[Vaelor]

Hi all, I just purchased SimCity Societies without noting that the requirements say I need to be running XP or Vista to play. Since this is usually bullshit, my first stop is here to find out how I can get around this! I've never seen a game that couldn't be trickily install to run just fine under Win2k, and I'll be suprised if this is the first.

If anybody can help me out, I'd be extremely grateful. Nothing like wasting money on a game you can't play! =(

Thanks!

[DosFreak]

Don't have the game so I don't know what your talking about but usually these issues are caused by the installer and not the game (Although recently some games haven been putting XP specific functionality into their .dll's like Crysis and ET:QW). (Both games have been hacked to work in 2000 though).

So is this an installer issue or a game issue?

[Vaelor]

It's an installer issue. Actually I've never seen one that isn't. If somebody can just get me around this ridiculous attempt to convert me to Vista, I'm sure the game will work just fine on my OS like everything else.

[Wilhelmus]

What installer does it have?

If it does have Windows Installer (MSI), then you could try to use Orca to modify the .msi file and see if you can remove OS check from it.

DosFreak's Windows Defender + Windows 2000, see that how to use it.

You can get Orca from here (Orca.zip), for instance.

[DosFreak]

I would pick the game up when I go to Best Buy today but from everything I've heard and read the game isn't that good. Add that to the fact that I've bought every single Simcity game but haven't played them since the first one on the Mac.......at least the other ones were good so I don't feel guilty for wasting the money.

Is there a demo of the game?

[Vaelor]

Originally Posted By: DosFreak

I would pick the game up when I go to Best Buy today but from everything I've heard and read the game isn't that good. Add that to the fact that I've bought every single Simcity game but haven't played them since the first one on the Mac.......at least the other ones were good so I don't feel guilty for wasting the money.

Is there a demo of the game?

I got lucky, the day it came out I was given a gift card for the exact cost of the game, and there was nothing else I wanted at all so it was an easy call to get this for free. Still, feels like wasted money anyway when I can't play it. =(

The installer doesn't seem to use MSI, just an EASetup.exe which spouts the error, "EASetup.exe - Entry Point Not Found - The procedure entry point GetSystemWow64DirectoryW could not be located in the dynamic link library KERNEL32.dll." =(

To my knowledge, there's no demo of the game available. =(

[DosFreak]

Hmm, easiest method is to install on another computer and copy the files over.

Problem there is some games require registry entries or installed copy protection drivers. The registry entries can be monitored and captured with an registery monitor and the copy protection drivers are usually easy since they can be installed from their respective websites.


I'm suprised that the game looks for "GetSystemWow64Directory" in Kernel32.dll since not even XP has that directory (unless it's XP 64bit). I guess the installer is confused...

[commander_keen]

sry, was not meant to be posted twice...

[commander_keen]

heya, have you managed to get around this thing?

EASETUP.EXE seems to be really confused to search for a Win64-Function an a 32bit OS.
Any way to make it "read" XP instead of Win2k? Maybe that already fixes he isssue...

[OldCigarette]

I've make a kernel32 wrapper that has a lot of different XP functions and do version faking for Windows 2000.

The wrapper has GetSystemWow64Directory so it might work if you use that. I don't know if there are any other missing functions or not, but you can see I've added a lot of them.
http://win2kgaming.siteburg.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=7

Just place the kernel32.dll next to your EASETUP.EXE and follow what the README says about setup for the KnownDll fix and the target dlls.

Cheers

[DosFreak]

Hey thanks for posting OldCigarette!

I don't know if you've seen my compatibility list but you should probably take a look:

http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=8784

The forum is also the official forum of DosBox and VDMSound and we do alot of work with old games on new computers.

You may also want to post about your site at the MSFN forums:

http://www.msfn.org/board/forums.html

Not too many 2000 users over there though, they are mostly concerned with 9x.