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JCOMMAND's avatar
JCOMMAND
11 years ago
Solved

C&C ultimate collection Red Alert 2 wont start

Hi I just downloaded Red Alert 2 and Yuri's revenge from the Command and Conquer Ultimate Edition through origin.  When I click Play in origin the window that lets me chose between Red Alert 2 or Yu...
  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    11 years ago

    Try to disable the In-Game overlay in Origin settings. This resolved my game launch issues with Red Alert 2 and Generals.

Durbellion's avatar
Durbellion
11 years ago

I have the same problem. I tried compatibility mode, running as admin, running in 16 bit color, and uninstalling and reinstalling the programs. Any help?

Anonymous's avatar
Anonymous
10 years ago

can anyone  give me a brief description of how to change compatibility mode? all forum say that i need to change something in the RA2.ini file but i dont have anything with .ini ! I downloaded the game from origin and using windows 8 pro so i get the error " cannot set the video mode", i would appreciate any help!

Thanks in advance

  • Nyerguds's avatar
    Nyerguds
    Hero+
    10 years ago

    @suuus93

    @suuus93 wrote:

    can anyone  give me a brief description of how to change compatibility mode? all forum say that i need to change something in the RA2.ini file but i dont have anything with .ini ! I downloaded the game from origin and using windows 8 pro so i get the error " cannot set the video mode", i would appreciate any help!

    Thanks in advance

    You read that wrong; the compatibility mode is set on the exe file. The ini file is a text documents which contains the game's in-game settings. As for how to see these extensions, google for "show extensions" plus your Windows version, and you should be able to find out how to enable extensions pretty fast.

    Anyway, as for the compatibility mode... 

    1. If you don't know your Origin folder, go to the "Origin" menu in the Origin desktop application and choose "Application Settings". Go to "Advanced". The first thing in there should be the Origin install folder.
    2. Open Windows Explorer (the file browser, not Internet Explorer) and go to the Origin Games folder. In there, you should find the game's folder.
    3. Find the application files called "game(.exe)" and "gamemd(.exe)". For both of these, go through the following steps:
      1. Right-click the file, and click Properties
      2. In the properties window that pops up, go to the "Compatibility" tab
      3. Enable the "Run this program in compatibility mode for" checkbox, and then select "XP Service Pack 3" in the dropdown menu under it.
      4. At the bottom of the tab, under "Privilege level", enable the "Run this program as an administrator" checkbox.
      5. Press OK.
    • Anonymous's avatar
      Anonymous
      10 years ago

      @Nyerguds

      Thank you for your post, I was able to change the compatibility settings but i still get the error "unable to set video mode" any idea why?

      • Nyerguds's avatar
        Nyerguds
        Hero+
        10 years ago

        @suuus93 You only asked about compatibility mode. The problem you have is indeed one for which you need to edit that ra2.ini file 🤓

        Basically, that means that the resolution configured in Red Alert 2 is one your monitor doesn't support. There are two ways around this:

        1. Open ra2.ini, find the [Video] section, and adjust the values under it. If the section doesn't exist, create it:
          [Video]
ScreenWidth=1920
          ScreenHeight=1080
          Though you're better off actually looking in your desktop's Screen Resolution settings what video modes are supported. I'd start with something like 1280x768 instead. These sprite-based games don't scale, so the larger the resolution, the more terrain you see, but also the smaller your tanks and buildings become in the game. If your stuff becomes too small, this is not really an advantage.
        2. Run the game in Windowed mode, by opening its game properties in Origin and adding the "-win" parameter in the text box. This will require you to switch your desktop to 16-bit colour, though. If you're in Windows 10, this is easier, since there should be an option in the properties of the program (as explained in my previous post) to run the program in 16-bit colour mode. This does have the disadvantage that your units will ALWAYS look small in the game, no matter the configured game resolution.

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