Older Game titles wont run

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Allan.T

PCHF Member
Jun 17, 2017
132
19
35
U.K, North West.
So, whilst waiting for my new PSU to arrive, I bought some older titles to occupy me whilst I wait, I thought a simple change of compatibility mode would work to play them, however, I fear it's not that simple. The titles are command and conquer Red Alert 2 (also have expansion Yuri's revenge), and Warcraft III (Also with expansion frozen throne). yet neither of them are playing ball with me.

We'll start with warcraft III as this one seems to be the more "well-behaved" title. I put it in the CD drive, installed it, installed the expansion pack afterwards. I went to play the game, but before the programme fully starts, I get a pop up saying :
Warcraft III was unable to initialize DirectX. Please ensures you have DirectX 8.1 or newer installed and that your display drivers are current. DirectX may little on your Warcraft III install CD under Options.

So naturally, I did as it asked, I loaded the installer screen, went to options installed the DirectX 8.1 (which was done in a nano second as I'm running DX12). I tried launching the game again but get the same error message. I then did a bit of googling, but I couldn't find much relating to the Windows 10 side of things. Regardless I tried some "simple" fixes, like simply adding -OpenGL at the end of the open location (which it wouldn't let me change), re-installing and even removing the expansion to see if it ran "solo".

All of these have had no effect, and I'm lost on what to do, google keeps telling me the same things over and over.


Now the real problem child, Command and Conquer RA2. I put the disc in, I get the install screen, I click install and I'm left there twiddling my thumbs with no further action coming from RA2. I've changed compatibility mode, using all available windows. I even downloaded some CC RA2 compatibility fixes, and they all yielded no results, so I uninstalled them. tried running as admin, tried re-installing and googled and tried numerous fixes, all of which yielded nada results.

So anyone know how to help? RA2 is a bit of a problem child if I can just get warcraft III working for now, I'll be a happy bunny it's only for a couple of days.
 
MY apologies, I thought I had replied. My minds been gone recently.

Hi Allan. Try downloading the DirectX End User Runtime Package, extract the zipped folder and run the setup file to install the DirectX components. Then reboot the computer and see if the games launch properly.

What Operating System is your computer running?

Already tried using this, and it still had no avail, it just refuses to get past the install screen. I'm running Windows 7 now, I've heard that there are more fixes for this platform so I'll have another root around, I've been getting a little addicted to a new game at the moment, so I'll try and sort RA2 out tomorrow sometime.
 
I've got them working... sort of..

Warcraft III is fine (y)

RA2 is working now, but I'm getting ALOT of lag? I've only played it once, had a mad few days, and trying to stream inbetween, its taken up all my time to research further I'm afraid :(
 
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