Windows XP and missing CD

[Miles]

I just recently installed XP from 98 and now have the problem of the CD not being recognized by the game. I've tried all of the compatability approaches and none of them work. And I've called Dell to see if there is a software solution with the CD-ROM ( no luck ). From reading this forum, I see that I'm not the only one experiencing this problem.

So far, all of my other games ( even DOS ) seem to run fine on XP. Except for CM, which I consider to be one of the greatest games ever for a wargamer, I'm not really having any other problems with XP. Soo...the solution of getting a different CD-ROM drive to run one game is not very appealing.

So I ask, has anyone figured out a work around to this problem. And if not, is Battlefront working on a solution via a patch ? And if not,should we anticipate the same problem with the next iteration of CM ? And if not, will they reverse engineer the solution to CMBO ?

Miles

[Schrullenhaft]

Only so many people have this problem. With clean installs of XP on several machines I have not run into this problem. So it isn't a simple problem of incompatibility. It seems only certain setups or installs of XP will have this problem. The only way to 'patch' this problem is to use a completely different method of copy-protection, which isn't very likely going to happen.

Do not use any of the compatiblity modes, since this may actually increase the liklihood that you'll have the CD problem.

Depending on how desparate you are to play CM there are some other things you can try. You may want to try a completely clean install of XP (possibly to another hard drive) and see if this helps or not. Since there are so many possible issues with an in-place upgrade of an OS it may be very hard to determine what it is about your install that is causing the problem.

Some CDROM/DVD/CDRW drives have had firmware updates for XP compatibility; many haven't. Not all drives need firmware updates and the ones that have had them usually aren't CDROMs, since it isn't very common for most of those drives to have flashable firmware.

[Miles]

Thanks very much for the reply. I guess you've left me with some things to think about. I'm considering putting in a 2nd hardrive and having XP on it and just restoring 98 to my old drive.

[VirusB23]

Hey Miles,

Is your cd a DVD?

I used to have a DVD with XP

It gave me no end of troubles.

If it is you may wanna look into new firmware for the drive or a software update.

Hope it helps

[Madmatt]

After some testing I have now been able to come up with a fix for this, or at least everyone who ever came to with it seems to be working now.

Okay, I am assuming you have a shortcut to the Combat Mission.exe on your desktop that you double-click to launch the game. I want you to try this:

Right click on that shortcut and select Properties.

Next click the Compatibility Tab at the top on the screen that opens.

By default NOTHING on that screen should be checked but we have seen that sometimes the "run this program in compatibility mode for:" option is selected.

If anything is checked then uncheck it and try and launch the game again. If that doesn't work, go ahead and select that Compatibility mode option and go through the four OS choices, testing the game after each one.

Before you do this make sure you have the most updated video drivers installed for your video card.

Come back here and let us know what you find. For most people that have encountered this issue it seems the NO Compatability setting (nothing checked) or Windows 2000 mode will fix the problem.

Madmatt