Vista - Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries

Has anyone had any luck in getting this program to run properly under Vista
with the Mech Paks installed?

I'm sure I'm not the only person having this problem: Launching
Mercenaries, patched to PR1, with the Mech Paks installed, results in a quit
to desktop immediately after displaying the splash screen without any error
message.

I've run into comments on various modding forums that the problem involves
an incompatibility between Vista and either C-Dilla or SafeDisc.
Macrovision, who makes both, I believe, makes no mention of it, nor does
Microsoft on any forum or knowledge base I've referenced to date. In fact,
about the only useful information I've found is that Microsoft has stopped
supporting MW4 altogether as of July this year.

Using tips from those modding forums I was looking at, I was able to get
Mercenaries to run by renaming the ISPAK and CLANPAK directories, and
replacing EBUEula.dll and EBUSetup.sem with the corresponding files from
Mechwarrior 4: Vengeance. Of course, doing this means that I cannot use the
Mech Paks.

Is there a solution to this problem?

Had a similar problem when I moved over to XP Pro.
Some games, if not most, require the disc to be present in a drive before
the game will start.
Windows XP uses a different system to 'talk' to CD/DVD drives compared to
say, Windows 98, where the games would work fine.
An example of such a game is Populous: The Beginning, and Drakan: Order
of the Flame.
Both of these games will not work under XP Pro or Vista even with the
disc present. Installing goes just dandy, but it stops there as the game
runner process can't locate the disc because of the way the operating
system handles calls to the CD/DVD drives.

The solution was a No-CD crack, resulting in the games no longer looking
for their discs in order to play.
In legal la la land this is illegal as you are altering the software
and/or circumventing copy protection (SafeDISC, C-Dilla, SecuROM,
whatever); but in my opinion justified to run a perfectly good game you
paid for and own the original disc for.








=?Utf-8?B?ZWtpc2JleQ==?= <ekisbey@xxxxxx> wrote in
news:A3BF8BB3-E8A6-44EA-A3F9-2F4257D0A1C2@xxxxxx:


--
*Reply to newsgroup please.
*Your mileage may vary.
*Spelling/Grammar errors free of charge.

This is not true, at least from all of my experience. Over the last 3 months Ive had everything - xp 32, xp 64, Vista Ult 32, Vista Ult 64. The Game Mechwarrior Mercernaries itself works flawless (While running as an administrator(Vista)) Under XP 32, XP 64, Vista 32, and Vista 64. The only problem is with Vista 64 when you install the Microsoft 'Mech Pak add-on packages to your Working installation of MW4 Mercenaries.

I have come to understand from Microsoft that they no longer support me in my interests of Mechin. Not cool M$. Love your products, hate your attitude.

Anyone interested in getting the 'Mech Pak products working with Vista 64 bit by any means necessary is welcome to join me and the SJ crew at: CLAN SMOKE JAGUAR

I will stay in touch here should anyone come up with anything.

i have MW4merc and vista 32bit, and i can even get it to read the disk to install. Any ideas??

I have a similar problem; I have all original discs for both MW4 Mercenaries and the Clan & IS MechPaks, they all install without any problems. All updates (PR1 & MekPak 3.02a+b) install fine as well...

However, when i go to run the game the screen blinks and flashes, then shows the config dialog box, then once i click 'continue' the screen flashes some more and just goes back to the desktop... no errors, no messages, no log files....

I can't believe Starcraft works fine TEN years later but Mechwarrior (which is about 1/2 as old) doesn't even work at all, and it's even made by microsoft... (yes, i know, totally different engines and blah blah blah, just making the point a microsoft game doesn't even work on a microsoft operating system 5 years later)

The only information i've found is a repetitive series of 2 events in the windows application event log:

Information 7/9/2008 11:48:01 PM Desktop Window Manager 9013 None
The Desktop Window Manager was unable to start because composition was disabled by a running application

Information 7/9/2008 11:48:33 PM Desktop Window Manager 9010 None
A request to disable the Desktop Window Manager was made by process (MechWarrior IV)


disabling desktop composition and/or running in compatibility mode does not help unfortunately, it just eliminates the afore mentioned messages in the application log