Need help getting Alpha Centauri to run

[TheProvost]

To clarify: the Planetary Pack was a special bundle released by Firaxis (I assume) that includes both vanilla AC and Alien Crossfire. I mention it because, as it uses a slightly different version of both games, and thus different patches, it is possible it will work where others have failed. Unfortunately, it is somewhat hard to find.

And I'm not sure about this board's policy regarding the NO-CD crack, but I would encourage you to give it a shot, as a lot of these problems can be resolved by eliminating any unneccesary peripherals (e.g. a cd-rom drive). Also, have you tried a full install? Or a full reinstall?

Also also: sound cards can cause problems such as the one you mentioned. Are you using a somewhat less than perfect board (such as a native Creative card)?

[#endgame]

also, I had to turn eax sound off on a friends comp to get his SMAX to work.

eax=0 in the AlphaCentauri.ini

[Googlie]

arcadian:

I've sent you a Private Message with the urls for both the smac and smax no-cd fixes. Also, I've sent my .ini file contents (I've been running on XP with no problem for coming up on 2 years now)

G.

[arcadian]

Googlie, tnx for the pm. I used your ini file and it looked prommising.
I can't say for sure because I only tried once and I lost. Got my ass kicked by Santiago within 20 turns or so.

Anyway, I think this does the trick. I did a complete install and then applied the XP patch. As I said I used your .ini settings, although I think it's kinda silent. So I turned on teh sound and guess what? The game crashed again. Leads me to believe that it's a sound issue.
I'll go and update the soundcard drivers.
It's a SigmaTel C-major Audio card. I don't know if that means anything special, but then again... I don't know that much about soundcards.

[Kaboth]

Perhaps you can disable your sound card and try running integrated sound though I'm not sure if this is possible.