Re: C&C Red Alert 2 black screen

So I've been going back and forth about this for days now trying to get it to work. I run the game on a Win 10 Pro 64bit system. So it seems a combo of the different sulutions given here and there did seem to work with a few tweaks.

Here is what did it for me.

Fresh install first.

Head to the origin game page and find RA2. Go to game properties and disable the Origin UI in game and also add "-win" in the command window above so the game will start in windowed mode.

Then install and copy this ddraw file found here. Extract the rar file in the root RA2 folder. If you used an origin install, it's most likely in "C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\Command and Conquer Red Alert II" Included in that rar file was a dll file, but also a config file called aqrit. Open it with notepad and only change "NoVideoMemory" form 0 to 1 only.

Then we need a launcher fix found here. Simply run it and select RA2 form the list and patch it.

Now you need to go RA2 install path again and find the game.exe and gamemd.exe. Go to properties on them and make sure they both have Windows XP service pack 2, reduced 16bit color mode, and run as administrator.

 Lastly we need to edit the RA2.ini file. As now the game should work and run fine, but in a small window. If you go to the RA2.ini file and find the [video] section. You can edit the screen res there to match your desktop one. I had some small screen issues, but jogo_veio's trick and extra video options fixed it. Here is what he had added in his

[Video]
AllowHiResModes=yes
AllowVRAMSidebar=yes
VideoBackBuffer=no
ScreenWidth=1920
ScreenHeight=1080
StretchMovies=no

Simply copy that into your own RA2.ini file and adjust the screen res to match yours if it is lower.

That did it for me. Now the game runs in HD in window mode with working cinematics that has the correct colors etc in Win 10. The only issue is that the screen might flicker if you have something behind hit, like a browser window etc. Just make sure to hide all windows on the screen the game will run on first. Then I had no issues at all running it. 

Oh and I know if you need to do a fresh install. You are forced to watch the intro again. 2 ways around that. Either crash the game and close it with task manager when the intro starts. It still will think you have seen it, and will skip it the next time. Or add a new line in the RA2.ini file right above [serialDefaults] all the way down. And simply add

[Intro]

Play=no

So I followed everything you did and was really pumped when I was able to ALT+TAB away from the main game menu without returning to the black screen, with sound and cursor.

It seems like there are multiple versons of the ddraw.dll file floating around the internet.

When I tried to play Campaign however, the game will crash sometimes when moving unit(s). I will try to post back if I find a fix for the game crashing side effect.

It worked, for me in the way, that i see the menu (not full screen), but the menu and the buttons are misaligned. See the picture, where the cursor is, there is the actual close button.

Any solutions?

solution is, to change in the RA2.ini file the DisableHighDpiScaling    = 1.

I could play for 10 minutes, but then the game crashed

Well campaign works fine for me so far. Done 5 missions with no issues, and one Skirmish match. But I guess there are many hidden hardware factors to that can cause separate random effects. I just hoped it would work for a few at least. On a different forum 3 got it to work with my version, and 4 did not so far that have responded.

The menu was small for me to, but not misaligned like you said in terms of activating the keys. But glad you sorted it out.

@SgtGeorgeLuz 

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@SgtGeorgeLuz wrote:

solution is, to change in the RA2.ini file the DisableHighDpiScaling    = 1.

I could play for 10 minutes, but then the game crashed

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Please get your facts straight before posting things like that. DisableHighDPIScaling isn't an option of Red Alert 2. It's an option of DDWrapper.

While DDWrapper and its configurations may help fix problems in RA2, the option will certainly do nothing at all if you add it to ra2.ini, since DDWrapper won't look inside ra2.ini, and the RA2 game which reads ra2.ini doesn't know that DisableHighDpiScaling option.

hx, that worked for me on win 10

This all worked really well for me and I'm on a Surface Pro 3 with Windows 10. My only issue now is that when I'm in game and mouse over the bottom of the screen the mouse interacts with my taskbar and immediately crashes the game. 

Any ideas on this?

@glaci0us Perhaps playing in windowed mode might fix that? The way to do that is detailed in one of the earlier posts i this thread.

What I ended up doing was decreasing the screen width and screen height in the config RA2 file by about 10 pixels each. It's not a bad fix, just have to deal with a little bit of black on the right and bottom. No more crashing!

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@Balc0ra wrote:

So I've been going back and forth about this for days now trying to get it to work. I run the game on a Win 10 Pro 64bit system. So it seems a combo of the different sulutions given here and there did seem to work with a few tweaks.

Here is what did it for me.

Fresh install first.

Head to the origin game page and find RA2. Go to game properties and disable the Origin UI in game and also add "-win" in the command window above so the game will start in windowed mode.

Then install and copy this ddraw file found here. Extract the rar file in the root RA2 folder. If you used an origin install, it's most likely in "C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\Command and Conquer Red Alert II" Included in that rar file was a dll file, but also a config file called aqrit. Open it with notepad and only change "NoVideoMemory" form 0 to 1 only.

Then we need a launcher fix found here. Simply run it and select RA2 form the list and patch it.

Now you need to go RA2 install path again and find the game.exe and gamemd.exe. Go to properties on them and make sure they both have Windows XP service pack 2, reduced 16bit color mode, and run as administrator.

 Lastly we need to edit the RA2.ini file. As now the game should work and run fine, but in a small window. If you go to the RA2.ini file and find the [video] section. You can edit the screen res there to match your desktop one. I had some small screen issues, but jogo_veio's trick and extra video options fixed it. Here is what he had added in his

[Video]
AllowHiResModes=yes
AllowVRAMSidebar=yes
VideoBackBuffer=no
ScreenWidth=1920
ScreenHeight=1080
StretchMovies=no

Simply copy that into your own RA2.ini file and adjust the screen res to match yours if it is lower.

That did it for me. Now the game runs in HD in window mode with working cinematics that has the correct colors etc in Win 10. The only issue is that the screen might flicker if you have something behind hit, like a browser window etc. Just make sure to hide all windows on the screen the game will run on first. Then I had no issues at all running it. 

Oh and I know if you need to do a fresh install. You are forced to watch the intro again. 2 ways around that. Either crash the game and close it with task manager when the intro starts. It still will think you have seen it, and will skip it the next time. Or add a new line in the RA2.ini file right above [serialDefaults] all the way down. And simply add

[Intro]

Play=no

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THANK YOU!

You helped me get 99% of the way, I only have 1 problem left - the Network/LAN-menu is screwed up - the chat/game windows are overlapping, the "meter" at top right is double and overlapping it self, and the new-button is somewhere offscreen - any ideas?

@toth42 Honestly, I think that's just the game having problems with resolutions that are higher than it was ever designed for. Try lowering it to something more reasonable. Your PC's display settings ("Advanced display settings" in Windows 10) will have a list of the resolutions your monitor supports. So you can just look for a slightly lower one from that list and fill it in in the ini file.

@toth42 What about the settings of ddwrapper, in aqrit.cfg? I've always heard it advised to enable the "ForceDirectDrawEmulation" option. Balc0ra's guide didn't enable that.

Disable high dpi scaling, it should fix your last problem

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/443-dpi-display-size-settings-change.html

set it back to the original setting, 100% / 96dpi

Another option is to right click game.exe/gamemd.exe and go to properties/compatibility and check the disable high dpi scaling checkbox