Call to Power and XP??

[hubito]

Hi @ all,
I am not sure whether this is the right place for my question so pls. do not mind when I am wrong here...

I got Civ Call to Power from a friend who was to throw it away otherwise. It does not run on my XP computer, which is quite normal as I found out from various posts on different forums. Just that I have not found a solution for the problem, yet. The programme compatibility mode does not work in my case for whatever reason.

Is there a patch and - if yes - where do I find it?

Many thx in advance,
hubito

 

[Sir_Lancelot]

Hello hubito and welcome to CFC!

I don't remember having problems with running CTP on my XP system. Have you installed the 1.2 patch?

You will need that one. If you don't already got it, download it. I followed a link in the game menu which took me to an Activision website, I think. It can probably be downloaded from other sources too, maybe Apolyton (or whatever its name was).

 

[aberwak]

I recall for the longest time being annoyed I couldn't get CTP to work on my machine (also with XP). I was able to install it on another machine, but it wouldn't work on mine. Finally, I read a solution someplace:

- Right click on the shortcut to the program to open the properties
- Go into the compatibility tab
- Click the box to run it in compatibility mode, and choose Windows 98.

That seemed to work on my machine, if I recall correctly. If that doesn't work, I imagine you can try the compatibility mode for another version of Windows, but 98 should work.

 

[hubito]

Hello hubito and welcome to CFC!

I don't remember having problems with running CTP on my XP system. Have you installed the 1.2 patch?

You will need that one. If you don't already got it, download it. I followed a link in the game menu which took me to an Activision website, I think. It can probably be downloaded from other sources too, maybe Apolyton (or whatever its name was).

Hi Sir Lancelot and thx for your advice. I had downloaded the patch (at least it was labeled "1.2") but when I installed it, I was informed that I already had the latest software version and that the patch was not necessary.

Maybe someone else has an idea what my pc needs...

Best regards,
hubito

 

[hubito]

I recall for the longest time being annoyed I couldn't get CTP to work on my machine (also with XP). I was able to install it on another machine, but it wouldn't work on mine. Finally, I read a solution someplace:

- Right click on the shortcut to the program to open the properties
- Go into the compatibility tab
- Click the box to run it in compatibility mode, and choose Windows 98.

That seemed to work on my machine, if I recall correctly. If that doesn't work, I imagine you can try the compatibility mode for another version of Windows, but 98 should work.

Hi aberwak and thx for your suggestion. Unfortunately, it did not work at all. I still get sent to the desktop when I start the game via compatibility mode (no matter what I choose: Win 95 or 98 or 2000 or NT).

Anybody else have a helping idea?

hubito

 

[joef5050]

Unfortunately the problems with Call to power will only get worse with time. The game requires a few things. That you have 1 processor core. So if you don't, and theres a good chance that you may have multi core, then you need to set the process affinity after the game has begun. It should be trivial to find instructions about that as it is a general problem people have with old games. Once the process is assigned an affinity then every successive time its run it'll use that many cores, basically its saved somewhere.
Secondly, the game will refuse to run at all if your graphics card is too new. It seems that Nvidia has taken it upon themselves to remove alot of legacy rendering routines essential to old games, Call to power being one of them. I believe Call to power is Direct X 7 ish but there are a whole bunch of libraries one would have to go through to try to find the one that is causing the crash, and its uncertain if it could be fixed without a complete workaround. I don't remember what the model number of the card is that won't work, if you want I'll look it up. Stick with ATI, they seem to support old games much better, and thats true for alot of titles.
Basically if you can load up the menus and it crashes when you press launch game, it most likely a multi core bug, can be fixed with setting affinity. Only when you're IN game does the code use the single core libraries.
If you can't even see the startup movie, then its your card.

 

[ricketyclik]

I've just run into this issue. My movie plays, but the game crashes on launch. I've tried setting process affinities t each of the 8 cores displayed on the machine I'm on, with no luck. Win 98 compatibility, run as administrator, no luck.

Any further suggestions?

Win 7 by the way, not XP.

 

[Hail]

wing32.dll + win98 compatability mode works for me

download WinG32.dll
and throw it in c:\Windows\system32 directory

btw WinXP SP3 + agp Radeon 4650

 

[Sir_Lancelot]

What is this dll you want him to download?