Creatures 3 and Vista

[Stg-Flame]

I have been trying to get Creatures 2 and 3 to work on my girlfriend's laptop for a while now and it does not seem to work. She assures me that they both worked at one point, but now all she gets is a missing registry key error as well as a killengine Direct Draw error. I figured it was Vista's fault, but it installed and played perfectly on my PC.

I know this is an off game, but their official forums are being flagged by Firefox for possible phishers on top of being fairly dead. So I hope Anandtech can figure this out for me.

 

[Stg-Flame]

Anyone?

 

[Fox5]

Try uninstall and then reinstall? Try xp compatibility mode, or maybe even 98?
You could also install a copy of virtualbox and throw an older version of windows on as a virtual machine.

 

[Lepard]

Have you tried installing the DX Redistributable?

 

[aka1nas]

Can you at least give us some specs on the laptop? You really didn't give us anything to work with.

 

[Stg-Flame]

Originally posted by: Fox5
Try uninstall and then reinstall? Try xp compatibility mode, or maybe even 98?
You could also install a copy of virtualbox and throw an older version of windows on as a virtual machine.

Tried the uninstall and reinstall and I tried all compatibility modes. Still has errors.

Originally posted by: Lepard
Have you tried installing the DX Redistributable?

Not entirely sure what this is, but I shall Google it and look into it tonight.

Originally posted by: aka1nas
Can you at least give us some specs on the laptop? You really didn't give us anything to work with.

How careless of me. I am usually fairly good at posting specs of everything, even when they need not be posted.

As far as I know, she has an integrated chipset GPU, 3.0 Intel C2D, and 3GB RAM. Any more and I would need to go get her laptop and post the specs as I read them. For now, I am going by memory. I shall post an update, hopefully tomorrow since it's my day off.

 

[frozentundra123456]

How long ago did the games quit working??
If it happened recently, you might be able to try doing a system restore back to a time when the games supposedly worked. You probably already tried this, but it is just a measure that has worked for me.

Also, I don't know if you have User Account Control on or off. If it is on, try turning it off, and vice versa. I have had games get messed up because I changed the status of UAC after the game was installed.

 

[Mem]

Creatures 3 solution.

You can run Creatures on Vista. Go to My Computer or whatever its called. Then right click on Creatures 3 and go to Explore. Then click on the Install folder. You go through a few more folders and you should find a Setup icon. Right click on it then go to Properties. Go to Compatiblility at the top. Click the box to run the compatibility mode and set the mode to Windows 2000 for the best results. Apply the changes then exit out. Then double-click on the Setup icon.

You might have to right click again and go to Run as Administrator. This will install the program on your computer. You'll have to go to the Start menu with the disc in to play. Vista doesn't recognize the startup engine to Creatures for some reason so every time you want to play, put the disc in, wait for the message telling you that the engine won't work, click out of the message, go to the Start menu and start your game up from the Start menu.

.

Also install latest DX9.0c (March 2009)

 

[Stg-Flame]

Originally posted by: frozentundra123456
How long ago did the games quit working??
If it happened recently, you might be able to try doing a system restore back to a time when the games supposedly worked. You probably already tried this, but it is just a measure that has worked for me.

Also, I don't know if you have User Account Control on or off. If it is on, try turning it off, and vice versa. I have had games get messed up because I changed the status of UAC after the game was installed.

I did a restore point to when she claimed the game worked and still to no avail. As for the User Account Control, I disabled the UAC on her laptop because it always bugged her.

Originally posted by: Mem
Creatures 3 solution.

You can run Creatures on Vista. Go to My Computer or whatever its called. Then right click on Creatures 3 and go to Explore. Then click on the Install folder. You go through a few more folders and you should find a Setup icon. Right click on it then go to Properties. Go to Compatiblility at the top. Click the box to run the compatibility mode and set the mode to Windows 2000 for the best results. Apply the changes then exit out. Then double-click on the Setup icon.

You might have to right click again and go to Run as Administrator. This will install the program on your computer. You'll have to go to the Start menu with the disc in to play. Vista doesn't recognize the startup engine to Creatures for some reason so every time you want to play, put the disc in, wait for the message telling you that the engine won't work, click out of the message, go to the Start menu and start your game up from the Start menu.

.

Also install latest DX9.0c (March 2009)

I did find that while carousing the forums and I tried that method which still did not work. If she would ever let me have the laptop for a day so that I could thoroughly test some possibilities, I could probably narrow it down and repair the game for her. Unfortunately with both of our work schedules, this does not seem to be an option. Her days off are my busiest days and my days off are her busiest days. Either way, I appreciate all of the suggestions thus far and I shall continue trying.