Matrix Games Forums

Tried installing WF on my XP machine, and it tells me I have the wrong version of Windows loaded. According to the Talonsoft website, it should work, especially after installing the patch (which I did). Anyone out there with similar experiences? Les, I know you mentioned you had the game - ever tried installing it to XP? Any help would be appreciated.

I installed it quite awhile back and it never mentioned 'wrong version of windows'. If that's the case just explore the CD to the setup exe, rt click and change compatibility to win98/ME. Then run the setup exe. The only thing the compatibility mode does it make the program believe it's NOT winNT/2k/XP anyway. Maybe if you installed it again that way??

It's worth a shot - I'll try it tonight when I get home from work. Thanks Nefarious!

Hmmmmmm. Ya, I had mega problems with that whole series on XP. I couldn't get any of them to run on XP. West Front, East Front, all those.

I'll look into that suggestion as a possible solution to that problem.

KGrob wrote:Hmmmmmm. Ya, I had mega problems with that whole series on XP. I couldn't get any of them to run on XP. West Front, East Front, all those.

I'll look into that suggestion as a possible solution to that problem.

Tried it last night - I tried running every executable file I could find under Win 95/98. No dice.

i had rising sun on my xp 1.2 duron no video card
maybe because it was a newer version or the vid card thing
didnt have to do anything special, even the sound worked

Thanks guys. I'll look around and see if I can find anything about how to load those games up on XP. Nothing so far. If I do find something, I'll post it up here.

Please, do the same if you happen to run across anything.

Thanx.

That's strange, I have had no problems what so ever with West Front nor East Front 2 on XP. Nothing about "wrong version of Windows" or anything during install. I have "gold" versions of them, but they're just patched up versions of the games (WF ver. 1.05 and EF2 ver. 1.03). Well, they both complained something about "wrong color depth" (or something) once the game had launched, but both games ran without any other problems. I have GeForce 4 video card, so at least it works with (quite) new vid cards. Sounds play OK as well.

I know this wasn't very helpful, but at least you know (aside from Talonsoft's assurance) that West Front should work on XP. Hope you succeed in getting it running.

Yeah, I had the same thing happen as did Tommi. The only problem I had was that it recommended I set my desktop to 16 bit color instead of 32. It ran just fine in 32 though - so no big deal. My West Front and EF2 are both loaded up and work perfectly. I don't know what's missing guys....

Jeez. Lmfao.

I just can't figure it boys. Tried it again. I have all the gold series. They run fine on my windows ME machine. But, they don't run at all on my windows XP machine.

Bummer.

Hey KGrob,

I run WF, and RS on Windows XP Home Edition without problems as well so I am guessing that maybe you are using XP Pro perhaps?

The only reason I can think of that you would get the 'wrong version of Windows' message is that I recall that most games back in the time frame that WF etc were initially released were incompatible with the Windows NT operating system and they would routinely check which OS you were using when the game was launched. To the best of my knowledge neither XP Home or XP Pro shares any of its code with the Windows NT OS but the heuristic that WF uses to determine this may be getting tripped up by some subtle difference between the Home and Pro editions of XP.

Anyway, just a guess and hope you find the problem.

-g

Nah, good thinking though.

I run Windows XP Home edition.

It's probably a software switch somewhere. Probably something as simple as setting it from where it's at to where it needs to be. Hehe. It would probably take a whole one minute to do -- if only I knew what it was???? Heheh.

Thanks

I have the original Rising Sun and had no problems running on my old machine under XP with an Nvidia Geforce card. I didn't try West Front, but none of the old ACW games caused a problem.

Ok This is how I got West Front by Talon Soft to work on XP.
First open the CD of West Front and find the "SETUP ICON" right click on it and under the COMPATIBILITY TAB set it to WIN98. Then close this window and then click on the SETUP ICON, do NOT use AUTO SETUP OR AUTO INSTALL. After the game has installed THEN load the West Front 1.5 PATCH, just unzip it in the directory where you installed West Front. Once the install is done find the West Front.exe ICON (just says West Front and is Army Green with a Star inside the square box) click on it, when you see the EAGLE press your ESC key and it should take you to the scenario/campaign screen. Should work, it did for me.

A current comment, yes I have been able to run it in XP, but as was just mentioned ahead of me, you have to walk through the process, and be aware you might have to do a fiddly custom install. Might depend on your hadware and drivers currenty installed too.

Nothing like changing the hardware and drivers to mess up a previously happy picture eh.

ORIGINAL: Les_the_Sarge_9_1


Nothing like changing the hardware and drivers to mess up a previously happy picture eh.

Very true Les, I've had games work for me on XP that others have problems with and had problems with games in XP that others don't and I suspect it's actually newer device drivers that are causing the problem rather than XP. A good tip with old DOS games, for instance, is to disable the sound in the set-up routine.

Graphics card drivers are so dodgy these days, that the old advice to keep your drivers up to date should be replaced with advice to find a set that works for you and don't update until you have to.