Display on Win7 garbled
 

The Taskkill.exe for some reason was not in the game folder. Copied it in and all is good now.


I have tried the CMD file with the 4.5 patch and everything else listed here on the forums yet my screens are horrible when in full screen mode at 1600X1200.

The screens are fine in windowed mode but the window streaches across the screen and the mouse does not work (makes it a little hard to start the scenrios lol).

I have the CD version all the latest nVidia drivers. The game is NOT installed on the C drive either. Any help would be greatly appriciated.

Re: Display on Win7 garbled
 

???????? What "taskkill.EXE" ??

Don

Re: Display on Win7 garbled
 

I am trying to make some sense of this post...

Your problem appears to be only with full-screen mode from what I can make out. i.e. Windowed mode is working fine?.

Why should taskkill.exe be anywhere near our game folder. Since it is a Windows (Vista plus) intrinsic function, it is always available to batch files. (It lives in the /Windows system files hierarchy). Thus there is absolutely no need to supply this, as it is already there and in the system path. (Unless you have XP, but as the batch file is for Vista+, not relevant).

If you have to make a copy of it locally to make windowed mode work, then something is rather wrong with your windows Vista/seven installation, I think. Since it cannot find the path to the windows system folder.

What exact path did you install your game (and all the patches) to?

Andy

Re: Display on Win7 garbled
 

First off I have Windows 7 not Vista.

The batch file provided in the new patch (Win7SPWW2 which is a Windows Command Script) has a call to a windows internal program called 'taskkill.exe' which apparently is set up in the script to kill the Aero process in Windows 7.

Running this script caused it to error our with 'Unknown Command Name' so the game did not work in either Windowed or FS mode due to Aero not being stopped as discussed in other threads. I did a search for taskkill and copied it into my SPWW2 folder which is on my G drive (Yes I have that many drives).

After coping the taskkill exe into the SPWW2 folder everything is now working fine when the game is launched using the script file (Win7SPWW2). Now I just have to remember what the hell I was doing in the campaign I was in the middle of :D

It really does not matter to me why I had to copy the taskkill exe into the SPWW2 folder, as long as it is now working.

Rant on

It is awesome that I can now play one of my favorite games again. I just wish that the copywrite owners of the source code would allow the game to be redesigned to take advantage of the new displays, multitreading, etc. rather than continuing to have everyone jump through hoops to keep getting the game to run on systems that it was never designed to run on. At some point advances will get to a point that the game will be beyond help and then we will all feel a loss of a really great game.

While some here may be willing to play with 800x600 graphics forever in order to enjoy the game, (or running virtual machines using DOS/XP/etc. or using utilities like DOSBox) I am not one of these. While it is great that higher resolutions are now usable, it does not do justice to the unit and terian graphics that could be presented if allowed. I for one would be more than willing to pay full price for such an upgrade.

But it at least it does work once again, and I will continue to play but at some point without any fundamental changes to the game, I will stop and move on to lesser games which at least do not require such detailed requirements just to get the game to function. A sad day for me to be sure, but one I find is fast approaching.

Rant off

Re: Display on Win7 garbled
 

Not sure if this is related in any way, but when I tried to use the taskkill method on another game (C&C Red Alert) I also got the Unknown Command Name error. I did not think of copying taskkill.exe directly to the game dir though.

Have you tried the alternate method of fixing the color issues in Win Vista /7?

I posted some info about it here:
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=47156

The direct draw compatibility tool is an easy way to apply the color fix without the need to write registry files manualy.
It is available here:
http://www.4shared.com/file/xeIljXSm...ity_Tool_.html

Basicaly you run it and browse to the .exe file of the game. In this case WinSPWW2.exe (or WinSPMBT.exe) and hit the Apply button. Then it should write the nessesary registry values automaticaly. Then you should be able to start the game witout the cmd file directly from WinSPWW2.exe.

Re: Display on Win7 garbled
 

re my bold

it may be that something about the way your G:\ drive is set up makes windows 7 lose the path to the windows folder? (is it an USB or flash drive perhaps?).

In that case, you may need to edit the batch file to use fully-qualified paths to the windows service routines?.

So the taskkill statement in the CMD file would therefore need to be modified to C:\Windows\System\taskkill - or whatever path it happens to be to the exe location, tacked on in front.

Dumping the executable in the folder of course bypasses that completely :)!.

If it's restoring the desktop after exit from the CMD script session, then it is finding the other system commands fine though. Which would be weird - or Microsoft, which amounts to the same thing really..

NB - the CMD file is not called, in Windowed mode. It is only called for Full-Screen mode. There is no need to kill off Aero, if you play in windowed mode - and "Desktop resolution" Windowed Mode does the same job as full-screen for the full CD game owners, together with playing with Windows multi-tasking in a more cooperative manner.

Cheers
Andy