Crippled

Tyrion · Post by **Tyrion** » Sat Sep 20, 2008 9:44 pm

No, not me, but my ability to continue working for Tamriel Rebuilt. You see, about a month ago I left for that glorious place called University. I get to leave home and make a new life for myself in the city and learn and grow and blah blah blah.

Anyway, when I got my laptop, a Sony VGN-CR320E, which had Vista pre-installed on it. Vista did not let me play Morrowind, especially not with the graphics extender or fps optimizer. Well, I wasn't going to settle for no Morrowind, and no thus no modding, so I got rid of Vista and installed XP. Well XP seemed to work well, the CS runs, but there's one small problem. My video card is not supported on XP, so no video drivers that give me more than absolute shit graphics. Morrowind doesn't even play, thats how bad it is. I should get around 358mbs shared of video memory, I get a fraction of that. Basically, if it doesn't not-play/crash it plays like crap.

Now I'm between a rock and a hard place here. I can't do anything on XP besides use the Morrowind CS (Oblivion CS doesn't work). I don't have a Vista CD, so I'd need to find one to reinstall Vista in the hope that I could fiddle with it enough to get things working on that. I'm looking for options right now, if anyone has an idea, please pitch them my way, I'd be glad for any help.

I'll be watching the Death Note live action movie while waiting...

Nomadic1 · Post by **Nomadic1** » Sat Sep 20, 2008 10:30 pm

I remember hearing something about not installing anything game-related to Program Files on a computer with Vista.

Faalen · Post by **Faalen** » Sat Sep 20, 2008 11:19 pm

This topic is of particular interest to me, as well. I have a Vista-equipped laptop on the way, and I would very much like some insight on how to get Morrowind and the CS running properly. My modding has been on hold for three weeks now, and the laptop was purchased pretty much for the express purpose of continuing my TR work. Best of luck, Tyrion, and I hope you get some information that helps me out as well.

(To hell with Microsoft and their deliberate removal of backwards compatibility. What on earth were those idiots thinking when they came up with this Vista crap? Does anyone even test these things before Microsoft thrusts them on the general public? Or are they just sitting in a room going, "But look! Your desktop is all pretty and animated now! Isn't that worth sacrificing function and system resources?" /rant)

Tyrion · Post by **Tyrion** » Sun Sep 21, 2008 5:15 am

Nomadic1 wrote:I remember hearing something about not installing anything game-related to Program Files on a computer with Vista.

So just install it to a different directory?

Andres Indoril · Post by **Andres Indoril** » Sun Sep 21, 2008 5:45 am

There is also the possibility to remove that user control thingy from the users thingy in the control panel thingy. Removing that will make Vista stop controlling you. At least it worked on my laptop

Tyrion · Post by **Tyrion** » Sun Sep 21, 2008 5:49 am

I already tried doing that... besides removing the incredibly annoying security pop-ups, it did nothing.

Unless you were talking about something different.

Andres Indoril · Post by **Andres Indoril** » Sun Sep 21, 2008 6:22 am

That is what I meant.
Interesting though. It did allow me to mess around in the Program Files folders and such. It stopped denying me access to many stuffs, such as saving esps.
But oh well, I never encountered the no-can play bug with Morrowind. It might have something to do with the video card, what is it? (For an example, the video card on my laptop denies the existence of Oblivion. Silly Intel.)

Nomadic1 · Post by **Nomadic1** » Sun Sep 21, 2008 7:48 am

Tyrion wrote:So just install it to a different directory?

Yep, apparently. I don't know much about it TBH (I'm sticking with XP) but it seems to solve a lot of problems for people. But look at your video card too.

Aeven · Post by **Aeven** » Sun Sep 21, 2008 8:58 am

I use Vista with no problems. Morrowind runs really well. I just disabled the UAC and made sure I set all files to be owned by me rather than Administrator (I AM Administrator, but the engine doesn't know that).

theviking · Post by **theviking** » Sun Sep 21, 2008 9:16 am

I installed morrowind to C:/Games/Morrowind and it worked perfectly.

Tyrion · Post by **Tyrion** » Sun Sep 21, 2008 4:52 pm

The laptop has an Intel chip.

This is bad?

Andres Indoril · Post by **Andres Indoril** » Sun Sep 21, 2008 5:03 pm

Well, Intel's video cards do tend to be less than Nvidia's and ATI's. I know I have encountered quite a few problems with the one on my laptop.

Tyrion · Post by **Tyrion** » Sun Sep 21, 2008 5:57 pm

Damn

Well, here's my plan:

First I need to get a hold of a vista disk. I have the keycode on the laptop so all I'll need is the disk to install. If I can't find somebody here who has one then I'll request one from Microsoft saying I accidentally removed Vista while formatting my hard drive. Once I have that disk I should be able to install Vista on its own partition. It should work more than XP at this point but it goes without saying anyway. If something goes wrong I'll still have XP.

Then again XP is basically useless at this point so I might as well remove it altogether....

Gez · Post by **Gez** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 10:24 am

Nomadic1 wrote:I remember hearing something about not installing anything game-related to Program Files on a computer with Vista.

Yes. This is the key.

Vista added a nice "protection" system to its applications, so that Office.exe doesn't get replaced by BwahahahaIamavirus.exe, which they call "folder virtualization". Basically, when an application tries to change files that belong to another application, or add files to its folder, it thinks it succeeds but it actually only affect a copy of the file that sits in another hidden directory created on the fly by the system.

Of course, this means that games installed in Program Files becomes unmoddable because no other application can change these games' content.

Folder virtualization is restricted to C:\Program Files and its subdirectory. So, for the Love of God, Astaroth and the Flying Spaghetti Monster DO NOT INSTALL ANY GAME IN C:\PROGRAM FILES. Install them in C:\Games, for example.

Right, there you go.

Nemon · Post by **Nemon** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 2:36 pm

My games are installed in D:/Program Files, which is no problem. It's just the C: drive perhaps?

Gez · Post by **Gez** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 10:43 am

Do you have C:\Program Files as well?

Tyrion · Post by **Tyrion** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 3:00 pm

I'll have a fun time installing games and testing them this weekend then. Thanks for the tips guys

Tyrion · Post by **Tyrion** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 11:55 pm

Sorry for double posting but I had another minor question.

What's the word on things like fps optimizer and graphics extender working in Vista? Works fine with the right settings, buggy, or not at all?

Nemon · Post by **Nemon** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 6:36 am

Gez wrote:Do you have C:\Program Files as well?

Yes, it's where I put smaller programs, winrar, cdxpro, anti virus and such... All games are in my D: drive.

Tyrion wrote:Sorry for double posting but I had another minor question.

What's the word on things like fps optimizer and graphics extender working in Vista? Works fine with the right settings, buggy, or not at all?

I must really be the only one having the diamond edition of Vista. Everything works, no problems...

Edit: I remember having problems early on, but that actually turned out beeing stupidness on my behalf.

Gez · Post by **Gez** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 4:44 pm

Tyrion wrote:Sorry for double posting but I had another minor question.

What's the word on things like fps optimizer and graphics extender working in Vista? Works fine with the right settings, buggy, or not at all?

MGE doesn't work on my computer (well, it does if I don't ask it to do IVD, with IVD it just crashes Morrowind as soon as it starts loading the actual game). I do not know whether it's because of Vista or for some other reason.

FPS Opt works without any OS-specific issue.

Nemon wrote:Yes, it's where I put smaller programs, winrar, cdxpro, anti virus and such... All games are in my D: drive.

So you probably didn't change the "real" Program Files directory from C: to D: (it is possible to change the path to special folders, I always do it to put My Documents on the D: drive). C:\Program Files\ is the one that is "protected" by virtualization. D:\Program Files\ or E:\Program Files\ XYZ++:\Program Files\ would work just as well.

Tyrion · Post by **Tyrion** » Sun Nov 09, 2008 7:34 pm

Sorry for my disappearance. I got Sony to send me another recovery disk for my laptop so I'll be able to work again in about a weeks time or so.

Lady Nerevar · Post by **Lady Nerevar** » Sun Nov 09, 2008 8:08 pm

sweet

cant wait to have you back!

Tyrion · Post by **Tyrion** » Mon Nov 10, 2008 7:33 pm

My life was so empty without TR

kikai · Post by **kikai** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 1:11 am

that's wierd.
all of my games are installed in c:\Program Files
and work perfectly, even morrowind.

Tyrion · Post by **Tyrion** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 1:33 am

for some reason I think it depends on the specific model of PC you use