see a tab that says compatibility. Go to the tab, check the box that says use compatibility mode and then either pick Windows 95 or 98, I've had more luck with 95 so far. The game is rather buggy though. Hope that helps!

[Kael 0]

Has anyone had any luck making it work with XP and if not is there any way to shut down XP and run straight DOS if you have XP PRO. That may work as long as you reboot and can go into DOS from XP. Let me know please?

[Tyrius 0]

Kael,

Sorry friend, XP does not have a DOS engine. What you see when you run command.com or and MS-DOS prompt, is a emulator of DOS. There is no way to "boot to DOS" with XP, as you could with 95/98 (apart from making a dual boot partition as I mentioned above).

 

(Note: There is a 'recovery console' you can run in XP at boot up that looks a little like DOS, but it offers no real driver or advanced file support.)

 

Additionally, Chaos Gate is a DirectX based game, so it won't even run in DOS-only mode. You have to have a Win9X or above O/S running to load the Virtual-Mode drivers DirectX uses.

[freq nasty 0]

8) I can't believe i've found like minded people trying to get this game working. I just got it off amazon lol, and now the damn thing don't work I tried downgrading (which is never good) by installing direct x 6 that comes with it and.... it near buggered up my system!

I'm running xp home by the way. It would be nice if there was a driver working under xp that could run old games like this and bloodbowl. I couldn't even get to the menu screens with this one.

Tell me, would purchasing fire warrior be any use?? My brother, who is pretty adept in the warhammer universe, played it and said he wouldn't touch it with a barge pole:0

Any thoughts?

[bobjohn 0]

I was just going through my pile of old games when i found Chaos Gate ... got all excited about playing it again then foudn it didn't work on my all flashy suped up xp proffsional If any off you guiys or anyone else finds out how too make it work on xp email me at bobjohnthemonkeyman@hotmail.com As a fellow WarHammer fanatic too another...

[dsk2293 0]

Just registered here, found this thread on Google having some trouble with... guess what... Chaos Gate!

 

Anyway, I think I fixed the problem. The game kept crashing on turn 2. I simply turned off all options in game (sound, unit animation etc) and then loaded the save. It worked! I then turned all options back on, and haven't had any troubles since.

 

Another tiny problem though.... The autorun screen that pops up when inserting the CD actually makes my win2000 system restart... Interesting, aint it.

[Sa1nT 0]

Hey guys

Glad to see so many people trying hard to get this classic game working

Naturally I've also been having hassles, I will be trying some of the ideas listed above, but one odd thing I found was that for me to get the game to run at all, I have to open a command window and navigate to the .exe DOS-style, I dont know why but if I just use a shortcut I get kicked back to desktop...

still having plenty of other problems, the worst being that when I hold the cursor over an enemy I get a little 'Gun Shoot' debugging pop-up telling me the co-ordinates, which also causes the game world to respond incorrectly, allowing me to walk through walls and stuff, I've found that I have to reset the computer before each level, this seems to be the only way to get any kind of playability, still sometimes get odd things (pictures of checkered flags and light-bulbs) on the top level, but that level is hardly ever actually used in the game so no biggie there...

 

The moral of the story is: it IS possible to run it on XP, but you have to be pretty dedicated, and I'm glad there are others like me out there (and keep posting any fixes\partial fixes!)

[Sa1nT 0]

Just as another aside, I'm also having a REALLY hard time finding the v1.2 patch! ALl the mirrors I can find 'hosting' it have either dead links or ftp's that wont respond...

If anyone knows a reliable location for the patch I'd leave to hear about it!

[Calculon 0]

I just found the patch on Gamespot.

 

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/warhammer40000chaosgate/downloads.html

 

Cheers!

[ChaoticLusts 0]

Hey all

 

I just got chaos gate and yes i'm running xp (damn it's been giving me a lot of troubles stupid microsoft ;( )

 

well I can't even get it to install....it autoruns then i click install, a little dos screen pops up then dissappears then nothing

 

any help?

[Big_Dave 0]

I'm really annoyed about Chaos Gate not working on XP, and don't know enough to help any one, but I have an idea. You can get emulators for the PC simulating consoles like the Gameboy and nintendo. Do you think the same can be done for Windows versions?

Just a thought.

Dave.

[dsk2293 0]

There is a very nice app named "Virtual PC" that can be used as an emulator. It can emulate DOS and all kinds of Windows. Pretty advanced and hard to get working, but I managed to get Fantasy General running with sound and everyting! Microsoft bought the company that made it (Connectix) and renamed it to "Microsoft Virtual PC". Here's a link : http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/virtualpc/default.asp.

 

Havent tried the MS version.

[Dalwin 0]

I used the following procedure to install Chaos Gate on WinXP.

 

I copied the entire CD contents into a folder on my desktop. I then double clicked on the setup icon in the new folder. The CD still has to be in the drive to play but this did get it to install. I had to change the shotcut to the game executable to Win 95/98 compatibility mode to get it to launch.

 

I still have the CTD issues described earlier in the thread.

[Zywen 0]

I am having trouble as well. I found a better site for the 1.1 and 1.2 patch.

 

go here: http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Galaxy/6777/cgpatch.html

 

If we all keep posting here and giving solutions Im sure we can get Chaos gate working. I'm going to try installing this on Windows 98 and see if it works. Not sure as to why XP is being a pain.

[Slammy 0]

Im messing with chaos gate as well. I used to play it on XP decently awhile back until i started getting crashes to desktop at a certain level. Now ive reinstalled it on a different computer i built and reinstalled my save games and i can get it to play but still get the crash to desktop every single time. I dont know what level im on but its inside some spaceship. It does it even if i start a new game as well. It seems to crash after the enemy moves and its supposed to let me move again. Ive tried everything to fix it and nothing has worked. I did fix the sound problems i was having. At first my sound was all screwy and overlapping itself and just wasnt right. I just turned the hardware acceleration for the sound card down in the control panel and it seems to be fixed. Heres my computer specs, id love to be able to play this game if anyone can find out why its crashing to desktop.

 

2.4c Pentium 4 @ 3.3ghz

512mb Corsair XMS DDR433@440mhz

HIS Radeon 9800 pro 128mb video card

Sound Blaster Audigy 2 sound card

Windows XP with all updates and DX 9

[Guest]

1st thread posted under chaos gate solution

 

Right after a long grewling 6 hours of messing with setting try the following;

 

Uninstall

 

Re-install but ensure destination directory is eight charictors or less. I used (c:\chaos)

 

You must set Desktop resolution to 640x480,16 Bit colour,any refresh rate works up to 144 mhz

 

Use gpedit.msc to enable "run in seperate memory space" check box to run dialog box located under user configuration,administritive templates,start menu and task bar

 

Then goto start,run and type "command.com /c C:\chaos\WH40K.exe" without the quotation.

 

The game will now load and no longer crashes when the early level enimies fire.

 

Do not use the compatibility tool, always use the command line option. Even thou the compatibility tool enables the ability to load the game through windows but it will crash very early in to the game.

 

I fixed this problem on my PC for my friend as he is a great fan of war hammer games so all thanx to Luke.

 

2nd thread posted under chaos gate solution

 

The black screen part is definately to do with the resolution as it is switches modes, i have just set my resolution to 1020x768 and run the game, the game start to load in the command.com dos box, screen goes black and then it exits. I changed the resolution back to 640x480, started the game again and it loads fine. I have now also checked the colour depth and it still loads fine with either 16Bit colour or 32Bit colour.

 

The version I am running is the origional, no patches.

XP has Service pack 1 installed

Direct X V9.0a is installed and has not error on dxdiag

The Video Driver is nv4_disp.dll V6.14.0010.5216 WHQL (geforce4)

 

 

Brok-en-coder

[Zywen 0]

Nicely done! Now i have tow roking on my comp. I'll try the patches 1.1 and 1.2 and see if that makes them still work.

 

Awesome work brok!

[Twisp 0]

I tried doing the last fix shown here on a Win2000 computer, and I still get the black screen for a second, and then desktop. Is there a different method that works for Windows 2000?

[Sa1nT 0]

Dont know bout win2000 specific, but I found that actually opening a command window and running the game thru that rather than using a shortcut makes it work, I guess because of how it's done, the console must open, and then windows thinks it's finished with it and closes it again, which closes the whole program, so by already having the command window open, it doesnt exit prematurely...

worked for me anyway

[Twisp 0]

I tried that, and I get exactly the same error. It seems to be a graphics error or some type - I suspect DirectX 9 not liking it.

[Guest]

Right back again,,

 

W2K Professional Potential Fix,

 

Run chaos through the start menu and the video intro should start, but whenyou click the mouse to skip the intro you should be thrown back to the desktop. At this point press alt+cntrl+del and goto proceses (music should still be playing in the background from chaos), look for a process call starting with WOW, end this task then re-run chaos from the start menu.

 

Video resolution was set to 800x600 with 16Bit colour, DX version 9.0b, video driver intel 82185 V6.13.01.3015.

 

Brok

[Twisp 0]

I never get the video to run at all. What exactly do you mean by "Run chaos through the start menu"? Do you mean go start, programmes, then run the exe? When i do that I get the usual black screen then desktop.