It would be helpful if you told us which problems you specifically have with which games; these games span a time of roughly 15 years, you know, and in that time they went through at least four significantly different game engines. The older ones have vastly different issues than the newer ones.
@JAGrossman wrote:
even though I have put them all in Windows 7 compatibility mode.
Too new. Try WinXP SP3 instead.
Ok let's just talk about the Command and Conquer with the Tiberian Sun extension. I have just tried putting it in XP SP3 mode but I'm doing this from the desktop. I noticed that you had an answer for someone that involved opening the folder and changing the compatibility from there but I can only find the game folder and not the other one. Is this where I need to actually change the compatibility mode? As for what the game is doing it is taking several clicks in the main menu to respond then it immediately opens into a game I am unfamiliar with, the screen movement controls are sluggish and as soon as I click the options tab it freezes. Is there anything else you need to know?
Ok let's just talk about the Command and Conquer with the Tiberian Sun extension.
That's not an "extension", that's just the game's name.
@JAGrossman wrote:
I have just tried putting it in XP SP3 mode but I'm doing this from the desktop. I noticed that you had an answer for someone that involved opening the folder and changing the compatibility from there but I can only find the game folder and not the other one.
You mean you made the installer create desktop shortcuts? Unfortunately that's something you can only do when installing a game (unlike in Steam), meaning that, since not all people will have done that, I can't use that as basis for tech support. I don't have a clue what you mean with "I can only find the game folder and not the other one", since the only folder I ever talked about is the game folder.
@JAGrossman wrote:
As for what the game is doing it is taking several clicks in the main menu to respond then it immediately opens into a game I am unfamiliar with, the screen movement controls are sluggish and as soon as I click the options tab it freezes. Is there anything else you need to know?
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. You can find them here:
Command & Conquer 1:
Red Alert 1:
Tiberian Sun:
So, I suggest you start by installing those on their respective games.
OK, sorry about the confusion. You obviously have no clue as to the post I was talking about but it was a "games" and "gamesmd" folders you were talking about in your other post. Also my collection was installed shortcuts and all by EA Games so it confuses me that you wouldn't have shortcuts for your games, if you have them. As for the fix, it requires an unadulterated version of the game to use it and since the games have probably been modified by EA Games to play on a Windows 7 platform in the first place, it may do more harm than good. At this point I am considering getting another hard drive and creating a dual boot system so that I can play some of my other Windows 7 games as well without having to do IT patches that I am not exactly qualified to do. Unless you want to give me step by step instructions on verifying the game version and installing the patches.
JAGrossman wrote:OK, sorry about the confusion. You obviously have no clue as to the post I was talking about but it was a "games" and "gamesmd" folders you were talking about in your other post.
I see your confusion now. First of all, those were files I talked about, not folders. Secondly, that was "game", singular. Thirdly, that was about Red Alert 2 specifically. The file "game.exe" is literally Red Alert 2; the program that is the game itself, while "gamemd.exe" is the expansion pack program.
Tiberian Sun, on the other hand, and all the C&C games before it, for that matter, doesn't have two different executables; both the game and its expansion pack are still just one program, and the choice between them is actually given in-game. The executable file for Tiberian Sun should be just "GAME.EXE".
However, Westwood had the tendency to add smaller launcher programs to the folder, with more recognizable names, like RA2.exe, Yuri.exe, Sun.exe. You can immediately see from the file size that those are not the actual game exe because they are so much smaller, and all they really do is launch those actual game exe files. But seeing as I don't know which of them is actually launched by the Origin launcher, it's best to apply the compatibility settings to all of them.
Note, if you don't see the ".exe" part of all these files when browsing the folders, I suggest you do a quick google for "show file extensions", and enable them on your system. It's pretty much impossible to do decent troubleshooting if you allow Windows to hide vital information from you.
JAGrossman wrote:Also my collection was installed shortcuts and all by EA Games so it confuses me that you wouldn't have shortcuts for your games, if you have them.
Uh... are you talking about "The Ultimate Collection", or about the earlier "The First Decade" pack? Because if this is about TFD, you should really have said so.
@JAGrossman wrote:
As for the fix, it requires an unadulterated version of the game to use it and since the games have probably been modified by EA Games to play on a Windows 7 platform in the first place, it may do more harm than good.
Nope. All of these fixes were specifically made to work on all versions of the games, with modern OSes in mind. The main problem with these games is that EA did NOT modify them one single byte to make them work better on modern OSes; all they did was replace the original CD checks with newer DRM. That's exactly why it was up to us, the fans, to patch these games ourselves. I can show you the full changes list for my C&C1 patch; it's several pages of critical bug fixes, improvements and enhancements. (The short overview is probably more useful for the average user, though it's missing the two critical game crash fixes the whole patch is originally based on)
@JAGrossman wrote:
At this point I am considering getting another hard drive and creating a dual boot system so that I can play some of my other Windows 7 games as well without having to do IT patches that I am not exactly qualified to do.
That is why I suggested the patches; they do these things for you. And even though I'm not an EA employee, the fact they made me moderator here sort of indicates that yes, I might be qualified. I literally have a decade of experience with troubleshooting these games; I started when The First Decade pack was released, which is just about ten years ago, now 😉
