Vista, W7, 64bit, and the somehow confusing nature of it.

Alright kiddies, so I've successfully installed Arcanum on Vista Ultimate 64 bit. I'm running version 1074. Just to test it, I've been booting the game, letting it go through all the opening videos, starting a new game, and then closing it. I've been doing this as opposed to a full play-through because most people expressed the issue being within the first launch period. If Vista isn't fucking working for you, please follow my steps. If it still isn't working when I'm done, please hit yourself in the head with the pointing courner of your keyboard. If your keyboard lacks a suitably pointy courner, please try again with a different but similar object. Maybe your monitor? Anyway, onwards and upwards: If you install it, and it won't run, Uninstall it and Reinstall it. If this doesn't fix it, the first thing to ask yourself is, "Are you an administrator on the machine?" If you don't know the answer to this, please follow this steps to check: Click on the Start Button. Select Control Panel. Switch to Classic View. Select "User Accounts." It should, in the little bubble next to the flower picture that most likely symbolizes you accurately, say "username administrator password protected" If you'ren't an administrator, please get mommy and/or daddy to make you one. Are you an administrator? Will Arcanum still not boot for you? Alright then. Let's try attempt number two: Click the start button. Click "Computer." See the "path" bar at the top of that window? Let's click on that. Not the computer part, just to the right of it. At this point, it'll change to an actual path, and you want to change it to C:\Sierra\Arcanum If it tells you there's nothing there, try D:\Sierra\Arcanum . Now then, let's carry on with these unnecessary steps, shall we? See the little file called "Arcanum.exe" that has a gear symbol? Right click on that, and select properties. Switch to the "Compatibility" tab. Select "Run this program in compatability mode." Select "Windows XP SP2" And, while we're at it? Make sure that "run in 640x480 resolution" is checked, as well as "Run this program as administrator." If the box is greyed out, don't worry about it. It means that it already is. If this fails to solve your problem, I recommend the step involving the keyboard and your face a few more times, and then, once your vision is suitably blurry due to blood, post here, crying about the blood in your eyes, and the fact that Arcanum won't run.

Please note: I did absolutely nothing to my install of Arcanum. It's a plain-Jane vanilla Arcanum. In case you think that, somehow, it's a difference in machine, below is what I installed it on. Also, if you read through this guide, and go "I don't know how to do this step" please find a friend/family member/someone you can sleep with that is technologically inclined, and get them to read through this and do it. I intend to update this as solutions are sorted out. Good luck, godspeed, and I'll kill the next person to make a thread about Vista.
Something else of interest: I didn't do jack shit to make it run on my machine. I just installed it. This is for those whom somehow fail at that act.

Windows 10: Please follow this link to a video on how to configure it for W10, running on the assumption you downloaded it from GOG (setup via disk would probably be the same, just with having to download the UAP).

User Access Controls
Thoughtful Disclaimer: Microsoft doesn't think it's wise to turn off UAC

Since somebody asked, I thought I'd throw in a guide on how to remove UAC. It's rather simple. Follow these steps:
1. hold down the windows key and press 'r'
2. type 'msconfig' and press enter
3. select the 'tools' tab
4. scroll down until you find 'disable uac'
5. Here's the confusing part: with 'disable uac highlighted, press the 'launch' button
6. reboot

WidowPC Sting 915
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.6GHz
2Gb of Ram
Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit
Dual 250Gb WD HD

Since this is disabled on my machine, I'll tell you all how to do it: User Access Controls nerfing: When you're sitting at the desktop, press the "Ctrl" key and the "R" key. UAC will come up, and scream at you, but ignore it, and carry on. Type into the box that appear "Msconfig" Select the "tools" tab. Scroll down until you see "Disable UAC" Here's the confusing part. You want to LAUNCH Disable UAC. Having done this, you must now reboot your machine. When you log-in after the restart, it will ask you if you want to open "msconfig again." The wording is odd, but you want to select "Do not show this prompt or launch Msconfig."

 

It helps to turn off the Vista security system, too, especially since compatibility does notwork for all old games (though it did for Arcanum, gratefully). Go try to play the original Myst, you will see I am correct.

The security system (UAC, I think it's called, but I've forsook it for so long I forget) is bloody annoying at every degree. I finally deactivated it permanently when I went to play the Witcher, haven't had any troubles since.

Though, it's so much less secure.

 

That is true. I apologize for forgetting that: I do've UAC turned off. If you want to know how to do it, I'm updating the guide to include it.

 

Here's a bump to say I finally added the UAC guide.

 

Good show sir. This fixed my problems quite well.

 

Thank you, and a bump to say that I added the "UAC Warning"

 

I had lots of problems with vista and Arcanum but the following options are working best on my Laptop.

 

Here's a screenshot of the same thing, in english. Also, I installed Arcanum, and it booted up and started quite fine. I have yet to play a character, as I realized I had yet to patch it. Here's the screenshot! An update will come post-patching:

 

If navigating your inventory or the character screen proves laggy and eventually results in a lockup or crash of Arcanum, add the -doublebuffer parameter to the properties of your Arcanum shortcut.

Originally posted here.

 

Arcanum starts up fine for me, but the inventory etc. are laggy. I've tried the -doublebuffer thing, which resulted in sheer horror, with the pointer leaving a trail of pointers and so forth. I've toyed with the compatibility settings, and have even tried setting the cpu affinity to only one core, all in vain. My Vista is home premium and is 32-bit.

In short: Help?

 

My apologies, I'm not much of an authority on the matter. As I find solutions to issues that I think might help others, I share them. Beyond that, I can only suggest that you double-check your method against what has been posted here at The House, investigate solutions at other sources such as RPG codex, or wait for somebody more competent than I to respond.

I had installed the officail patch, Drog's UAP, and the high-res patch on Vista Premium 64 when I experienced my issue.

 

So, I imagine you're all long-gone, and what-not, but that doesn't mean I give two shits. The fact of the matter is, when I went to play Arcanum last night, the game lagged like crazy on a machine vastly more powerful than is required to run it. I will be delving into it, and seeing if I can sort out some kind of fix for it that, with any luck, will prove consistant to all of you running vista. Then I think I'll install it on my W7 machine I'm using, and see how it runs here. Gotta keep it running for the next generation, I suppose.

 

When I tried running it at the W7 Public Beta, the map was laggy (means when you move the screen, it refreshes slowly), but everything else worked fine. Just dropping this as info.

 

Thank you! I am by no means an expert at this, so any help from others I can get is superb.

 

Hiya, I'm a tiny bit new to the game. A friend of mine raved about it and I thought I'd try it out after looking at it, seems really interesting. Unfortunately, I've had a few problems with it, and after searching for a little while I haven't found any answers. (I apologize if I missed a thread that answers these problems, though I did find one that mentioned a problem I had. No fix was to be found in it however.)

The first problem I had was during installation. Two .dat files were supposedly missing. I continued with the installation, and then copied them from the disc to their respective folders. (they were arcanum3.dat and vormantown.dat) Initially the game didn't run, but after a friend told me I shouldn't put it in the default install folder, and instead into Program Files(x86), the game ran. I patched it with both the .74 official patch and the unofficial patch. The game continued to run, and I was able to play and die very quickly. One thing I noticed, though, was the options menu, while I could scroll to the different options, had absolutely no text telling me what each option was for.

Time lapse as I played Infamous and worked for a while...

I try playing again, this time installing the high-resolution patch, making it so my 1920 x 1200 monitor was running the game nicely. Now when I try to go to options the game crashes, and also the screen scrolled slowly. (I fixed the latter with scrolldist:0) I enabled the debug option in command line, but unfortunately no log of the actual crash was being kept after I inspected it. (To my knowledge that is) I was however able to catch the error in Visual Studio.

Code:

004D4D05  mov         dword ptr ds:[00602888h],eax 
004D4D0A  mov         eax,edx 
004D4D0C  ret              
004D4D0D  nop              
004D4D0E  nop              
004D4D0F  nop              
004D4D10  mov         eax,dword ptr [esp+4] 
004D4D14  mov         ecx,dword ptr [esp+8] 
004D4D18  mov         eax,dword ptr [eax] 
004D4D1A  mov         ecx,dword ptr [ecx]    <--- error here according to Visual Studio

I tried restarting the computer and I was able to get to the options menu without it crashing, however the text was still missing. After opening firefox and browsing this forum for a bit I tried again after running some compatibility mode stuff (Windows XP SP2), and then mucking with options a bit. All times it crashed when I tried to open options, even after I restored it to its original settings (no compatibility mode, nothing special).

Anyway, if you could help me at all I'd really appreciate it.

My system is as follows:

Windows Vista 64-Bit Business
Video: nVidia Geforce 9600GT
Monitor: Samsung SyncMaster 2093HM (1920 x 1200 60 Hz)
RAM: 6 GB of 800Mhz DDR2 RAM with modifications to latency times
Processor: AMD Phenom 9500 2.21Ghz Quad-Core
Motherboard: Honestly I can't remember any more than the fact it's an ASUS nForce board from about a year or two ago.
Sound: Onboard, vista usually hates it anyway and only detects it as 2 instead of 7.1...a shame since I have 5.1 speakers. I sometimes use a workaround with SRS Audio Sandbox...normally it would use the C-Media CM6501 Like Sound Device

My installation:
Arcanum patch to latest official and unofficial patch (i think latest unofficial at least)
Latest Hi-Res patch
Hi-Quality Special Sound Effects Patch

 

To everyone having problems with running the game on Vista or Windows 7: have you tried -no3d and/or -doublebuffer?

Hey... They changed the options screen labels in the official patch, and the unofficial patch does NOT include all the content from the official patch, so if you don't have the official patch, then the file with the labels would be missing as well, thus no labels.

I really should release the next version of the UAP (which checks your game version and several other things during the installation) ASAP to discourage dyslexic idiots.

Uninstall the game, delete everything in the folder (you may keep the saves though), reinstall it, install the 1.0.7.4 patch (check the path, it does NOT auto-detect your Arcanum folder), then the latest UAP, and then finally the high resolution patch.

 

Ah, see I had actually meant I wasn't sure that I had the newest version of the UAP, though after finding the release date of it I noticed that I did. However I did what you said, and you were right. I was an idiot when I installed the patches initially. Everything works fine now, -no3d and -doublebuffer make the game work great.

Thanks.

 

Hey everyone,

Just broke Arcanum out for the first time in years but despite all my best efforts it won’t install. System specs are well above and beyond what Arcanum needs, I am using Vista 64bit sp 1. I tried going through a pile of threads on this forum for a similar error code but didn’t see one, and google searching it brings back stuff about installing .net and Microsoft office but nothing on Arcanum.


First, setup kept failing when it got to the insert disc 2: play disc portion because it couldn't copy arcanum1.dat. It also wouldn't let me manually copy it from the cd to my hard drive (I've never had this happen before, and the cd isn't scratched). So I dug up my old laptop that still had Arcanum installed (from the same cd set), copied arcanum1.dat from the install directory to a thumb drive and then over to my desktop.

Setup now fails by popping up a window that says "Internal Error: 2349" and only has an OK button that then terminates the setup. Also, if relevant, the install progress bar of the setup window fills all the way up and the time remaining counts down to zero, and then all of the sudden it empties completely, time remaining stays at zero, and it sits there for a couple of minutes before giving me the error.

I did set it to compatibility mode with xp sp2, 640 x 480, disable desktop composition, disable scaling, and UAC is turned off. I then tried copying all of cd2 (along with the file I copied from my laptop) to the install directory but received the same internal error when I tried to run setup again.


Is there some way I can manually install Arcanum without the setup program or is there a setting somewhere I’m missing? Is there some way to copy the entire program from my laptop (which really doesn’t work anymore) to my desktop and force it to work?

Thanks, I’m really looking forward to getting to play again.

-I posted this as its own thread a moment ago but thought it should be here instead and deleted the thread