Windows XP Music Question

[Verrucosus]

Running Civ2 under the new Windows XP operating system, I fail to get the programme to play music from the CD. The music option in the game menu is checked, the game recognizes the CD and plays all the movies correctly. I have noticed the same problem with other games that play their music from the CD (notably the two "Imperialism" games). Playing music from CD - even the Civ2 music files - using the Windows Media Player is not a problem.

Is there a Windows XP setting I can change to hear the Civ2 music within the game again?

Any help will be much appreciated.

Verrucosus

[EdwardTKing]

You are doing better than me.

I can not get Test of Time to install at all on my XP.

I can recollect reading here (think thread deleted) that program looks in drives early in alphabet for music files; so if you have D: as dvd and E: as cd rom reader; it may be looking in wrong place.
If so, try copying (burn) music files to CD RW?

[Jeremy Buloch]

Well I can't even get the music to work on Win.98 not to mention Win. 2000 pro. The music works in a regular cd player and is also reconized by the cdrom because it loads fine, the movies and sound effects are all correct. So don't feel too bad...
You can just play music from a radio, Cd player, etc.

-J.B.-

[Verrucosus]

Thanks for your help. Of course, I am happy that I can still play the game at all, but the bells and whistles are part of the fun, so I miss them.

EdwardTKing, your tip about using the DVD drive d: was great. It works perfectly with the two Imperialism games, so I suppose it would work with Civ2 as well. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to verify it, because now a different problem has raised its ugly head.

I said that Civ2 had no problems to play the movies from the CD, but that is no longer true. When I reinstalled the game to change the drive for the CD, the setup programme for the "Video for Windows" drivers [which is executed automatically after the installation of the game proper is completed] failed to find the commctrl.dll and dciman.dll files. The game wouldn't work at all without those files, so I copied them from my old computer into the windows\system directory of the new one. Then I reinstalled the game again - no error message this time. The game essentially works (units move more slowly than they used to, but that's not a huge problem), but whenever it tries to run a movie (opening movie, wonders, High Council or heralds), it reports a fatal error in the ir41.dll file and returns to the desktop. This is not a CD problem, because it happens also when I have copied the video files to the civ2 directory. The movies can still be played with the Media Player.

I have no idea why the *.dll files that (I suppose) must have been there when I first installed Civ2 had disappeared, nor do I know the cause of the problem with the ir41.dll file.

Now, I have two questions:
- Is there any harm in leaving the commctrl.dll and dciman.dll files in the windows\system directory while I don't play Civ2. (I'd rather not cause any damage elsewhere.)
- Do you have any theory about the cause of the new video problem?

I'm sorry to have taken your helpful answer to my first question as an invitation to ask a second (and a third, actually), but I trust you understand the needs of a fellow Civ-player.

Verrucosus