Jell has been helping me in a PM get 2 XP boxes up and running. This should surfice as a final report to him and hopefully be of some help to anyone else trying to get EAW up and running.
First a bit of advice to Vista, 7, and 8 OS owners. Do not install old games to the programs file folder. These operating systems try to guard this folder from modification by all users except the administrator. I know of an instance where the desktop was the administrator, but because the program was installed within the programs file folder the virtual store was still used and this caused all kinds of cusswords to get an old game running. There is nothing wrong with installing EAW to C:/EAW.
The two systems:
#1
Self built A7N8x based box that has always been a crash prone POS until recently when I swapped out the ram chips. This was one of 2 boxes I was using when I helped with the multiskins code. If I remember correctly it was XP SP1, 512 ram and GeForce4MX at that time. It may have been Win98 but I doubt that.
XP SP3
1.8 Ghz single core AMD
1.5 Gigs Ram
on-board sound and game port
Gforce 6200 AGP8x video card.
#2
Garbage picked Dell Dimension DIM3000. I know the original owner and the original OS disks are lost so I was unable to revert to original. I scrubbed all of there info and files from the system the best I could.
I even had the oppertunity to learn that deleting burning software improperly can cause windows to not recognize any CD or DVD installed. Registry edit will fix that that issue if you learn what too look do.
XP SP2
2.8 Ghz Pentium(r) 4
512 Megs ram (8 megs used by on board Video)
PCI Sound Blaster Live (had this thing since x486 days. I wish they still overbuilt new tech), needed for game port
On-board Intel(r) 82865g graphics (New owner of box will be adding PCI graphics card at a later date).
Jelly gave me a link to 140Trial2016.exe and I was off to the races. ( Jell, I could not find a text file of where to extract ) By guessing and wisdom from reading this forum, I extracted this to both computers EAW install folder. I also learned I may need to edit the eaw.ini file that is in the same folder as DSP1040offline. I believe the eaw.ini file is properly saved when you use the main menu's game set up. If you want to edit setting that the game's readme explains, you need to be sure you are editing the version file you desire.
Box #1 had a 1.28C install on it's E: drive, but the OS on drive C: had been replaced multiple times. To be honest, I forget if I reinstalled EAW from the InfoGames CD or not, so regestry issues may still exist.
Box #2 had no games installed. I tried both the copy and paste method and using the InfoGames version installer. No version of EAW would run due to the 8 bit error of XP and later. I did not try to install EAW from the original release's disk. At some point last month I installed MS's latest version of DX9.0c so that I could play PE and other older games on the box.
Neither box would recognize the mouse in EAW's game setup menu before I installed a game controller (joystick) to the box.
Both boxes would CTD when attempting to leave the menus and enter the simulation. Box #1 displays the main menu correctly. Box #2 displays only the top half of the background, leaving the bottom half blacked out. Mouse clicks in the blacked out space are properly recognized.
I downloaded D3Dwindower-english. Again, no readable text file. I assumed it was because I had my box set up to use Japan games. Jell tried to help through PM, but I was just lost. People may want to try DXWnd rather then D3Dwindower, just an option and not a magic bullet.
End result:
Open D3Dwindower and click on the '+' button. Find the exe for the version of EAW you wish. The version you wish is either in the main EAW folder or where you extracted Jelly's test 1.40 and the DSP. You will only need to add the eaw.exe to D3Dwindower once.
After adding the files to D3Dwindower click on the triangular button that shows 'activate emulation' if you hold the mouse over it. This will 'Hook' the exes to use D3Dwindower, while D3Dwindower is active. If you close D3Dwindower it will not work. You can run EAW by clicking on the version you added and then clicking the computer icon (run program) of D3Dwindower or minimaze D3Dwindower and launching from a desktop icon or Jelly's DSP. If D3Dwindower is working properly, you will see a standard Windows header (same as any MS 'window') at the top of the screen. If you do not see the min, max, close buttons then D3Dwindower is not active.
D3Dwindower cured my half menu on box #2. My performance seemed improved on box #1. Box #2 continued to crash while attempting instant action until I set up a single mission and had a successful launch. I do not remember if it continued to crash while the choices were random, but I set the types of aircraft for each fight and box #2 worked.
As it stands now, both boxes in 128c and 140 do see the mouse after a joystick was added and seem to still see the mouse after removal of the MS SW FF steering wheel used for testing. Box #2 is not able to use a glide wrapper. Glide is offered in the games configuration, but when I try to fly instant action it crashes, where single mission tells me Glide has crashed.
Box #1 was the less painful and I assume that is because it was not a fresh install. For any first flight, I suggest a single mission where you dictate what type of aircraft will be used.
Sorry for my usual bad spelling and thanks to Jelly for pointing me in the correct direction.