Damn you Windows Vista! (part 342)

fairline · November 17, 2009, 14:04

OK, I fancied giving MGE a whirl after a long period of abstinence, and I find that the cpu-hack exe for MGE crashes on my Vista 64 system. Anyone have the same problem and can offer advice and/or commiserations?

Harry Tuttle · November 20, 2009, 14:01

Commiserations. I just bought Windows 7 Professional with XP support. I'll let you know how it goes.

fairline · November 23, 2009, 09:47

Good luck!

curtsibling · November 23, 2009, 10:59

Gareth - My advice would be to buy a 2nd hand computer with XP for CIV use and nowt else.

And don't worry about XP updates...I haven't updated since 2006, with no adverse effects.

I'll never use that abyssal Vista nightmare or sinister Winblows 7...Nevah!

AGRICOLA · November 23, 2009, 18:54

I suggested the same thing some time ago. Gareth informed me that his ~~broom closet~~ computer set-up absolutely, positively has no desk space for a second PC.

curtsibling · November 24, 2009, 06:30

Faced with no CIV in my life, I would make the room...

AGRICOLA · November 28, 2009, 20:30

I had a terrible thought . . . . . will Civ2 die not because of lack of interest but because it may not run on future operating systems?

In the next few years there should be XP machines available for a pittance as people upgrade to W7 after skipping Vista. Get one and use it for a doorstop until needed.

McMonkey · November 29, 2009, 06:27

Or buy a cheap copy of XP and run it alongside Vista/Windows 7 using Virtual PC. I need to get around to doing this as there are several old games that don't run on Vista that I would like to have a blast on from time to time.

Harry Tuttle · November 29, 2009, 12:03

I got Win 7 Professional for about $130 at Costco. I have yet to install it, but I imagine that the XP option will allow Civ 2 to run. If not, Freeciv will be my future.

curtsibling · December 2, 2009, 19:44

Oddly, tonight my computer flagged up an icon to run windows update for the first
time in years (literally)...Naturally, I ignored this laughable feature and turned off
the notifications. I have avoided Window's lunatic influnce since 2006 and intend
to continue this trend...Vive la XP if it allows CIV modding to continue...!

fairline · December 4, 2009, 07:36

I always find Windows updates hugely entertaining, in a 'I wonder if my PC will still work after this happens' kind of way. My favourite was an XP update which disagreed with my AVG anti-virus software to the point of stopping windows loading and stalling at a desktop with no icons or menus present. Great stuff! Well done Gates, I remember saying to myself. Or words to that effect...

Still, I like Vista a lot more than XP, and it seems more stable in general. It's a huge pain in the arsse getting round the laughably restricive security settings (by default you have virtually no rights to save or edit files!), but once you overcome this the only real bugbears are the backwards-compatibility problems which are very rarely solved by running in XP mode. There are usually fixes online though; these are invariably user fixes rather than official MS fixes, obviously

Catfish · December 6, 2009, 18:10

Originally Posted by fairline

OK, I fancied giving MGE a whirl after a long period of abstinence, and I find that the cpu-hack exe for MGE crashes on my Vista 64 system. Anyone have the same problem and can offer advice and/or commiserations?

Whose CPU-fix are you using? Timbatron's patched civ2 executable or Till's all-version patcher? Are you using MastermindX's 64-bit patcher? Both Till and MastermindX are still active on CFC. If you have problems with their patches/patchers, post where they can see it.

CPU fix thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=112086
64-bit patcher thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=193215

DarkCloud · December 7, 2009, 23:55

So how does vanilla Civ II work in Win 7.

Commisserations on Vista. I foolishly purchased a vista computer in 2007 and have never stopped cursing it- it is the worst computer I've ever bought since a 1996 compaq that kept melting down. It is possible that even the old Apple IIs I had worked better, except the comparison isn't really fair given what Vista is expected to do versus what they are expected to do. (!) My quality of life improved drastically after I bought a tiny netbook this summer and have used it constantly because it has XP.

The Vista machine sits unused and I utilize the happy little netbook.

fairline · December 9, 2009, 09:08

Originally Posted by Catfish

Whose CPU-fix are you using? Timbatron's patched civ2 executable or Till's all-version patcher? Are you using MastermindX's 64-bit patcher? Both Till and MastermindX are still active on CFC. If you have problems with their patches/patchers, post where they can see it.

CPU fix thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=112086
64-bit patcher thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=193215

Timbatron's patched exe. Hadn't realised there were 2 others involved with patching, but it's kind of academic in terms of asking for help on CFC, as I can't log in anymore. I've e-mailed the site owners twice, but never received a response unfortunately.

I don't think not being able to play MGE is going to worry me too much though, as ToT still works. Also been playing Civ IV recently, or at least the superb ' history of three kingdoms' mod for Civ IV. This game sh1ts from a considerable height over any version of civ2 and is highly moddable. I guess the down-side is the degree of effort required to make a full-on mod as opposed to a simple vanilla scenario in civ IV.

fairline · December 9, 2009, 09:12

Originally Posted by DarkCloud

So how does vanilla Civ II work in Win 7.

.......a 1996 compaq that kept melting down......

I had an early noughties Compaq that did mush the same, partcurlarly with civ hogging all available cpu cycles when waiting for input; hence my reluctance to subject my current computer to any such shennanigins.

Catfish · December 9, 2009, 21:58

Originally Posted by fairline

Timbatron's patched exe. Hadn't realised there were 2 others involved with patching, but it's kind of academic in terms of asking for help on CFC, as I can't log in anymore. I've e-mailed the site owners twice, but never received a response unfortunately.

If anyone has problems running Civ2 on 64-bit operating systems, they should at least try MastermindX’s 64-bit patcher. As far as not being able to log in, you could always create a DL. My Wobbegong account there was a DL. But that message was meant for anyone here reading this. I’ve seen on a number of occasions people posting issues here about utilities and patchers, when the development threads are over there. Pointless. If I’d never posted in the CPU usage thread, Timbatron would probably never have made the patch for ToT.

Originally Posted by fairline

Also been playing Civ IV recently, or at least the superb ' history of three kingdoms' mod for Civ IV. This game sh1ts from a considerable height over any version of civ2 and is highly moddable.

I’ve played a fair bit of Civ4 myself recently; far more than Civ2 anyway. Mostly it’s been Fall From Heaven stuff. I’ll check out The History of Three Kingdoms when I reinstall Civ4. I’ve only recently installed Windows 7 (32-bit). I had a couple of issues with my WotR scenario, which I was able to fix. Video playback was the biggest worry. I’ll play it through one more time and then update the installation instructions.

curtsibling · December 10, 2009, 23:08

Civ4 was OK, but I found it annoying to play at times...Hard to know what effect the
city screen was having on trade, etc. I guess it technologically is superior to CIV2,
seeing as it came out a decade or more later. But I when is comes to chess-like fun,
I can never find anything that comes close to CIV2...

The only other game I am playing at the moment is the Star Wars mod for Mount & Blade.

civ2units · December 13, 2009, 13:22

I´m also thinking about using Windows 7 instead of XP. Does anyone knows if ToT works on Win 7? I´m still running ToT with the compatibility mode of XP, I´ve also heard about something like that is available in Windows 7. But I´m not sure if a program which needs Win98 runs on Win7

Catfish · December 13, 2009, 17:41

Yes, there are compatibility modes in Windows 7. I’m running a 32-bit version of Windows 7. ToT works on that without the need for compatibility mode, but I plan to play a game right through before concluding that it’s fully compatible. So far, the only problem I’ve encountered (not including batch files) involves the playback of Indeo-encoded AVI files: I’d get a black screen. The Indeo 5 DLL is present in the System32 directory, but it’s not registered. After registering the DLL, videos worked fine. I never needed to run ToT, or any version of Civ2, in compatibility mode on Windows XP (32-bit).

If it came to the crunch, you could always use Windows Virtual PC to run Windows XP Mode in Windows 7 – a pretty straightforward process if you have Windows 7 Professional or higher. Your hardware also needs to support virtualisation. It allows you to run a Windows XP environment inside Windows 7. You’d start up Windows XP Mode just like any other application, and install and play Civ2 inside the application window.

curtsibling · December 14, 2009, 05:52

I love the way Windows assumes that no-one is interested in any computing programs before 2005.

A bunch of nitwits...

Catfish · December 14, 2009, 16:13

Microsoft would not have bothered with compatibility modes if they did. Why else would they include XP Mode – for an operating system released in 2001?

And I just managed to install and run the original vanilla Civ2, released in 1996, on Windows 7 without compatibility mode. I think there’s plenty of legacy support in Windows. If you’re bitching about 64-bit versions of Windows not being able to run antiquated software, then all I can say is that you picked the wrong operating system. I'm no Microsoft fanboy; I'm just calling it as I see it.

civ2units · December 14, 2009, 17:58

Good to hear that civ2 and ToT runs on your Windows 7, Catfish

This gives hope that it also should run on my computer. A life without Civ2, it would be a nightmare for me.

Civ2 is the only game which I played since the release.

Harry Tuttle · December 15, 2009, 01:27

Installed ToT vanilla original CD on Win 7, 64 bit - XP mode virtual machine. 4 GIG RAM. Install went fine, program ran fine at startup. Started a new fresh game no problems. After game started game functions extremely sluggish to the point where closing out of a game took probably 20 seconds.

Installed and running PSPro 8 in XP mode with no lag. So ToT problem not machine.

Installed Civ 2 vanilla original CD. Install went fine. Started new game, same results as ToT.

Ideas, besides installing a 32 bit OS?

Catfish · December 15, 2009, 05:01

I’ll see if I can get my hands on a 64-bit version. When I upgrade to 4 GB RAM (no hurry there), I’m pretty sure I’ll switch over. There is 3rd-party virtualisation software, like VMware and VirtualBox, that might be worth trying. At the moment, I’ve still to work through a full game of ToT with the current setup.

Mercator · December 15, 2009, 17:30

to everthing you've said in this thread, Catfish.

I'm running 64-bit Windows 7 too as of a few days ago. I "installed" both ToT and FW in XP mode too (I just copied the folders from my previous machine, plus some registry settings for ToT). I haven't really played yet, just started them up to see if they worked at all and loaded some savegames/walked around some settlers, and they were running just dandy.

@Harry: I'd suggest trying the CPU fix Catfish linked to earlier in this thread. Or at least check the CPU activity in the Task Manager...

Harry Tuttle · December 15, 2009, 17:45

Yeah, I had the same thought too. I will DL the fix hopefully tonight and see if that'll cure it.

Harry Tuttle · December 16, 2009, 02:09

Looks like Mercator had the right idea. I copied my already patched MGE folder over to the XP virtual partition and it worked no problem. Same with ToT.

Catfish · December 16, 2009, 03:32

It’s looking like Windows 7 64-bit Professional or higher (Windows XP Mode), or any version of Windows 7 32-bit are the options for the Civ2 player. If your system has 4 GB or more of RAM, you’re probably going to go with the 64-bit version.

Radyserb · December 18, 2009, 18:04

Originally Posted by Mercator

to everthing you've said in this thread, Catfish.

I'm running 64-bit Windows 7 too as of a few days ago. I "installed" both ToT and FW in XP mode too (I just copied the folders from my previous machine, plus some registry settings for ToT). I haven't really played yet, just started them up to see if they worked at all and loaded some savegames/walked around some settlers, and they were running just dandy.

Did you try to found cities too??

Harry Tuttle · December 18, 2009, 20:12

I was able to found my first city... Is there a problem with the second?