After reading about last night’s difficulty with Eraser Turnabout, Colin advised me to try Windows XP’s Windows 95 compatibility mode (selected via the Properties dialog of an executable). I get past my first problem, the one where the game really, truly only wants to run under Windows 95. This is the whiniest program installer I’ve ever seen. It then goes on to complain about this:
Huh? Well, whatever. I can still continue the installation. Next up:
I’m surprised the ACM subsystem isn’t found, but who knows how this program is trying to do things. And the final message during the installation:
At least I understand this one, though I treat it the same I would any offer to install down-rev versions of DirectX or QuickTime. I suspect this program just wants to install Windows Media Player and the Indeo Video 4.1 video codec. Again, this stuff should already be present, so disregard.The game gets installed. I set the W95 compatibility mode on the main executable and am greeted with this dialog on execution:
What on earth is this swap file the game demands? Per my understanding, application-level software isn’t supposed to even care about swap files; that’s an OS-level thing. Another curious feature of the dialog is that it’s system modal in a way that blocks input to the entire desktop. I thought this was a “feature” that Microsoft fixed in Windows 95 and that from then on, system modal dialogs would only remain on top of other windows but not devour all input.
So, still no progress on this game. However, the game did install its 5-page manual which just might provide enough data to write a passable MobyGames description. I also took this opportunity to try 2 other games in Windows 95 compatibility mode that previously gave me trouble: Burn:Cycle still throws the same cryptic dialog and the Psychotron demo installer still thinks its running under Windows NT. I thought, at the bare minimum, the compatibility mode was supposed to lie to the app when the app asks the OS what version of Windows is hosting.
Oh, and I thought I would try Blade Warrior again since DOSBox 0.70 is out. Still no luck running the game but at least it no longer crashes the emulator.
Kostya says:
1. For swap file – maybe it’s just checking if win386.swp is present? Try searching for this string in executable.
2. For DOSBox – have you tried to change the core from dynamic to normal or full or vice versa? This definitely may help.
DosFreak says:
I see this sometimes when I do compatibility testing of my old games. You need to decrease the size of your pagefile to an extremly low value.
For these kinds of games I run them in an emulator so I don’t have to modify the host pagefile.
DosFreak says:
For games that still report requiring Windows 9x even if you apply the compatibility mode then you’ll need to either edit the installshield installer to remove the 9x requirement or you’ll need to extract the files using Uniextract: http://www.legroom.net/software/uniextract
My PC Game Compatibility List
http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=8784