the eternal dilemma. will. not. work.
Well, as for the "why", that's quite simple; there is currently no one employed at EA for the purpose of anything C&C related.
There are a bunch of unofficial patches that will probably help you out, though it's always handier if you actually tell us what your specific problems are. The C&C games are a very diverse collection of games from very different time periods, so they all have their own unique quirks and problems...
Anyway. Those patches. Command & Conquer 1, Red Alert 1 and Tiberian Sun have all been upgraded with community-created unofficial patches that fix a lot of their bugs and compatibility problems. For Red Alert 2 there's a more general patch that solves a lot of its graphics problems. 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)
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:
Red Alert 2:
- The graphics system patch DDWrapper is known to solve the "black screen" issue.
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 the game should work.
If the RA2 patch doesn't help you out, you can also try the CnCNet installer for RA2/YR; it includes a bunch of automatic fixes that apparently do quite a good job as well.
