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Once more: CM for NT 4.0?


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There have been persistent rumors that CM can somehow be adapted to NT 4.0, but I cannot find a workaround for this. Any new ideas?

My company laptop is NT (466 MHz and 128Mb, video sucks but it should at least play) and is going to stay that way for some time, so please don't bother suggesting Win2K. The I.S. folks are recidivist troglodytes, but cursin' it won't change it.

PLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASE if someone has a real answer, tell me/us? I have travel coming up, and this is too cruel...

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Yep, I've heard that NT is pretty tough to play games on - largely due to incompatability problems with Direct X (?), but I can't remember if CM requires it or not. Can any hardware/OS types out there address this? I've wondered about this as well - I'd like to SWITCH to NT because 95/98 is damned unstable sometimes. Not gonna happen though it I can't wargame (wouldn't be prudent!)

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I'm not an expert.... But I don't believe there is anyway CM will work with NT. NT does not and will not (according to MS) have directx support. Since they consider NT a business platform. This is why you see almost no games that will run on the NT platform. There are most likely some OS gurus out here that can explain it better. But that is my take on things. I use NT at work also, and I believe we are just SOL.

Lorak

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http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/combatmissionclub

Lorak's FTX for CM <--Proud member of the Combat Mission Webring

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Combat Mission will not run under Windows NT 4.0. Even after NT 4.0 has been service packed, it only supports DirectX version 3. According to the instructions included in the Demo, Combat Mission requires DirectX version 6 or higher. Thus, it will not run.

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Yep, been there, done that, got pissed, it don't work.

Tried everything under the sun.

The best thing you can do is try to partition

the hard drive with 95/98. Then NT will give you the option of booting either system.

The problem is....you cant do that if your hard is already formatted under NTFS.

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Better to make the wrong decision than be the sorry son of a bitch to scared to make one at all

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Fionn had mentioned a while ago that he thought some beta testers were running in NT (Lorak, might have been at your chat site).

But I don't see how. It's service-packed to the gills (oops- not authorized by IS!) and of course, nada. And yes, it was already partitioned.

Hmmm...would it be worth paying retail for W2K and a potential corporate court-martial just to play CM? Hmmm... gotta be a way...

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As DEFBUNGIS mentioned... No way AT ALL you will get CM to run with NT 4.0. DirectX 3.0 is the latest and LAST version of DirectX that NT 4.0 will see. CM is completely dependent on DirectX 6.x or later (it won't draw the screen properly otherwise).

You say that the drive was partitioned. Do you mean that it was partitioned into two or more logical drives or as a single drive ? If you have a second partition what file format and OS are on it ? If there is no OS on it (meaning that it isn't set to boot OS/2 or another copy of NT, etc.) you could possibly use a partitioning utility like PartitionMagic to set it up so that it could be a Win98 (there's possibly a manual method to do this, but I can't recall the exact steps).

If your drive is currently partitioned as a single logical drive and it is NTFS file system, then there is no way to install Win9x on that particular partition (if it is a FAT16 then you possibly could). It may be possible to use a utility to reduce the NTFS partition (if the free space is available) to allow for a second partition, but I'm not sure if this can be done with the utilities available.

A W2K upgrade would be nice, but your IS dept. will possibly have qualms if there are any custom apps that you are running, etc.

[This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 06-13-2000).]

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Hi.

FIRST (yelling), you should never be installing personal programs on business systems. I am sure your corporate IS department would frown on your installing personal programs on the company equipment.

(calming) What to do? Buy a spare drive, format with legal copy of windows 98 SE, install combat mission and away you go.

Richard Kalajian

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<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by aka kingtiger:

(yelling), you should never be installing personal programs on business systems. I am sure your corporate IS department would frown on your installing personal programs on the company equipment.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

They frown on everything and rule through terror and intimidation. This is why I use a nick- they might have a reward for turning guys like me in.

Buy a spare drive, format with legal copy of windows 98 SE, install combat mission and away you go.

That's the best idea I've heard yet.

The thing came partitioned into c: and d: with NT and various apps on both. It is a very lopsided partition, like 2Gb on c: and 14Gb on d:, plus a network card, the quasi-viral Lotus Notes, and some octopus named Novell. They can't make Partition Magic work on it for some reason related to the above.

External drive might work... off to the web to window-shop.

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Ummm, EXCUSE ME?? confused.gifconfused.gif

But something doesn't make sense here.

So what are saying? That you want to play a game on an office NT system? Aren't you supposed to be working??

Watching the BBS from work is one thing, but playing a game is another. I don't think your boss is gonna appreciate you fighting WWII all over again at work. tongue.giftongue.gif

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Finally........Maximus...has come back.....to the Forum!!!

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Everyone is correct about games not working on NT 4.0. But, you can dual boot NT, and Win2000. Also, Win2000 will run on a 32MB Ram system. Your Pagefile.sys is huge though. Therefore the NTFS is not a problem.

WARNING!!! DO NOT choose the upgrade option when moving from WIN98 to 2000. IT don't work well my friends. I know, I work at Microsoft. Either Dual boot, or reformat.

Phandaal.

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<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Phandaal:

WARNING!!! DO NOT choose the upgrade option when moving from WIN98 to 2000. IT don't work well my friends. I know, I work at Microsoft. Either Dual boot, or reformat.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

HA! Almost as good an admission as when I said that I had a K6-400 and was (and is) an Intel employee in some newsgrope or another..

hehe.

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<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Maximus:

Ummm, EXCUSE ME??

But something doesn't make sense here.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Key thoughts, embedded deeply in the first post:

a) CM

B) laptop

c) travel

Ponder.

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___________________________________________

lopsided partition, like 2Gb on c: and 14Gb on d:,

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Well with NT you are kinda stuck with one partition being 4 GB or under. During NT install, the partition must be 4 GB or less.

I am dealing with an Adaptec 1130U2 Raid Port III Vampire board that takes over control of the on board SCSI2 and turns it into an onboard Raid controller. I have the RAID set up as 0+1 (mirroring and striping with 4 9 GB SCSI2 160 Seagate Cheetahs) The NT install forces a 1GB boot partition. Arghh! Yikes! Gotta love Microsoft.

Richard kalajian

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kingtiger - Yeah, you gotta love NT. For some reason (obviously there is a programming/compatiblity one) the first partition has the 4Gb and under limitation due to some FAT-BOOT like compatibility and 1024 cylinders. I tried to make sense of the MS documentation on it, but came away still confused - so much for New Technology.

Mark IV - You may not be able to boot off of an external drive unless you are running SCSI. Most of the external drives are probably going to require a device driver. If you opt for an "exchangeable" hard drive I suggest looking at manufacturers that specialize in "drive replacement kits" geared towards certain brands of laptops. It will cost a bit more, but if you're lucky you'll have a hard drive that you can swap out easily (which isn't always the case). If directly swapping your hard drive out isn't possible or too much of a hassle then you are looking at a dual boot solution. I believe that you may have to get a 3rd party product to do this or modify some of the "boot files" in NT to have the Boot Manager point to another partition as an option to boot from (I believe it can be done, but don't know the settings). I don't know how well this works if you get an external drive that operates off of a parallel, PC Card or USB port since a device driver will be needed (and NT's Boot Manager won't recognize the partition to boot from).

Aaahhh... annoying details left and right.

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<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Schrullenhaft:

kingtiger - Yeah, you gotta love NT. For some reason (obviously there is a programming/compatiblity one) the first partition has the 4Gb and under limitation due to some FAT-BOOT like compatibility and 1024 cylinders. I tried to make sense of the MS documentation on it, but came away still confused - so much for New Technology.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Actually the system partition (which is usually the boot partition) has a maximum size of 7.8GB in NT 4.0. However, doing an install from scratch does limit you to an initial 4GB partition. However, if you do a lot of NT installs, you never install it from scratch. (Too time consuming.) We use Norton Ghost and it easily resizes the partition on the fly when dumping down a ghost/clone file. You then run the System Prep Tool to take care of the sid's and you're in business.

But as has been stated here, it's a pain that there's a limitation like this to begin with.

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