Windows Vista Problems WITH Solutions

[rahullak]

Hi,

I am having trouble with the Star Trek: Hidden Evil game.
I didn't have any trouble installing it, and used the Win XP/2000 compatibility to make it work.

The trouble is the Save game feature. It just won't work. Every time I save, quit the game and try to load game, the file/entry for the save is gone. Actually, even without quitting, if I save the game play for a while and go back to load the saved game, I still cannot see the saved game. This is a bit annoying since it is a bit hard to finish the entire game at one stretch the first time.

I was wondering if anyone has encountered this rather peculiar problem. Thanks.

[patnonono]

Hi, just to see if anybody has a copy of the first disk of Klingon Academy as my wife lost it in a move to Canada, I love this game so much, I love to mod away.

[AthanisTree]

@ Anyone with problems: A politely-meant reminder to post a decent list of system specs alongside your problem ( CPU type/model + speed, Amount of Ram, HD space Used/Free, Graphics Chip/Card type/Model + Ram amount, Operating System and any Service Packs installed. Graphics Drivers too... though anyone playing with a non-ATI/ NVidia card, you'd be best start running for the hills

Anyhow, nuff' of the patronising, onto my problem.

Have Star Trek: New Worlds, occasionally pop it in for a play BUT now that I've Windows Vista SP1 on the laptop, it won't function under any compatibility mode. The movies work, the menu loads but if I attempt to start a game it'll typically display an "Abnormal Program error" With the pop-up box header "Microsoft Runtime C++ library"...

It's damned irritating.. does anyone have any pointers/ ideas? I know it's a billion light-year long shot, but still...

CPU: Intel Core2 Duo 2.0 Ghz
GPU: ATI Mobility RadeonHD 3470 256 Ram (1536mb Hypermemory)
RAM: 4GB DDR2
OS: Vista Home Premium, Service Pack 1

Blu-Ray Drive,
Current ATI Radeon Drivers... modded by DriverHeaven (Helpfully :P )

*Sigh* Any takers for this one... or any of the above problems?

[AthanisTree]

Argh, I forgot to reply to the_Andorian!

Your computer specs SEEM powerful enough but it would be helpful to know the exact Make/Model of your graphics card, the amount of RAM memory that it uses and your current edition of the card's software drivers...

I suspect the vendor has pulled a fast one on you... (Has happened to myself before, to my utter shame...) :S

[Major Chord]

^Upon conferring with my aunt, who is well versed in these matters, I suspect that to be the case. This PC has an integrated graphics card, whatever that means...so according to her, it just doesn't have the juice to handle serious gaming. I really want to find that sales guy...

[AdAstra]

AthanisTree wrote:

---

Have Star Trek: New Worlds, occasionally pop it in for a play BUT now that I've Windows Vista SP1 on the laptop, it won't function under any compatibility mode. The movies work, the menu loads but if I attempt to start a game it'll typically display an "Abnormal Program error" With the pop-up box header "Microsoft Runtime C++ library"...

It's damned irritating.. does anyone have any pointers/ ideas? I know it's a billion light-year long shot, but still...

My idea is also a long-shot, but you could try installing Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 SP1 Redistributable Package (x86). I know that this program gets installed a lot by games and other applications, so maybe it lost some functionality when installing SP1?

Good luck!

[archeryguy1701]

the_andorian wrote:

---

^Upon conferring with my aunt, who is well versed in these matters, I suspect that to be the case. This PC has an integrated graphics card, whatever that means...so according to her, it just doesn't have the juice to handle serious gaming. I really want to find that sales guy...

You would be correct that integrated cards can't really do gaming well. All that it really means is that rather than being its own card, it is a part of the motherboard. Because of this, it shares all of the mobo's resources (processor, etc), and doesn't really have space for the more fancy features. On the other hand, an actual video card has its own processor and sometimes it's own cooling system, and the ability to do some of the more fancy stuff. You can buy a card to go into your computer for a decent price, though looking back on your specs, I would also advise a slightly more powerful processor as well.

[AthanisTree]

Thanks for the idea AdAstra, tried the install but to no avail

Maybe a hunt for a copy of Win XP (for a special 'old game partition' install would do it. Game, surprisingly, worked rather well on it. Well, as well as ST:NW was ever designed to run

If I might make a further, 'wagging finger' suggestion to ANYONE considering using a new PC for gaming...

PLEASE ensure that you interrogate the minions at your respective PC outlet for every useful scrap of data concerning the core components of the machine...

Kindly avoid GFX chips made by SiS, Matrox (if they're even going still..) or Intel : Nvidia and Ati/AMD are the dedicated game-card makers. Integrated chipsets in laptops are usually a given and most models made by Nvidia or Ati/AMD far outweigh the Intel/SiS chipsets.

Also, Pentium 4, Amd Sempron, Celeron and VIA processors are... well.

Old.

Intel Core, Core Duo, Core Quad, Core i7 or AMD Phenom x2, x3 or x4 processors will usually work best for you. (May have missed a few..? )

As for RAM, with any version of Win Vista, minimum needs to be 2 GB of, at least, DDR2 RAM for decent performance. DDR3 has a price premium :S, just FYI.

And use a decent Antivirus/ Firewall. Some people still don't... I mean, really, why?

:P Have rambled- sorry, just got to enjoying the dissemination of some vaguely useful knowledge!


BTW: Anyone attempting to play Star Trek Generations, just a suggestion: Backup the Savegames periodically, it seems to delete the files randomly... 0_o

[AdAstra]

Windows 7 will have an XP emulator/virtual machine built-in, so you can wait for that to come and play NW when it's out.

[AthanisTree]

Much as Win7 seems like a holy-cow Nirvana! after struggling with Vista for over a year (has it been... so... long >_<), am really not up for another OS swap... but!

Yes, but!

Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 + a copy of Windows 98, am going to try that, see if New Worlds will run on it... Am slightly doubtful but have only to wait for the Win98 CD to arrive. Will keep the thread informed of the inevitable BSD crash, Vista corruption and general nuclear fallout... :P

One question: How many of you have played New Worlds before... I'm becoming fanatic about getting it to work and the complete lack on the web of data about the game is... sad.

[anthonyjmf]

J. Allen wrote:

---

My system specs:


Hardware:

AMD Athlon XP-M 2800+ 1.6Ghz Processor
1.5 GB DDR400 PC3200 RAM
160 GB WD 7200RPM Hard Disk
nVidia GeForce 7300 LE PCI-e 16x 256Mb Graphics Adapter
17" Sceptre NAVI-X7 LCD Flat Panel Monitor


Software:

Windows Vista Ultimate 32 bit w/ Service Pack 1 RC



Working under my Vista machine so far, with no modification:


Star Trek: Away Team
Star Trek: Klingon Academy
Star Trek: Elite Force
Star Trek DS9: The Fallen
Star Trek: Starfleet Command I, II & III
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy
Star Trek: Armada I & II
Star Trek: Hidden Evil
Star Trek: The 25th Anniversary Edition
Star Trek: Judgment Rites
Star Trek TNG: A Final Unity
Star Trek: Bridge Commander
Star Trek: Captain's Chair
Star Trek: Starship Creator I, II
Star Trek: New Worlds

All of these I've tested on many settings in Vista, and they've worked quite well, so far.

J.

Hi,

I'm trying to load New Worlds onto my vista home edition but get error message on starting the game citing some C++ error of some sort.

How did you get Star Trek New Worlds running on your vista?

Cheers, much appreciate response asap so i can get trekking!

[anthonyjmf]

Hi Athanis, Just read your postings, t'is unfortunate the C++ patch didn't work, would seem windows 7 most prudent if not expensive solution. I've new worlds since it was first released, great game, almost finished it on federation mode then got distracted with uni! now am determined to finally finish it! i've been battling to install it on my vista home edition for over a week now, and nothing seems to work. let me know how your windows 98 installation goes.

Cheers,

Anthony

[AthanisTree]

A brisk, vaguely amusing Install of Windows 98 in Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 + Fresh install of New Worlds, update to Direct X 7 and....

The same, sodding message.

The project isn't a waste of time for other reasons (Boot it up just to get the classic Win98 chime ) but..

GRRR! Hulk want game work!

Haven't any further ideas for you antonyjmf... Besides smacking Microsoft with a Bat'Leth. Any luck on your end?

Oh and.. does anyone else have any Deuterium for the New Worlds MAKE-IT-WORK!! fire?

[anthonyjmf]

Problem solved as follows:

1. Vista installs conventionally using NTFS file system.
2. STNW was designed to run on win 95/98 architecture using FAT32 file system.
3. Saving any files wanted to external USB drive first, repartition you hard drive. To repartition go to "computer management (local)" then click "storage" then click "disk management" or just type "using disk managementin" in help menu and click link directly to it.
4. Delete your existing drive ...yes delete, so ensure step 3 is complete first!
5. Now create a new partition (D drive) and set its size to 4Gb (maximum FAT32 will operate in) and format using FAT32 option (from drop down menu);
6. Set the remaining partition to your main partition (C drive) using NFTS on which your VISTA or XP is installed and set as active partition.
7. FINALLY, install STNW onto the FAT32 partition (D drive).
8. Go to folder for STNW in D drive, right click the STNW exe file, set compatibility to WINDOWS 2000 and to run as administrator, new create short cut, place on desktop, and your in :-)

Any folks that this helps can buy me a pint next time your in Dublin!!!

Enjoy.

Anthony

[Deks]

Or ... wouldn't it be simpler to try and install ST New worlds on a USB pen drive (of say 4GB's) which was formated to FAT32 instead of re-formatting your much larger HDD partition?

One more thing.
Star Trek Armada 1 and 2 seem to be having problems with systems over 2GB of RAM.
I recently tried to run Armada 1 (patched with 1.2 v) with the Millenium mod, and ran into a problem of the progress bar not moving at all when trying to start a Single Player mission (this issue was reported even without any mods installed).
Granted, I have 4Gb Ram and a Win7 x64 Ultimate OS.
Am trying right now to compensate for this this issue with the msconfig manipulation and setting the RAM to 2GB.
Hopefully this will limit the OS recognizing only 2GB of RAM and ultimately the game itself.
I'll report back soon.


EDIT :

Well actually, only Armada 1 has issues on systems with over 2GB of RAM.
Armada 2 runs fine on my system (though it requires compatibility mode with XP SP2 apparently in order to avoid the 50MB memory error).

I just opened msconfig.ini and forced windows to utilized only 1 cpu and 1.5GB of RAM.
Upon next restart, my OS still detected 4GB of RAM, however, it stated that only 1.5GB was usable.
And seeing the Task Manager 'Performance' tab showing only 1 CPU along with 1.5GB RAM was quite interesting - bordering on amusing.

But Armada 1 resumed with it's blinking during the attempt to start a single player campaign and of course ultimately stopped responding.

It would appear the only viable solution is to remove 1 of the RAM sticks and test the game like that, because the OS was still able to detect 4GB (but only use 1.5GB).
So we are in the ballpark of the game detecting the amount of total RAM (and not just usable RAM).

The only other solution without removing the RAM stick of course would involve using a Virtual Machine with Windows XP for example (32bit) and ordering the VM to limit RAM detection and use to say 1.5 or 2GB, and run older games like that.

I'll try to find alternative options under Windows 7 x64 (and likely x86 users) for those of us who have 4GB of RAM so we don't have to resort to removal of the RAM sticks or VM.

Though I have to admit that the initial idea was valid.
It still might be ... I just have to find a way to prohibit Windows from detecting the unusable RAM.

EDIT II:

Forget Virtual Windows setup.It can't run games such as Armada.
The gpu emulation is set automatically to S3 ... and that is of 0 use to us in this situation.
If anyone else has any ideas on running Armada 2 on a system with 4GB of RAM, let me know.