Vista - Warcraft 3 Problems

Ok, I saw some of the other threads but they don't workout with mine.

So here is my issue. I am able to install Reign Of Chaos fine and without issue. I can play it afterwards and everything.

But then I try to install The Frozen Throne and it stops about 3 quarters way. I stop the install, and try to install again and it tells me to "first install Reign of Chaos"....keeping in mind I had already done that. I go try to play Reign of Chaos and its telling me this: First off War3.ExE- Unable to Locate.

Then it shows me this message: This Application has failed to start because mss32.dll was not found. Re-Installing the Application may fix this problem.

I reinstalled it twice, and tried The Frozen Throne twice....with no luck. yes I have tried run as admin before installing The Frozen Throne but thats not working either.

I really hope someone here can help me out.....

Thanks...

Oh, my specs are : Windows Vista Home Premium
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T9300 @ 2.50GHz
Nivida GeForce 8700M GT

This is a really weak suggestion.. but is Reign of Chaos updated to the newest version before you try and do Frozen Throne?

Attempted that before even coming here, and no, did not help. Like I said, I am not sure whats wrong.

I look at history here and I notice someone had posted the same problem I have had. Although the reply posts didn't really help him...so really can't help me.

They had suggested it was the CD's but my CD's are both is very good condition, especially the Frozen Throne CD.

So I am guessing Vista is acting up with something....

Not sure if this will help, but I would go to Add/Remove programs and uninstall the game(s). Then go to the Control Panel/Appearance and Personalization/Folder Options. Select the View tab and then check 'Show hidden files and folders'.

Then hit the start button and go to your user name folder. You'll now see a folder called App Data. Look in the Roaming folder for any folders that were created by the game; delete them. There "might" be a game folder in LocalLow, but I can't recall from when I had to clear one of these files out? Check anyway.

Then do a disk cleanup and in the other options page choose to delete all but your latest restore point.

I am not exactly sure how this works yet, but it's my understanding that Vista keeps what its calling a Shadow Copy of everything you install. If you've re-installed the game you may notice in the game icon's property sheet previous versions tab that you do indeed have a previous version. I pulled clumps of hair out trying to figure out how to get rid of that previous version because it was apparently causing re-install failure.

Hopefully someone with a much greater understanding of Shadow Copies will come in and clear this up. If you're worried about losing your restore points (because they're tied to shadow copies), then I'd wait for a Guru.

I didn't fail in reinstalling Reign of Chaos. But every time I tried to install The Frozen Throne then it would stop about 3 quarters way then Reign of Chaos, which was working fine before, needs to be reinstalled.

I understood all that the first time. I said what I did under the assumption that The Frozen Throne was an expansion to Reign of Chaos. In short, without Chaos, you can't play Throne, right?

Because Throne uses some Chaos files, it somehow messed up your Chaos install. In order to start over from scratch you need to do more than just uninstall the game(s) because Vista keeps a shadow copy of all previous installs. This means that it's possibly keeping a shadow copy of a messed up install which is what's preventing you from getting Throne installed right and preventing you from now playing Chaos.

I don't know for sure if this is your issue, but something similar happened with a 1942 expansion pack and that's how I resolved it.

First of all, mss32.dll is a winamp file, here is the description provided by Uniblue:

I don't have winamp installed and it works fine for me, I am placing my bets that winamp is the problem. It most likely is messing with your audio driver. Uninstall winamp and try it again.

+Rep me if I helped

ZeratuelX

mss32.dll is not a WinAmp file. WinAmp uses mss32.dll, but so do other audio players, and so do some games, as is the case here.

There's another thread here with a missing mss32.dll: Call of duty 4, mss32.dll not a valid x64 program?

The user solved his problem by updating DirectX: Latest DirectX Update and by patching to the latest version of the game.

Microsoft has two entries on mss32.dll. One says to turn off WinAmp while playing the game (this doesn't apply), the other says to copy mss32.dll from your system folder to the game folder: You may receive a critical DLL error message when you start Dungeon Siege II However, I see no such file in my System, System32 or SysWOW64 folders?

If it only uses it, then it must be installed by another program? Most missing dll errors are probably corrected by DirectX updates, as Fumz stated. If you need the dll though, try this link: mss32.dll - Filefront.com

Heres a virus scan:

I appreciate the help guys! I will be sure to test this out. Hopefully i will be playing The Frozen Throne before long.