Posted February 09, 2014
So having recently got a new PC with a new Win 8.1 OS I've been going through my game library and finding what does and doesn't work with this. I'll log what I've tried and any games that are presenting problems that I've not yet managed to find a solution for:
Games that don't work (all CD copies)
Blood Rayne
Metal Fatigue
X3 Reunion
Rising Kindgoms
Kingdom Under Fire Gold
Dark Reign 2
Diablo 2
Steam Games that don't work
Sacred Gold
Any Windows Live game (including Dawn of War 2; Universe at War; Red Faction Gurrilla)
Solutions and expansions of problems.
Windows Live games - These games fail to even load and simply flicker the screen and don't go any further. For the solution Windows should detect that there is a problem with the title and will offer to troubleshoot - accept this offer and let it search. It should say that you need to download a new version of Windows Live and will direct you to a webpage where you can download it.
http://www.xbox.com/en-GB/LIVE/PC/DownloadClient
Is the web page, just download and install and the Windows Live games should run without problems thereafter.
X3 Reunion - for some reason this affects the use of the mouse scrolling wheel in combat to change the target selection. The game will crash when the wheel is used. I've also heard that this only affects the combat simulation, first mission. I'll have to further test if it affects the main game itself. (note target selection by other means works without error).
I've also read reports that the mission taking place in "The Hole" can have a crash problem
Metal Fatigue - sadly whilst the game will start and load the interface fails to load correctly during battles, preventing you from building or controlling units. This error was also present for me on Windows Vista and I suspect its linked to the graphics card and drivers.
Rising Kingdoms - fails to install as the game can't detect the second install disk
Kingdom Under Fire Gold - strangely the CD drive refuses to event detect that the game install disk is inserted into the drive (this is odd as I'm using the same physical drive as I used for my Win Vista machine where this game did install and run). I've not found a solution
Dark Reign 2 - the computer states that "this app cannot run on this machine" when trying to run the setup.exe. I've not managed to find any references or information further on this.
Blood Rayne - game fails to load and crashes.
Sacred Gold (steam) - game starts, but becomes stick loading its first component, leaving you with just a pretty loading screen and nothing else. I do have a CD version of this game to further test with in the future.
Diablo 2 - whilst this game installs and runs the screen appears slightly choppy when playing, especially when the character is moving around the map. It's just not the normal smooth display of visuals that one would expect. I'm unsure of the problem as the graphics card in this machine is the same as the one I used previously under Vista and ran the game smooth and without problems.
So that's as far as I've gotten, if anyone has any suggestions or ideas as to how to resolve these problems I'd be very interested to hear. Thus far 3 of the games are on GOG and so potentially I can rebuy and try the GOG version, safe in knowing that even if its not yet Win 8 compatible the good people at GOG will continue to work on it.
The games that fail to install because of non-detection of the disk confuse me greatly and I'm not sure why the computer can't see the disk itself.
Games that don't work (all CD copies)
Blood Rayne
Metal Fatigue
X3 Reunion
Rising Kindgoms
Kingdom Under Fire Gold
Dark Reign 2
Diablo 2
Steam Games that don't work
Sacred Gold
Any Windows Live game (including Dawn of War 2; Universe at War; Red Faction Gurrilla)
Solutions and expansions of problems.
Windows Live games - These games fail to even load and simply flicker the screen and don't go any further. For the solution Windows should detect that there is a problem with the title and will offer to troubleshoot - accept this offer and let it search. It should say that you need to download a new version of Windows Live and will direct you to a webpage where you can download it.
http://www.xbox.com/en-GB/LIVE/PC/DownloadClient
Is the web page, just download and install and the Windows Live games should run without problems thereafter.
X3 Reunion - for some reason this affects the use of the mouse scrolling wheel in combat to change the target selection. The game will crash when the wheel is used. I've also heard that this only affects the combat simulation, first mission. I'll have to further test if it affects the main game itself. (note target selection by other means works without error).
I've also read reports that the mission taking place in "The Hole" can have a crash problem
Metal Fatigue - sadly whilst the game will start and load the interface fails to load correctly during battles, preventing you from building or controlling units. This error was also present for me on Windows Vista and I suspect its linked to the graphics card and drivers.
Rising Kingdoms - fails to install as the game can't detect the second install disk
Kingdom Under Fire Gold - strangely the CD drive refuses to event detect that the game install disk is inserted into the drive (this is odd as I'm using the same physical drive as I used for my Win Vista machine where this game did install and run). I've not found a solution
Dark Reign 2 - the computer states that "this app cannot run on this machine" when trying to run the setup.exe. I've not managed to find any references or information further on this.
Blood Rayne - game fails to load and crashes.
Sacred Gold (steam) - game starts, but becomes stick loading its first component, leaving you with just a pretty loading screen and nothing else. I do have a CD version of this game to further test with in the future.
Diablo 2 - whilst this game installs and runs the screen appears slightly choppy when playing, especially when the character is moving around the map. It's just not the normal smooth display of visuals that one would expect. I'm unsure of the problem as the graphics card in this machine is the same as the one I used previously under Vista and ran the game smooth and without problems.
So that's as far as I've gotten, if anyone has any suggestions or ideas as to how to resolve these problems I'd be very interested to hear. Thus far 3 of the games are on GOG and so potentially I can rebuy and try the GOG version, safe in knowing that even if its not yet Win 8 compatible the good people at GOG will continue to work on it.
The games that fail to install because of non-detection of the disk confuse me greatly and I'm not sure why the computer can't see the disk itself.
Post edited February 09, 2014 by overread
