Hello,

I downloaded and installed the Dos-Version of Wing-Commander IV.

After Mission 4 I cannot continue, because Dosbox breaks with following error message on the Dosbox-Command line:
OPEN FAILED ON FILE: ..\..\DATA\SOUND\MISSION1.WAV

I guess dosbox tries to load a music-file from the next cd, but it doesnt work.

How can this problem be solved?

I have the same issue, and I found the solution.

The MUSIC2.TRE file in the GOG installer is probably corrupted. I pulled out the file from CD2 of my WC4 box, and found that the md5 checksums of the files are different:
- a0708655ea760a83c6136658ed11c266 MUSIC2.TRE (from original CD2)
- 8e9d17af9c07f81cf190ccfc2b2452c0 MUSIC2.TRE (from GOG installer)

I've zipped up the correct MUSIC2.TRE and you can get it here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7UyKonBlU-yMFlMNUJ1MFdka0k/view?usp=share_link&resourcekey=0-L8PG2ctUh5rY8ZqP3DPWJw

To fix the problem:
1) Unzip the attachment and replace the MUSIC2.TRE file in your installed directory
2) Load up an earlier mission so that the game can rebuild the cache
3) Exit, and then load up Mission C1 again.

That should fix the problem. It did for me.

Edit: It seems some of the other MUSIC*.TRE files are also messed up. Game crashes with the same "OPEN FAILED ON FILE: ..\..\DATA\SOUND\MISSION1.WAV" error when loading Mission G3. I'll check up on them when I have the time.

Hello desmondneo,

thank you for your help. With the new music2.tre the problem seems to be fixed.

I havent played until Mission G3 yet. But I will report, if I will receive similar problems then.

Now I have the same error message like desmondneo on one of the next missions:

OPEN FAILED ON FILE: ..\..\DATA\SOUND\MISSION1.WAV

Some of the *.tre flies are obviously corrupted. Is GOG going to do something about that problem?

@desmondneo: Do you have a solution for the problem?

I've extracted and compressed all the MUSIC*.TRE files from CDs 2 to 6 into a zip file and uploaded it into Google Drive. MUSIC1.TRE is fine, so that's not included in the zip file.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7UyKonBlU-yMFlMNUJ1MFdka0k/view?usp=share_link&resourcekey=0-L8PG2ctUh5rY8ZqP3DPWJw

CD2 and CD3 contains MUSIC2.TRE, and CD4 and CD5 has MUSIC3.TRE. I believe this is because of the branching missions. Just extract the appropriate file and rename it accordingly when the error occurs.

I've completed the game with these files, so I believe it should work for you, too.

Let me know if you need any more help, and I'll try to see what I can do.

Is it just the wrong name of these *.tre-files?

The URL is correct. Let me see if I can get the URL in here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7UyKonBlU-yMFlMNUJ1MFdka0k/view?usp=share_link&resourcekey=0-L8PG2ctUh5rY8ZqP3DPWJw

Hope this works.

Thanks, desmondneo!

I confirm that it solves the problem. Download the files, rename them to MUSIC2.TRE - MUSIC6.TRE, replace the files currently in the CD1 directory, and start the game from the save before the last one.

This definitely requires an UPDATE from GOG.
<Tried to fill out a support request, but it won't let me submit without automatic log, and it won't happen as there's no Linux installer for WC IV.>

Yep, seems that whatever discs were used to make the DOS version of the GOG package were probably scratched all to hell. Not surprising, as they're over 20 years old at this point. ;-) Here are all the TRE files from a clean-looking set:

*** FILE REDACTED *** (See next post)

The timestamps say Jan 24 1996, for whatever that's worth.

Well, I just finished playing through the GOG version of the DOS flavor of WC IV, and unfortunately there are even more corrupted files. In fact, some of the ones uploaded by desmondneo are bad too, unfortunately. Worse, there's a corrupted video file as well. Again, the media for the DOS version hasn't been produced in over 20 years now, so some bit rot is to be expected. Scratched media can be fixed; that's just plastic. But the metal layer where the data lives can rot too... and that's a much harder problem to solve.

And now the good news: I've used a tool which was specifically designed for copying damaged / rotted optical media and I seem to have produced a pristine copy of the files in question. That said, here's the files. Just copy them over the existing ones in the GOG WC4 DOS installation:

https://pub.dotbalm.org/misc/WC4-DOS-FIX.zip

Note that I didn't do proper QA on the rest of the multimedia bundles, only the ones on the "best" story tree for the main game. If anybody needs alternate versions of any other files, let me know and I'll see what I can do.

This is still an issue, I'm getting a crash to desktop when starting mission C1 in the DOS version. I just tried using the versions of MUSIC2.TRE from cwadge and then desmondeo, but it's still crashing either way.

It works for me - thanks@cwadge and @desmondeo!!!
What I did:
1) Replace files --> reload savegame where it crashed --> crash still
2) Start a completely new game ---> wc4 would extract music1.tre again (black background/white text on screen)
3) once inflight use ejector seat --> reload my savegame --> tataaaaa, now it worked

Hope this helps

Thank you, cwadge! I finally got it working using the files you posted. That they still haven't fixed this after 3 years really sucks but I was able to get it working with these files. I had to replace both the files in the CD1 folder and the WC4 folder, upon doing that it's working properly!

No problem, glad to help.