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First post, by johnboy

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Not sure if this is the right place to put this, but here it goes.

Okay. I remember playing TWoT on WinXP years ago and thought it would be nice to play it again. The problem is that I have Win10 now and Microsoft hasn't supported XP for quite some time.

Anywho, I have long since disposed of TWoT so when I got the urge to play it again I had to buy the game from amazon.com (two discs in a CD case). While I knew I was going to run into some problems when I tried to play the game, my hope is that I can get such problems solved here.

What follows is a step-by-step of my efforts to get TWoT to run on my Win 10 laptop.

1. disable anti-virus
2. update video drivers (ATI video card)
3. insert disc one into CD player and run the installer.

The installer took a little bit of time to run but once it started things seemed to be going along well. I chose not to install Direct X and Quicktime since I already had updated versions of those two programs on my laptop. Once the installer finished, I removed disc one and inserted disc two to play the game.

4. Inserted disc two and double-clicked on WoT.exe to play the game.

Nothing happened. The little blue circle appeared next to the mouse pointer, but that's all.

5. right clicked on WoT.exe to try to run the game in compatibility mode.

Again, nothing happened.

I don't know what else to do. Any hints would be greatly appreciated. I really liked this game and would like to play it again as I did almost twenty years ago!

System specs:

Windows 10 64 bit
HP Pavilion Laptop
BIOS: F.13
Processor: AMD A12-9720P RADEON R7, 12 COMPUTE CORES 4C+8G (4 CPUs) ~2.7GHz
MEMORY: 12288RAM
Page File: 3220MB used, 26949MB available
DirectX Version: DirectX 12

Reply 2 of 17, by johnboy

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teleguy wrote:

According to the game's wiki page it uses Safedisc, that's probably the reason.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/08/17/w … sc-securom-drm/

Thank you for your reply, teleguy. The problem is that as I am not too terribly tech savvy, I'm hoping to get some help here on what to do to get this game running on my system.

Any suggestions are much appreciated.

Reply 5 of 17, by skitters

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Wheel of Time seems to have issues that go beyond SafeDisc.
The PCgamingwiki site has some tips for running it.
https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Wheel_of_Time

Be sure to use the v333b patch pcgamingwiki links to.
http://www.patches-scrolls.de/patch/4783/7/

PCgamingwiki also mentions a "cutscene fix" to prevent badly stuttering cut scenes.
Vogons also has a thread about the choppy QuickTime and a link to the fix
Wheel of Time - Choppy QuickTime Video Problem Fix

Reply 6 of 17, by gdjacobs

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The DMCA exemption for obsolete software protection should be resurrected. However, maybe you're good if you call it "research".

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 7 of 17, by dr_st

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gdjacobs wrote:

The DMCA exemption for obsolete software protection should be resurrected. However, maybe you're good if you call it "research".

The DMCA should be thrown into the garbage bin, and whoever initiated it should be executed. But hey, it's not my problem. 😵

https://cloakedthargoid.wordpress.com/ - Random content on hardware, software, games and toys

Reply 8 of 17, by johnboy

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Shagittarius wrote:

If its got safedisc there is nothing you can do legally to run it on Windows 10.

But I legally bought the game so what would be illegal here?

skitters wrote:
Wheel of Time seems to have issues that go beyond SafeDisc. The PCgamingwiki site has some tips for running it. https://pcgaming […]
Show full quote

Wheel of Time seems to have issues that go beyond SafeDisc.
The PCgamingwiki site has some tips for running it.
https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Wheel_of_Time

Be sure to use the v333b patch pcgamingwiki links to.
http://www.patches-scrolls.de/patch/4783/7/

PCgamingwiki also mentions a "cutscene fix" to prevent badly stuttering cut scenes.
Vogons also has a thread about the choppy QuickTime and a link to the fix
Wheel of Time - Choppy QuickTime Video Problem Fix

I'll try each of these and get back to yous guys! Thanks again for the responses!

Reply 9 of 17, by akula65

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It may also be useful to look at the original Wheel of Time website (see the Troubleshooting FAQ, for example):

https://web.archive.org/web/20000520094502/ht … loftime.com:80/

Also, since you didn't mention where you are, you might also need to get patches appropriate to your location, and there are mirrors still available:

http://www.unrealtexture.com/Unreal/Downloads … es/GamePatches/

Reply 10 of 17, by teleguy

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Shagittarius wrote:

If its got safedisc there is nothing you can do legally to run it on Windows 10.

He can legally install and sign the Safedisc driver on Windows 10 himself but then he's "not too terribly tech savvy" so that might not really be an option.

Reply 11 of 17, by scan72

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skitters wrote:

PCgamingwiki also mentions a "cutscene fix" to prevent badly stuttering cut scenes.
Vogons also has a thread about the choppy QuickTime and a link to the fix
Wheel of Time - Choppy QuickTime Video Problem Fix

Hi, not working on Windows 10... cutscenes not starting

Reply 12 of 17, by Jiri

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johnboy wrote:

Inserted disc two and double-clicked on WoT.exe to play the game. Nothing happened.

scan72 wrote:

Hi, not working on Windows 10... cutscenes not starting

I installed the game on Windows 10 without Quicktime and DirectX and put Quicktime fix into the game directory.
I run the game and played only few minutes but everything seems to be working fine including videos.
I have 2 CD version that was bundled with gaming magazine and I think it does not have any copy protection. The game offers safe mode in case of problems so it is possible to experiment with that but I suspect that culprit for this game not running is copy protection on some versions.

Reply 13 of 17, by johnboy

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Okay. I got a better computer. It's a gaming laptop. Here are the specs.

Win !0 64 bit
Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. GP63 Leopard 8RE REV:1.0
2.20 gigahertz Intel Core i7-8750H
384 kilobyte primary memory cache
1536 kilobyte secondary memory cache
9216 kilobyte tertiary memory cache
64-bit ready
Multi-core (6 total)
Hyper-threaded (12 total)
Board: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. MS-16P5 REV:1.0
Bus Clock: 100 megahertz
UEFI: American Megatrends Inc. E16P5IMS.101 02/26/2018
1234.12 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
1099.97 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space
HGST HTS721010A9E630 [Hard drive] (1000.20 GB) -- drive 1, s/n JR100XBNHA82JE, rev JB0OA3U0, SMART Status: Healthy
TOSHIBA THNSNJ256G8NY [Hard drive] (256.06 GB) -- drive 0, s/n 679S10JNTUTW, rev JYXA0101, SMART Status: Healthy
16264 Megabytes Usable Installed Memory
Intel(R) 300 Series Chipset Family SATA AHCI Controller
Intel(R) UHD Graphics 630 [Display adapter]
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 [Display adapter]
Generic PnP Monitor (15.3"vis)
Microsoft Storage Spaces Controller
Intel(R) USB 3.1 eXtensible Host Controller - 1.10 (Microsoft)
NVIDIA Virtual Audio Device (Wave Extensible) (WDM)
Realtek(R) Audio

I hope that wasn't too much info! 🤣

I got the game to run, but minimally so. No in-game movies/cutscenes and everything is exceedingly dark. Even after I slide the brightness bar all the way to the right, the game is still consistently dark--No change at all. It's almost as if the brightness adjustment isn't working.

cc: https://www.facebook.com/groups/WoTFPS/

Reply 14 of 17, by johnboy

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UPDATE: I downloaded a Quicktime fix type-of-file and put it in the game's System folder. Now the movies are playing, but the mouse isn't working at all. Also still have the darkness/brightness problems.

Strange. Apple no longer supports Quicktime for windows yet when I applied the update, the movies started working. Now my mouse doesn't work in the game at all.

cc: https://www.facebook.com/groups/WoTFPS/

Reply 16 of 17, by johnboy

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UPDATE: After fooling around with which graphics driver to use and using compatibility mode, I got the game to run! And even though the game is a bit brighter, it's not 100%. Still playable, though.

Reply 17 of 17, by johnboy

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RESOLVED: Fiddling with the in-game software renderer helped the game to be displayed properly. Upping my laptop's gamma res helped (immensely) with making the dark areas not so dark. And fiddling with the in-game res helped the game to be as close to full screen as possible.

Happy gaming, guys! And thanks for your help!