So EA you EVER going to fix any of the problems you have created with this game?

@dirt319

Red Alert 2 works perfectly fine on windows 7, it must be a problem on your end.

Your problem could be related to broken graphic card drivers, there were a few other users with similar problems. Try to install a different version of the drivers.

I just had a quick look through older threads and someone mentioned that version 337.88 solved the issue for his GeForce card.

@dirt319

If upgrading your drivers itself doesn't do the trick, try the graphics system patch DDWrapper; it is known to solve a multitude of graphics problems in the game.

Download the zip file and extract "ddraw.dll" and "aqrit.cfg" into your game folder. Then, open the configuration file "aqrit.cfg" in Notepad, change the "ForceDirectDrawEmulation" option to 1, save the file, and try running the game again

1st will this do anything for windows 10, i have long since gotten rid of my win 7 machine for a win 10 2nd this is EXACTLY what im talking about..... this is not OUR job to figure this * out. its EAs as owner of the game, if there games dont work then THEY need to release a patch that does this if this is what fixes it, not tell us that i need to have someone from the community give me 100 different ways to fix it none which possibly will.

@dirt319

Whatever, man. I spend my free time trying to help people on this forum. If your only reply to that is that that help is not appreciated, then that's your business.

You know, in this time of ever-changing OSes and hardware, they can't keep maintaining decades-old games forever. Loads of games eventually switch to community support. It would make things easier if they released the source code, sure, but from what I heard, so much stuff got lost when Westwood was disbanded that they might not even have it anymore.

Not to mention the simple fact that the current fan-patches for the C&C games are just incredibly far ahead of anything they could produce. I don't think that patching being in the hands of the community is such a bad thing.

The only problematic point, of course, is that EA can't really add fan-made patches in the official bundle, since they can't guarantee that fan-made stuff is completely safe. It'd be nice if there were a list of fan-patches mentioned in some official place. Then again, we kinda have that, here.

For the record, these are the fan-patches available for the classic Westwood games:

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)

Red Alert 1:

• Funkyfr3sh's automatic Red Alert 1 patcher/installer
• 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.)

Tiberian Sun:

• Funkyfr3sh's Tiberian Sun patch

Red Alert 2:

• The aforementioned graphics system patch, DDWrapper.

None of these sites, as far as I know, are Russian 🤨

Nyerguds I completely understand what you mean with regards to how involved updating games that are decades old for all kinds of different hardware is.

I do agree kind of with OP though that if this game is still repackaged/sold by EA on their marketplace, it should be supported and/or compatible with whatever is current.

@davemeech

Well, yea, if they stop maintaining it they should really just make 'em freeware... but, y'know, they did that, with the oldest three. But since all those freeware releases were pushed by the community managers, and done as promotion for the then-new C&C game releases, well... we have neither community managers nor new C&C games, now ☹️

It's also immediately obvious that those games that have been made freeware are the most extensively fan-patched, simply because on those we no longer have to be careful about DRM.

But overall, when given the choice between them still selling it but with little support, or them not selling them at all, I dunno, I'm kind of glad you can still get them so easily.