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General discussionPlaying Soldiers of Anarchy (SoA) in a virtual machine - not starting up(13 posts)(13 posts)
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Posted January 23, 2023
Hey dudes!

I used to play Soldiers of Anarchy in the past, and loved it. Now that I want to enjoy it again, I face a challenge - getting it to run.
I'm running Windows 11 and it does not seem to work there.

So I went ahead and installed multiple virtual machines (Win 98, Win XP, Win 7) in VirtualBox. Didn't work.
I then used VMWare Player and installed again VMs (Win XP, Win 7), again no success.

I can install the game without issues (mounting an .iso file). However, when I want to start the game, the process shortly shows up in the task manager (some ~10s maybe) and then disappears. No error message, nothing. Just nothing will happen...

I am kind of at the end of my knowledge here, what could be the reason for this? Ah, I enabled 3D acceleration in VirtualBox, didn't do the trick.

Any hints from you experts how I get this awesome game running again? Happy for any hint :)
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Posted January 23, 2023
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chemiker11: Hey dudes!

I used to play Soldiers of Anarchy in the past, and loved it. Now that I want to enjoy it again, I face a challenge - getting it to run.
I'm running Windows 11 and it does not seem to work there.

So I went ahead and installed multiple virtual machines (Win 98, Win XP, Win 7) in VirtualBox. Didn't work.
I then used VMWare Player and installed again VMs (Win XP, Win 7), again no success.

I can install the game without issues (mounting an .iso file). However, when I want to start the game, the process shortly shows up in the task manager (some ~10s maybe) and then disappears. No error message, nothing. Just nothing will happen...

I am kind of at the end of my knowledge here, what could be the reason for this? Ah, I enabled 3D acceleration in VirtualBox, didn't do the trick.

Any hints from you experts how I get this awesome game running again? Happy for any hint :)
OK - so, I'm going to assume that you own the game and have created an ISO yourself from an old CD/DVD that you own because your current PC doesn't have an optical drive.

Have you removed the disk check from the executable?

To be honest, personally, I'd try again under windows 11. Install, remove the disk check, then if it still doesn't work, try running it through dgvoodoo 2 to pass through to a newer directX.

That process works with 99% of disk based games.
Posted January 23, 2023
thanks for the reply so fast!

I have the original CD (including serial key), but do not own a disk drive any more, so I tried it with two .iso sources from the internet.

I did not remove any executable disk check, however, when the .iso is not mounted, the startup complains to insert the CD. When mounting the .iso, there is no such check. So I would assume that the disk executable check is not the problem.

I tried to use dgVoodoo, but it seems it didn't make a difference (both tried in my Win7 VM + on my Win 11 host system). Seems harder than I thought to get this running :D
Posted January 23, 2023
Could it have something to do with DirectX?
On some games I've also had to manually lower the refresh rate of my monitor from Windows settings.
Posted January 23, 2023
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ppavee: Could it have something to do with DirectX?
On some games I've also had to manually lower the refresh rate of my monitor from Windows settings.
could be... I was, however, manually installing DirectX 8.1 and 9 on the VMs without any difference, also using dgVoodoo locally.
Lowering the refresh rate sounds funky. Can that really be the cause that a program is not starting at all?
Posted January 23, 2023
Have you tried, Wine, BoxedWine, or Proton thereof?
Posted January 24, 2023
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Darvond: Have you tried, Wine, BoxedWine, or Proton thereof?
not really, no. Never did this, so sorry for the nooby-question: Do I have to install a Linux VM, then add Proton and try to install SoA then in this Linux VM?
Posted January 24, 2023
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chemiker11: not really, no. Never did this, so sorry for the nooby-question: Do I have to install a Linux VM, then add Proton and try to install SoA then in this Linux VM?
Well, no not quite. Depending on your setup you could make a Linux Subsystem or something.

Besides, Proton is from Steam which might have some complications.
Posted January 24, 2023
Linux Kubuntu for example, can run on a usb drive. You can play around with Wine first and maybe Lutris after you install Wine. But linux is always an angry badger. It hates you and should be left alone, when you do not know the nature of the beast.

My suggestion would be to buy a $20 optical and save yourself the headache.
Posted January 24, 2023
yeah, maybe it'll work using the original CD...

Still I'm just flabbergasted that for some people starting the game using the same .iso files from the internet worked, just for me it doesn't. Hoped to meet someone who had the same issue and could resolve it.

In case you are out there - I keep waiting :) but also thanks for the responses provided so far, appreciate it!
Posted January 24, 2023
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chemiker11: yeah, maybe it'll work using the original CD...

Still I'm just flabbergasted that for some people starting the game using the same .iso files from the internet worked, just for me it doesn't. Hoped to meet someone who had the same issue and could resolve it.

In case you are out there - I keep waiting :) but also thanks for the responses provided so far, appreciate it!
Unfortunately, in my case as I don't own an original copy, I can't try it on my computer. Interestingly, I couldn't even find a pcgamingwiki entry for the game
Posted January 24, 2023
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pds41: Unfortunately, in my case as I don't own an original copy, I can't try it on my computer. Interestingly, I couldn't even find a pcgamingwiki entry for the game
Well, there is some old Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldiers_of_Anarchy) and the original website in the archive :D https://web.archive.org/web/20030329051017/http://www.soldiers-of-anarchy.com/
Post edited January 24, 2023 by chemiker11
Posted January 24, 2023
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pds41: Unfortunately, in my case as I don't own an original copy, I can't try it on my computer. Interestingly, I couldn't even find a pcgamingwiki entry for the game
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chemiker11: Well, there is some old Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldiers_of_Anarchy) and the original website in the archive :D https://web.archive.org/web/20030329051017/http://www.soldiers-of-anarchy.com/
Sorry - I wasn't asking for a download link! (you probably want to delete the link as we're not allowed to link to abandonware)

I think your best bet is going to be trying a usb optical drive and going from there. I'm not sure it will fix your issue, but it's the best I can come up with. BoxedWine might help, but I've not tried getting that going on one of my computers before.
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Community
General discussionPlaying Soldiers of Anarchy (SoA) in a virtual machine - not starting up(13 posts)(13 posts)
(13 posts)