Difficulties with XP/Games
 

One of my oldest, favorite games ever is Heroes of Might and Magic 3. I always played it on our old computer downstairs, but now I have my own PC. I installed XP Pro on it and everything works fine. But then when I try to install the game (Heroes3 Complete) it gives me an error during installation. I believe it might have something to do with Direct X compatibilities, but I'm not sure. Hopefully there is some computer genius lurking about who can tell me how to fix it. I don't know if I gave enough information, if I didn't just tell me. Any help is appreciated.

What error does it say?

-Lasereth

I too had problems running my older stuff, Doom especially would give my computer fits. I do remember on some tech forum a couple years ago stating that older games on newer platforms will not work well or at all with the new breed of OS's. They also mentioned somthing about DOS being the biggest reason for this.

Yeah, a lot of DOS games have major problems with newer OS's, mainly 2000/XP since they don't run off of DOS.

-Lasereth

No one can help you if you don't post the error. :)

I'm guessing it's not a DOS game since it's using an installer. DOS "install" was merely setting your sound devices and saving it to a .dat file on the original floppy.

AppName: _ins5576._mp AppVer: 5.50.137.0 ModName: chkreqs.dll
ModVer: 0.0.0.0 Offset: 00006436

And it started off with an error consisting of "DirectX is not supported by this version of windows" and then "Error installing Direct X" even though I already have it installed.

I think your version of dx is prolly too advanced for an old game.

Same here.

-Lasereth

try running the game in compatability mode

right click on the .exe, should have a compatability tab, enable like win98 emulation.

that might help, although to be honest, it has never solved a problem for me.

i dont know how old the game is, but if it's DOS based (16-bit) it wont work with a XP based system (32 bit only). You can use an emulator like DOSbox. look DOSbox up on google.

It's not old....came out in 2000. But I'll try the other suggestions.

This is kind of advanced, but it's what I do an I love it.

Go to http://www.vmware.com and download the VMWare Workstation program, then create a Win98 SE or DOS (or whatever you have) virtual machine on your XP machine. Install your games on there and play away. I play all my old DOS games on a 98 VMWare machine. May lag slightly, but nothing major.

A free-ware, opensource option to VMWare (but is more difficult to get going properly) is: http://bochs.sourceforge.net/

Good luck.

I actually worked a bit on heroes might and magic 3, doing some compatibility fixes :)

Sorry about that.

I'm able to run all four Heroes of Might and Magic on an XP Pro system. Definitely use compatability mode. It'll make your life a lot easier.

Dano, what version of DirectX do you have? That might be my problem and anything i can relate to will be helpful. And I would try the compatibility thing, except it won't even install. That's where it crashes.

And CharlieX, great game you helped make :)

I'm running version 9. My video card doesn't support it and I doubt my sound card does either, but, it works.

Are you running the install in compatibility mode? If not, try that. You need to browse to the install program on the cd and right click and set the compatibility mode to 98/ME. Hope it works for you.

I have this issue on almost all of my games. I try running the installer for Red Alert, Mechwarrior 3, Hero's 3 and I gave up after awhile.
If the installer won't even start, should I try that with the compatability mode?

Well I used an uninstaller to backtrack to DX version 8.01 or something. Then I put the installer in compatiblity mode, but it still didn't work. I'll go fiddle around with it some more.

Did you try 95 compatibility mode too?

An update on my situation, thanks for the compatibility mode tip. I got Mechwarrior and another game to work, but still have yet to get Red Alert to work. When I get home tonight though, I'm going to try again.

Bah, why does it work for you and not me!!?!?

Computers are so aggravating.

every thing I have has worked fine in compatability mode and its real simple to set too....

Gave this a go and was impressed. I can play Captive again which is a great game. It took some working out how to set up, so if anyone wants to try it read the forums for help.

thanks...dosbox worked for me too