SPWW2 keeps crashing

[Noah Vaile]

After several years of no problems my faithful Inspiron 8000, Me O/S has started to crash SPWW2v7, only. Other games that are downloaded (PG2, SPWAW) play just fine. I am having a video problem that requires me to re-set the video settings to "Use display adapter scaling" every time it shuts down or sleeps.

When I open the game I get a small DOS window that says "Drive not ready error reading drive D" even though there is no disc in the drive; but by hitting "f" (fail) two times the game starts right up. It has been doing that for years. When I put the 'game disc' in the d-drive it starts right up without the small DOS window, going directly into the game. However in both cases the game freezes after only a few moves.

Right now it is (I am) trying to get through the AI turn but freezes in a few seconds. Then I have yo alt-con-del.

I have erased and reloaded the game without effect.

Unfortunately this I-8000 has no virus protections and no internet capability. I use it solely to play Steel Panthers.

[Mobhack]

Originally Posted by Noah Vaile

After several years of no problems my faithful Inspiron 8000, Me O/S has started to crash SPWW2v7, only. Other games that are downloaded (PG2, SPWAW) play just fine. I am having a video problem that requires me to re-set the video settings to "Use display adapter scaling" every time it shuts down or sleeps.

When I open the game I get a small DOS window that says "Drive not ready error reading drive D" even though there is no disc in the drive; but by hitting "f" (fail) two times the game starts right up. It has been doing that for years. When I put the 'game disc' in the d-drive it starts right up without the small DOS window, going directly into the game. However in both cases the game freezes after only a few moves.

Right now it is (I am) trying to get through the AI turn but freezes in a few seconds. Then I have yo alt-con-del.

I have erased and reloaded the game without effect.

Unfortunately this I-8000 has no virus protections and no internet capability. I use it solely to play Steel Panthers.

V7 is the obsolete and unsupported DOS version, not WinSPWW2 right?.

The DOS versions of SPWW2/SPMBT do not read or require any "game disks".

Are you confusing DOS SPWW2 with the original SSI SP games (which did require a CD in the drive)?.

The only suggestion I would have for you is to do a disk surface scan for bad sectors, since you may have some corrupting the game data.

Cheers
Andy

[Noah Vaile]

Yes Andy: It is the old, early, now unsupported DOS based version. In order to get games to my "gamer" I download them to my online machine, burn discs and then upload from the disc to the Inspiron. These games had been running off the hard drive for several years. No problems. No confusions. I know what I have and know what it is and how (in the shallowest of senses) it works.

The I-8000 developed a "scaling" problem that effected the gaming windows (centering them and shrinking them). This happened on this internally loaded game as well as two others, SPWAW and PG2. After a Bios (A23) download and fiddling with the NVIDIA (GeForce2Go) settings that is mostly solved (every time the machine shuts down I have to re-set, but I hope that is another story). In any event now my ancient and doddering SPWW2v7.01 crashes/freezes after only a few minutes/moves without fail. I can usually do one or two (or more) moves and save but it will freeze in the save window with the same likelihood as in the game board. I have really loved this and hate to lose it, at least on this computer. It still runs just fine on an older I-3500 with Windows 98 O/S. I discovered that even though it does not require the disc to run, if the disc is in it will load directly from that (?) and I will not get the inane DOS prompt that opened the game after a pair of 'fail" inputs. Not that that really bothered me.

In any event I have uninstalled the v7.01 in the event that it may have gotten corrupted. Even tried re-installing to, guess what, no avail.

I have since loaded the newest Windows version of SPWW2 and will soon see how that works.

I was/am simply seeking help in resurrecting my old SPWW2v7.01 on this machine, if possible.

[Mobhack]

I am afraid I have no clue about the DOS game - I doubt I even remeber what you had to do to get it up and running and the mouse working etc.

Sounds like your old machine is on its way out, really.

Cheers
Andy

[Noah Vaile]

Loaded WinSPWW2. Mostly working fine. Only crashes when editing number of turns in map-edit screen in long campaign. Otherwise staying upright and hard at work.