Microsoft Virtual PC

[Gotcha!]

Hello people,

Perhaps my post below can help people with running Worms: Armageddon from XP with a high end videocard. (Mine is a Geforce 6800GT and really screwed things up.)

I felt a sudden urge to play a game of Worms: Armageddon.
If I had only anticipated the problems accompanied with running this game on Windows XP... :eek:
(For a game released in 1999 I think it's sad that it has so much issues with running on today's systems, but let's leave that aside. :rolleyes:)

Anyway,
- The first challenge was simple, W:A wasn't supported to run in NT/2000/XP, but XP has a nice option for that. (Right-click wa.exe, properties, enable Win98 compatibility)
- Then I needed to use a no-cd crack (I have an original copy, mind you) because the game hung at start-up, unable to find the cd.
- But then the real challenge started. W:A crashed to windows every single time that I started it. After installing the latest beta patch W:A was able to lockup and reboot(!) my pc every time I spent some time in the menus. I plowed through the forums and various sites for other solutions, but there weren't any.

Nevertheless, I wasn't about to give up. Windows 98 was sure to run this game smoothly, but I wasn't looking to reinstall my system to a dualboot system.
Microsoft provided the perfect solution! Free of charge even.

I installed Virtual PC;
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/default.mspx

For those who do not know what it is; you basically create a virtual environment inside Windows XP in which you can install other operating systems. This operating system is then saved in a single file on your harddrive.

I then installed Windows 98 (you will need a bootdisk!) in this virtual environment and installed W:A in it; used a no-cd crack, patched to 3.00, and copied all files off the cd to the Worms folder.
it works perfectly, online play and everything.

This might sound like a lot of work (and for some it is) but if you're desperately looking for a solution to play this game, then this might help. ;)

If anyone wants to try this out and has any questions, I will try to answer them.

[Gotcha!]

Some tips using Virtual PC:

- You will need a bootdisk, bootable cdroms won't work.

- After you booted your VPC you will need FDISK to setup a partition to install Windows 95/98 on. After that you need to format it.

- Everything you do inside Virtual PC happens INSIDE the file on your harddrive!
Using FDISK and FORMAT will not screw up your system in any way.

[KRD]

Erm, yes. The game runs on XP easily, all you have to do is patch it properly. Instructions here: www.nanacide.com/wahelp/

Ta ta, hours and hours of mind-bending work.

[Gotcha!]

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough, but this didn't work for me and might not work for a lot of others as well. Please don't expect that any solution should work for everyone.

Ta ta.

[KRD]

So far updating the game has worked for everyone on the three Worms-related forums I read.

I'm hardly an expert, but it sounds to me the game runs fine for you when updated to version 3.6.26.5, other than the annoying fact your computer reboots after spending some time in it. The most likely cause for that is one or more components of your system reaching a critical temperature. Or it could be faulty RAM, but I imagine it wouldn't only happen in WA if that was the case.

The reason it doesn't happen in version 3.00 is probably because WA wasn't programmed to use all available system resources then yet, but is with the latest update. However, with version 3.00 you won't experience much of WormNet, since the vast majority of people playing online refuse to allow unpatched people into their games. For obvious reasons, the updates have brought a lot of new features and bug fixes.

But like I said, I don't know too much about hardware, so someone else will have to hop in and explain it in detail. Your system specs will probably be appreciated then.

[Gotcha!]

KRD, I just wanted to share this information for people who are just dying to play W:A and can't get a solution for any problems that they have.

I work in ict myself, and really did everything in my power to make things work, but in the end the given solutions didn't work for me.
I think it has to do with my videocard together with its drivers, due to the massive screen-turns-black-pc-locks-up-and-reboots-problem and the way W:A is displayed when running in XP.

My pc is in tip-top condition, so hardware problems are out of the question. You just have to trust me on that one. ;)
Thanks for your help though. I can play W:A and am all happy.

[Plasma]

Gotcha, did you install the patches the same way as KRD's link told you to? Because in your first post, you said that you had only patched the game to 3.00 on Windows98.

[Gotcha!]

More clearing up:
I did everything that was asked of me on www.nanacide.com/wahelp/. Tried it multiple times even.
I did this in XP, and I run a virtual Windows 98 inside XP now.

Not every system is the same, guys. For me it didn't work, don't worry about it. ;)

[Plutonic]

very odd, I get the 'closes afer a few secs on the menus' bug under vista but never heard of it under winXP. Does the game close or the whole PC lock up?

[evilworm2]

LOL! He installed virtualpc to run worms on windowxp! lol

[Lex]

Anyway,
- The first challenge was simple, W:A wasn't supported to run in NT/2000/XP,Obviously, you did not read everything. WA is perfectly supported for Windows XP with the latest Update (3.6.26.5), which you should have installed before trying this:but XP has a nice option for that. (Right-click wa.exe, properties, enable Win98 compatibility)There is absolutely no need to do that for WA, on any system. Then you went ahead and added a bigger headache to your list of headaches by doing this:- Then I needed to use a no-cd crack (I have an original copy, mind you) because the game hung at start-up, unable to find the cd.It couldn't find the CD probably because you applied the 3.00 patch to your already-3.00 patched game. Did you not read on the site that you're not supposed to patch a US version? Did you check the version number on the WA you applied the patch (which is different from the "update") to?

Also, there is no no-CD crack that works with the latest Update. The only possible crack you could have found is a German crack for 3.00 that removes all sound and, when I tried it years and years ago, made my game completely non-functional because it is the US version.I plowed through the forums and various sites for other solutions, but there weren't any.Once again, in your "plow"ing, you missed a few important details.Microsoft provided the perfect solution! Free of charge even.Team17 provided a better one.I did everything that was asked of me on www.nanacide.com/wahelp/. Tried it multiple times even.If you had, you would have known before your first post that, with the latest update, WA runs natively on any XP system, especially one in "tip-top condition". Well, you may not have known, because that site tells you to do things without explaining why you're doing them.

You are trying to sound like some sort of expert on this problem, but you don't seem to know how WA works. You didn't even update WA to the latest version. Perhaps you should start again from the beginning and check the version number of your WA, before saying with complete confidence that your solution is the best one.

[Gotcha!]

You are trying to sound like some sort of expert on this problem, but you don't seem to know how WA works. You didn't even update WA to the latest version. Perhaps you should start again from the beginning and check the version number of your WA, before saying with complete confidence that your solution is the best one.

You lot are really something.
I was ONLY trying to be informative towards you people to pass on another solution and all I get are posts on how I probably did things wrong in the first place.

Do NOT read my first post too literally, because it doesn't contain any clues about what I did or did not do to run this game and it also wasn't meant to be. I first tried my own things to solve things, then I found more info on that particular site and tried that as well. And it didn't work for me. End of story.
To clear things up: I did everything that www.nanacide.com/wahelp/ told me to do.

Now you can all continue to tell me that I must have done something wrong, but you should learn to live with the fact that not every system is the same. What might run well on 95% of pc's around the world might not run at all on 5% of them. You're welcome to come to my house to see it for yourself, but it will cost you a crate of beer.
Sheesh, this is depressing. :-/

@Evilworm2: It's called dedication.

[CyberShadow]

Hey... what speed are you getting?

I use Virtual PC very often for my Worms-related research - however, I never got to run Worms at full speed, even at 640x480 with minimum detail. The virtual version always lags behind in a network game.

I have used Windows XP SP2 as the host operating system, though. It might also be related to my CPU - I have an Athlon 2500+ Barton running at 1.83 GHz.

[MrBunsy]

Wow! Virtual PC is now free! Didn't know that!

I used it ages ago to run WA though, so it's quite capable (with a 3000+ athlon anyway :D). In fact I had two Virtual PCs running both running WA and my computer running WA. I can't remember what I was testing though, sopmehting across a LAN game anyway. All this back on 512 megs of ram! I can't wait to see how it'll cope nowadays with my gig.

[Lex]

I was ONLY trying to be informative towards you people to pass on another solution and all I get are posts on how I probably did things wrong in the first place.Well, one can not be informative if they are incorrect.Do NOT read my first post too literally, because it doesn't contain any clues about what I did or did not do to run this game and it also wasn't meant to be.W:A wasn't supported to run in NT/2000/XPHow am I not supposed to take a direct statement like that literally? It is simply completely wrong, unless taken in the context of about 5 years ago. It's like saying Internet Explorer can not run in Windows XP.Now you can all continue to tell me that I must have done something wrong, but you should learn to live with the fact that not every system is the same. What might run well on 95% of pc's around the world might not run at all on 5% of them. You're welcome to come to my house to see it for yourself, but it will cost you a crate of beer.I would love to see you give a video demonstration of you taking all the correct steps and it not working in Windows XP. If you did that, I would eat my posts, bow to you, and mail you $10 (Canadian), or however much a case (note: not crate ;)) of beer costs. There is no way that it can just not work on a clean Windows XP install.

Yes, I'm serious about the video and the cash reward! To be honest, I think that video would be extremely informative, and well-worth my money! :D

[AndrewTaylor]

There is no way that it can just not work on a clean Windows XP install.
Well, that's where you're wrong.

There are hundreds of ways -- Windows is a huge labyrithine behemoth of an OS, running an a myriad squared different system setups. Any one of a thousand things could mess up and scupper Worms Armageddon's plans. I'm pretty sure I've got a legal CD version that can't be patched, for example. Heaven knows where that came from, but it won't run on XP, no matter what I do, and I've tried it on three computers so far.

[Lex]

You beat me, Andrew. I admit defeat. I was wrong there. I guess it just took a good description of what I already knew for me to realize it. I admit that my last 2 posts were very silly and unnecessarily aggressive. Sorry about that, Gotcha!. Your post could help some people, I'm sure.

[Gotcha!]

Hey... what speed are you getting?

The speed is normal, unless there's a bit much harddrive activity due to file copying in windows xp. Then worms lags a little.

@Lex:
W:A wasn't supported to run in NT/2000/XP, pretty obvious since you get a nice error message when you install W:A and run it WITHOUT PATCHES. That there's a BETA patch for this game that might help run it on XP is an entire different story.

"There is no way that it can just not work on a clean Windows XP install."
I never said that it was a clean install. I said my pc is in tip-top shape.

Further more, it's not my fault that you and others think that I am looking for help, totally misinterpret the meaning in my posts (I am not english, sue me) and go on some holy crusade to hope to prove that I am a ****. I find certain people here quite impolite.
I also do not want any help, I posted something to had some hope that it would be useful to others. I know perfectly well what I am doing; working with pc's is my job for crying out loud.

Learn to believe or at least accept what other people say once in a while, instead of trying to be all-righteous. Thank you.

[Lex]

Please read the post above yours. I realize you may have been writing your post during the time I posted that. Once again, I apologize for my rampage.

Edit: Going back and reading those first two posts of mine, I realize I was in a totally different frame of mind than I am now, and was frustrated about something in my life that was completely unrelated. I'm sorry for taking that out on you, and so ignorantly, too. I can't really express how wrong I now understand I was in posting that junk.

[Gotcha!]

Apologies accepted.

[Plutonic]

Deispite all the areguing and what now, I'm highly intrigued to know what it is about gotchas and AT's WA CD's that wont let them be patched. If we can work that out then DC (when we find him) can probably fix it.

What I would do is find another CD from a friend and try that, then we would know if its a PC problem of a CD version problem.
Out of interest, you said your not english so I assume its not an english version of the game. Where are you from?

[KRD]

He's Dutch.

[bonz]

Maybe AT and Gotcha! would like to swap a copy of each of their games. :)

[Muzer]

Gotcha!, which CD version do you have? Here are the descriptions:
Sold-out software (UK budgert) - has a Sold-out software style case and blue/green Sold-out software CD
Green Pepper (German) - has a Green-pepper-styled case and a bright green Green Pepper CD.
Original US - when run, a hasbro interactive logo appears as well as the team17 and microprose logos
Original European - An original styled case and CD, when run only Team17 and MicroProse appears (NOT HASBRO Interactive)

[bonz]

FYI, the green pepper budget version looks like this:
http://img236.imageshack.us/img236/3549/wormscdcoverab0.jpg

It's a pre-patched v3.0 Euro multilanguage version and beta updating works fine.

[Gotcha!]

Gotcha!, which CD version do you have? Here are the descriptions:
Sold-out software (UK budgert) - has a Sold-out software style case and blue/green Sold-out software CD
Green Pepper (German) - has a Green-pepper-styled case and a bright green Green Pepper CD.
Original US - when run, a hasbro interactive logo appears as well as the team17 and microprose logos
Original European - An original styled case and CD, when run only Team17 and MicroProse appears (NOT HASBRO Interactive)

Lots of flavours. :o Mine doesn't seem mentioned here.
I am digging in my memory here;
It was an original looking gamebox, not a small dvd case you have these days, and the cd case inside the box lacked any fancy layouts. The box didn't show any budget-type logos.

Anyway, I threw away the box a long time ago.

The cd itself is entirely covered in a yellow/black nuclear warning sign. On it are the Team17 and Microprose logo and some white lettering around the edge of the cd (codes and stuff).
I don't see hasbro logos when starting up.

Hope to have fed your curiousity. :)

Edit: I found a small picture:
http://www.abcgames.cz/udaje/cd_previews/44/4430_c1.jpg
And the cd box: (I had cut out a bit of the box to use inside my jewel case, so pretty sure that this was the one.)
http://www.cdaccess.com/jpg/shared/front/large/wormsarm.jpg

[Lex]

Original US - when run, a hasbro interactive logo appears as well as the team17 and microprose logosMuzer's a little off here. I have a US version with the same box as Gotcha!'s, and there is no Hasbro logo. By default, it installs to C:\MicroProse\Worms Armageddon\ rather than C:\Team17\Worms Armageddon\. The CD installs version 3.0.0.0, so it does not require the "Patch", but does require the latest "Update".

By the way, I still own my original box and manual. :)

[Gotcha!]

Muzer's a little off here. I have a US version with the same box as Gotcha!'s, and there is no Hasbro logo. By default, it installs to C:\MicroProse\Worms Armageddon\ rather than C:\Team17\Worms Armageddon\. The CD installs version 3.0.0.0, so it does not require the "Patch", but does require the latest "Update".

By the way, I still own my original box and manual. :)

Mine defaulted to C:\Team17\Worms Armageddon\ during installation. How many versions are there? :D

[Plutonic]

What you have gotcha is the original 1.0 Worms Armaggeddon by the looks of the box

Which would require both the 3.0 patch and the update.

Anyone know what CD AT has?

[Lex]

Mine defaulted to C:\Team17\Worms Armageddon\ during installation. How many versions are there? :DI'm sure there are quite a few! Does yours install 1.0.0.0 by default? I'm still wondering that. :)

[Gotcha!]

I am sure that mine was 1.0.3.0. It wasn't 1.0.0.0 at least.
Can't check it now though, since I am at work.

Anyway, I can play it, so I am happy. What I need now is to find some nice people to play it with, since I wasn't quite impressed with the way l33t kiddies behaved yesterday. *coughs*

[Plutonic]

yeah 1.0.3.0 sounds familiar.....

Well either way, even in your virtual PC you will want to install the beta patch to play online.

Also, the online comunity and the T17 forum comunity are 2 vastly different things. They overlap but thats about as close as it gets.

[AndrewTaylor]

Anyone know what CD AT has?
Oh, Lord only knows what that is. It's not mine, technically; a friend gave it to me because he couldn't run it andthought I might be able to. So I don't have a box or anything -- just a mysterious disc. I'd tell you the version number it registers if I had it installed, but I uninstalled it years ago because it wouldn't run.

[bonz]

I'd tell you the version number it registers if I had it installed, but I uninstalled it years ago because it wouldn't run.
You can check the version number of the wa.exe in the \Install\Install folder on your CD.

[Plutonic]

what does the disk look like? if its orange and black its the original european disk, if its yellow and red is the european "USA" version (3.0 i think)

[Lex]

I have an (orange or yellow) and black disk and mine is the US version, 3.0.0.0.

[Plutonic]

Yes, but you are in america. 3.0.0.0 in europe was yellow and red.... or at least my version was, although it did come with the armageddon collection...
I only got it cos my 1.0.3.0 CD broke, although it sort of works now too...

[Lex]

Ah. We should catalogue the different releases of WA once and for all. So, you say the one in the Armageddon Collection has a yellow and red disk? Could you please scan the disk, box, and manual (doesn't necessarily need to be the entire manual; just the cover) for cataloguing? :) It could go on the Worms Knowledge Base (http://wiki.thecybershadow.net/Worms_Knowledge_Base) wiki. I have added a new section to the Worms Armageddon (http://wiki.thecybershadow.net/Worms_Armageddon) page for cataloguing releases.

[Plutonic]

Ok, have put a scan of the WAcollection box. cant find either of my WA CD's right now... whcih is a little worrying.

Also added a bit of info for the MapGEN section.

[Lex]

Thanks a lot! :) I'll start adding some nice formatting for the pages right away, as well as writing a little something about the Armageddon Collection. I bet Dream17 has some nice info. about it. Will check.

[Plutonic]

Just wrote up a basic history on WCC.... when i say just a mean at 2.30 last night, so some probably wont make any sence..