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Windows 7 and Blades of Exile/Exile 2?


Eclipse

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FYI, the Exile series does not play on Windows 7 32-bit or 64-bit. (I finally broke down and got a refurbished Dell 755 w/ Win 7 on it.) DOSBOX works perfectly, but within the Win31 environment, the cursor gets a little shakey. Maybe some tweaking of the DOSBOX.conf file may improve it.

 

BTW, I have the whole thing on a thumb drive, and did not have to install anything into the Win7 environment. Just plug it in and run DOSBOX. If I had an autorun.inf on the thumb drive, then I could launch it automatically.

 

On my website I have the link to the VOGONS page that describes how to install the Win3.1 on DOSBOX. DOSBOX itself requires no installation; just download and unzip and it's ready to roll.

 

The jumpy cursor bothers me somewhat. I'm going to try the virtualbox approach. This should let me install Win98 or even XP in such a way that I won't have to dual boot.

 

Wish me luck, I'm off to crash the server.

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I thought that would be the case with Win 7 as well, which is why I installed the 32-bit version. There may be some other way to fix the problem, but right now, Exile 3, which I am mapping, does not work.

 

Here is an interesting piece, which I just found. Mayhaps I'll find an easier answer. I will post the results of my research here as soon as I can, probably tonight.

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Finally got around to testing the compatability mode on Win7 32-bit. Exile does work OK if you set compatability to WinXP, but it's better if you set Win98 mode.

 

On the choice of 32-bit vs 64-bit, I would not use 64-bit unless I had some application that was actually written for 64-bit and would benefit greatly in that mode. To date I know of only two reasons for 64-bit: CADD programs and Oracle database server. No doubt there are other 64-bit apps out there.

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Also, you're limited to 4 GB of RAM (minus whatever your hardware maps out) with Win32. Win32 does support PAE, but Microsoft apparently decided not to support large amounts of RAM on desktop versions (probably because of driver compatibility issues, maybe also because there was more money in making people upgrade to 64-bit versions).

 

(Though in all likelihood, not many people need 4+ GB of RAM.)

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Originally Posted By: Miramor
(...maybe also because there was more money in making people upgrade to 64-bit versions).

(Though in all likelihood, not many people need 4+ GB of RAM.)


If you buy a new copy of Windows 7 you actually get both the 32- and 64-bit versions included in the box, so at the very least it's not Microsoft trying to grab an extra buck.
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Double check your invoice and make sure you didn't get ripped off. On my refurb machine, I ordered it loaded with Win 7. When I got it, it had XP loaded. I had saved my online receipt, so I had the order number and all the specs. I called Tiger Direct, the folks I had bought the machine from. They directed me to the company that does the refurbs, U.S. Micro Corp. I called them, cited the order number, got the serial # of the machine. They happily sent me the disks with the valid product sticker. It does come with both 32-bit and 64-bit.

 

As to the 4gig memory limit, that is simply a function of 32-bits. One other limitation is a 2gig limit on file size. Most applications work fine within those limits. If you want to run a real database or intense graphical application such as CADD, then by all means grab for that 64-bit disk, although my preference for a database server is Sun Solaris 64-bit (unix). It is more robust, more stable, and far, far easier to keep your separate Oracle products separate so you don't get confused as to which environment variables you're using.

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Does your distro use PulseAudio? In that case, yeah, it's still broken. Wine doesn't interact too well with Pulse.

 

(Actually I don't think anything interacts too well with Pulse. It's given me nothing but trouble since it was introduced... Welcome to "Why Linux is not a major desktop OS," reason #255.)

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The Exile trilogy and the shareware version of BoE are all 16-bit programs, and will not work in 64-bit Windows. They will work in 32-bit Windows XP and Vista; I'm not totally sure about 32-bit Win7 yet, I'm not done testing. If you have 64-bit Windows and want to run any of the Exile games, you'll need to run them in a simulated 16/32-bit environment using DosBox, VirtualBox, or something similar.

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Preliminary report:

 

Exile 1 Version 1 runs natively on Windows 7 -32bit.

 

How to do it

1) I am not doing an actual install, having made a good backup from the original install. All I do is copy it over to the new box.

 

2) Right click on the exile.exe file, and create a shortcut.

 

3) Right click on the shortcut, and click properties. and make it look like this.

 

The trick is to disable the visual themes.

 

I'll finish testing this weekend and post a more detailed page on my web site.

Win7-exile-compatible.png

 

Edit: I have successfully launched all versions of all Exile games in Compatability mode win98. XP should be fine, but I figure that since they were written to 98, may as well use that mode. Web Page to follow.

 

 

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