FSP on Vista?

[CWatson]

Love FSP on my home pc with XP. Would love to put it on my laptop which is Vista. Is there a idiots guide on how to get it to work on Vista?

Thanks
CW

[William Miller]

Hello,

You will need to install DirectX 9.0c for it to work (you can find that at Microsofts download site) as it will not work under DirectX 10. This does not affect your DirectX 10 installation, it actually only installs a couple of files needed for games that cannot run under DX10.

Other than that any issues you may have depends upon your hardware and software/drivers. For example I have ran FSP on two of my Vista machines and had no issues at all on one machine, but one the other had to revert to a older video driver for it to work properly.

[CWatson]

Thanks,

I am however getting a error saying progam will not run because it is missing d3drm.dii .

Thanks,
CW

[William Miller]

CW,

Ahh yes...you will still need that older DLL because Fighting Steel was designed using the RM ("retained mode") version of Direct3D. You will either need to copy that file from a Windows XP installation or download it (only from a place you trust!), and then copy the file into your "c:\Windows\System32" folder. That should then allow FSP to work.

[CWatson]

Close, oh so close.

The game loads and starts up fine. You can pick a scenario and country you command and veiw the divisions and ships in them but once you start the scenario you can see your ships but the previous screen is superimposed over it. Ant ideas?


Thanks,
CW

[William Miller]

CW,

First look over the FSP "FAQ/Tech Support" thread and try out the suggestions there (playing in Windows 98 compatibility mode, shutting down background programs, etc).

If none of that helps let me know the following info about your system:

1) Operating system version (such as "Vista Home Basic SP1", etc)
2) Video card brand/model and amount of video RAM
3) Video driver version number (such as "GeForce Release 181.20")

Most issues I have seen with modern machines running FS/FSP are related to graphics sub-system issues (i.e. video hardware or drivers) -- sometimes these can be worked around or solved, sometimes not. Bear in mind that we do not officially support FS/FSP anymore as the game design is to the point where it is not supported by many new hardware/drivers, and there is little we can do about that since we have not worked on the FSP code for a couple of years now.

[CWatson]

CW,

First look over the FSP "FAQ/Tech Support" thread and try out the suggestions there (playing in Windows 98 compatibility mode, shutting down background programs, etc).

If none of that helps let me know the following info about your system:

1) Operating system version (such as "Vista Home Basic SP1", etc)
2) Video card brand/model and amount of video RAM
3) Video driver version number (such as "GeForce Release 181.20")

Most issues I have seen with modern machines running FS/FSP are related to graphics sub-system issues (i.e. video hardware or drivers) -- sometimes these can be worked around or solved, sometimes not. Bear in mind that we do not officially support FS/FSP anymore as the game design is to the point where it is not supported by many new hardware/drivers, and there is little we can do about that since we have not worked on the FSP code for a couple of years now.

Vista Home Premium Service Pack 1.
Nvidia Geforce 7oooM/nforce 610M
Driver 7.15.11.5671
Total graphics 799mb
Video 64mb

I also reinstalled the game and got a dao35dll error while installing the scenario editor.

Thanks again,
CW

[William Miller]

CW,

On the scenario editor install error message...did that kill the install or were you able to continue?

[CWatson]

It installed .


Thanks,
CW


CW,

On the scenario editor install error message...did that kill the install or were you able to continue?

[William Miller]

CW,

I have seen a number of reports that FS/FSP has issues with the 7x and 8x Nvidia card series, specifically with certain driver versions. At this point all I can suggest is that you try the previous 2-3 older drivers to see if they allow fucntion any better than the driver release you currently have.

I do note that the driver you are using is a proprietary (HP or Compaq?) OEM-type driver instead of an Nvidia reference driver -- that may or may not make any difference, and I have no idea if you can run a reference driver or not since branded machines sometimes require the OEM drivers, sometimes they do not.

[fred8615]

As an FYI, FSP does play fine with the Windows 7 RC1. I did have to download and install the d3drm.dll.