CombatGold1

[ I've Searched ] I installed Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge today to play with some mates at university during our excessively long breaks. I happen to be the only one of us that uses Windows XP for x64 systems. The games installed fine, with the westwood components. However, if I try and start up the game it crashes with a send error report dialog before it can play the EA logo. If I set the application compatibility to Windows 95 or Windows 98/ME, the game appears to run, however it can't find any IPX enabled network cards. I've not tried Internet play. Using Windows NT4, Windows 2000, or Windows XP compatibility modes, I get the crash. I have also ticked "Disable visual themes" and "Allow non-administrators to run this application", however I doubt that seriously effects it. Has anyone else been getting this problem? Is there a fix for it? The latest patches are also applied. Dual booting with an older version of Windows is not a fix by the way, it's a workaround; which is not what I want On a side note, some of you may be interested in an application I found on Google while installing the games called GIT (Gamer's Internet Tunnel). It has the ability to tunnel both IPX and TCP/IP packets within one another, which means you will probably be able to use the LAN game over any TCP/IP network including the Internet. It will work on x64 if you get the 64-bit version of the Winpcap libraries.

Ok, after much configuration and fiddling with IPX settings, I finally got my laptop and desktop pc to link up over an IPX network. So, we start the game, and after about 10 seconds, the player joining blows up and dies in a flash. I thought maybe it was the wireless network quickly reconnecting, or maybe the playing of an unofficial map. So, instead I put in a cable for the laptop, and played an official map. The same happened again. Any thoughts?

If you read the rest of this topic, you'd notice at the time I only had one copy of YR, which is why I was asking about the standard RA2, because that can be played on 2 computers with one serial. Luckily, I do have 2 YR's now, got another copy cheap off eBay.

RA2 has all the official patches, if that's what you meant by regular patch. As for teams, you can't do that on the standard RA2.

Anyway back ot Is there a fix avaliable for the AI, it's damn annoying being player one, and having to take all the attacks and super weapons off the AI players :/

I only made this because nothing came up in the search. Is there a problem with that? I thought that's what a forum is about, users can create topics relavent to the forum name and description, which I have done. I even searched for my problem before posting, which you must admit, next to nobody does that because they are too lazy. My search returned nothing relavent to my problem, so I created this.

I gathered that part. You obviously didn't read the part where I mentioned single player skirmishes don't work either. Maybe you should also read replies too huh? I thought as much. Anyway, RA2 without expansions works, with one CD-Key, which I guessed it would. I'll go and buy another Yuri's Revenge for the laptop.

I changed one figure in it because I didn't think they'd join with the same key. If I use same keys on both machines, when one tries to join the other, it says it can't join because someone else in that game is using the same serial# If I use different keys on both machines,when one tries to join the other, it's fine, the game starts, but after about 10 seconds, the person joining the game automaticly surrenders without even doing anything to make that happen. Edit: The laptop machine automaticly surrenders a few seconds into a single player game too. It's obviously not a network problem anymore, just a problem with that machine. It's fine on my desktop computer.

To tell you the truth, I installed the game with the exact same copy. I thought with the standard Red Alert 2, you were allowed to do that, as it comes with 2 disks. With Yuri's, I gathered you couldn't, so I did it anyway, and altered the CD key on the Laptop's Registry.

LOL no, all our power lines here are underground, as well as telephone lines. No radio stations here either. BTW it's not a hardware problem, it works with my brothers desktop PC upstairs.. it's more of an in-game problem.

I'm guessing many of you have noticed that both Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2 (including their expansions) require some serious patching, because it's current state is below awful. Ever since EA took control of the online facilities, there have been somewhat no updates at all. Here is all the stuff I have found to be labeled "required". Support for the TCP/IP protocol needed over LAN. IPX is outdated, and rarely used now. [*]56k performance and lag over a gigabit ethernet backbone or a broadband internet connection is simply not acceptable. Are you transfering bitmaps or something? [*]Constant reconnection errors for random reasons. [*]Shutting down all network adapters and forcing the user to do a hard reboot after a reconnection error. [*]Support for UPnP devices (eg Routers) is an absolute must, some of us HAVE to use NAT. I'm sure this list goes on much further. Just wondering what you all think. I know it's up to EA Games to fix problems now, but haven't you all noticed a major downfall since EA took over? Meh!!

As I said, I tried it with a cable to and it still happened.

The problem making us have to restart due to network card lockup is directly related to the NIC's chipset, rather than Windows XP in general.

Windows XP was out after RA2, so sure there would be some problems, but EA or Westwood should have patched their game to run on XP when it came out.

That provides a cause, but not a complete sollution Bad code makes network cards crash.

I found out why my network card crashes and makes me have to reboot. Page from EA's Custhelp. I have the Netgear GA311, and the drivers for everything in my PC are up to date, looks like only a patch can solve this problem.

I've moved over to XWIS now, damn impressed with the time it takes to join the lobby. I'll try the Windows 98 compattibility. Are there any patches to improve general multiplayer performance, for LAN as well as online?

Netgear DG834 ADSL Router It's completely UPnP compattible, but unfortunately, RA2 is not. I am pretty much **forced** to use NAT, since there are 9 devices in this house using the internet connection, so not using NAT is not an option. BTW just tried joining XWIS, it's so fast connecting and talking! Outstanding resource.

Is XWIS just improving the chat server and where you meet people, or does it also improve performance of the multiplayer gaming time? I get alot of "reconnection errors" on the WOL servers then all my network interfaces block themself out until I restart

does the win98 compattibility help?

Yeah it is a bit late I been using WOL for quite some time, just never posted what I think of it on a forum. Are there any 3rd party patches around that can fix any problems?