Command and Conquer ultimate edition and windows 10

@0252aa9f7c7762a37d8900d33e71b126 

It's... a bit of a tricky situation, and I can kind of understand them being vague. The pack, as it is released on Origin, does have its fair share of problems. However, most of these problems were fixed a long time ago by the C&C fan-patching community. But it's not like EA could do much better; the source code of a lot of the older games is lost or partially lost, and it has been a long time since EA had any kind of team dedicated to maintaining them. It's just not cost-efficient to them, especially if it means they'd have to reverse-engineer their own games.

So we are currently in this bizarre situation where fan-patches have made great strides in fixing and enhancing these games, but EA Support can't really point people to these fixes since that would make them liable in case these 3rd party programs might do some kind of harm.

I don't think there are many problems with the post-Generals games, but those aren't really my area of expertise. As far as I know though, with the fan patches, the older generation of C&C games all run perfectly fine. And, for the record, as far as I know, these patches are all perfectly safe. Paranoid virus scanners notwithstanding.

You can find them here:

Command & Conquer 1:

• Nyerguds' C&C95 v1.06c revision 3 patch (which also adds bonus missions originally exclusive to the Playstation and Nintendo 64 versions of the game)
  Note that this patch fixes two quite common and completely fatal game crashes (top-of-map reconnaissance crash, stealth crash), so installing it is strongly advised.
• HD music pack, with stereo music for the game.

Red Alert 1:

• Funkyfr3sh's automatic Red Alert 1 patcher/installer (The thread also has briefing videos for the expansion missions, converted from the Playstation version of the game)
• Nyerguds' main.mix cleanup for TFD/TUC (Not really needed, but cleans up about a gigabyte of unnecessary files in the RA1 folder. Unpack in the game folder, run "patch_main.bat", let it finish, and then delete the files you extracted.)
• HD music pack, with stereo music for the game.

Tiberian Sun:

• Funkyfr3sh's Tiberian Sun patch

Red Alert 2:

• I advise installing the CnCNet online play installer for RA2/YR. Even if you're not interested in online play, it comes with a bunch of automatic fixes. It should automatically take care of the "black screen on startup" issue, and has a configuration tool that allows further tweaking of the game's settings.

Generals:

• GenTool seems to be the main patch for Generals these days. The website is kind of vague on what it does besides restoring multiplayer and adding anti-cheat, but I heard it does a lot to make it work better on modern OSes too.
• If you have issues with DirectX errors popping up, find and delete the file "dbghelp.dll" in the game's install folder.

Renegade:

• The Tiberian Technologies patch fixes loads of issues on Renegade.

As for the old copies not working, yea, that's kind of Microsoft's fault; Windows itself stopped supporting the SafeDisc, the DRM system used for these game.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SafeDisc#Withdrawal_of_support

Do note that this is completely unrelated to Electronic Arts; tons of games from other developers were also affected by this.

There's also still active multiplayer for all these old games. The official servers have been offline for years, but you can play the games on the community servers:

• For the classics (Command & Conquer 1, Red Alert 1, Tiberian Sun, Red Alert 2) you can use CnCNet.
• For the later games (Generals, C&C3, RA3) you can use C&C: Online.

Thanks for this.

I did actually get a communication from EA (finally) stating that the games work on windows 10.

i can now use that as the basis for a refund if they don't 🙂

i will of course try your info first of course

@0252aa9f7c7762a37d8900d33e71b126 

Do note, the first three games are actually freeware, so they're somewhat irrelevant in all of that; they're just added to the sold collection for completeness' sake.
https://answers.ea.com/t5/C-C-The-Ultimate-Collection/Is-red-alert-1-and-tiberian-sun-now-freeware/td-p/5420723

They're also the most fan-upgraded ones in the series, since they are fairly small programs, which predate more complex DRM that could prevent such fan patching.