That problem is related to the amount of virtual memory available in the system. Set your minimum virtual memory to 256MB.

Is there a DOS version of this game? Underdogs refers to it as DOS only. but MobyGames says Windows 3.x.

My CD only has a Windows version on it.

Thanks Snover, I will try it out!

Dosfreak: There is no Dos version of the game; the game on the Underdogs site has a wrong label.

Thanks for your replies everyone!

*Edit*: Well, I tried it out, but the game still gets stuck.... 😵

Maybe I should change the maximum amount of virtual memory also to 256 mb to run the game, but that will cause some serious memory issues with some of my other software. 😖

I think I will try it out anyway, though..... 😢

All right, I also changed the maximum virtual memory to 256, but it didn't seem to work; I got the blue screen of death again while trying to play the game. 😵 I have no clue, what's causing the problem.

I searched the net for a windows (3.11 or 95) emulator for windows in the hope that could solve my problem, but I don't think there are any. At the moment I don't have enough hardrive space to change my system into a dual boot system either. I guess, I will have to play some other games first and get back to Woodruff when my system is a bit more up to date.

I don't know if ME is giving trouble with this, or not. ME is not a very good OS for gaming. You could try "downgrading" your OS to Win 98 SE.

collector wrote:

I don't know if ME is giving trouble with this, or not. ME is not a very good OS for gaming. You could try "downgrading" your OS to Win 98 SE.

A more accurate statement would have been that 'Windows Me is just a crappy OS with more problems than solutions" 😀 How Microsoft could think that grafting Windows 2000's WDM and other bits into Windows 98 was a great plan god only knows 😀

Downgrade isn't really the best plan. Although you'll encounter some compatability issues wrt games, upgrading your PC to Windows XP Home Edition (it's the cheapest version) you'll never look back as far as stability goes.

Reckless wrote:

Downgrade isn't really the best plan. Although you'll encounter some compatability issues wrt games, upgrading your PC to Windows XP Home Edition (it's the cheapest version) you'll never look back as far as stability goes.

Well, WXP is certainly more stable, but as far as running old games W98SE is by far the best alternative (and it still runs the newest games). At my workplace I would certainly use only WXP, but if somebody mainly plays older games, then W98SE could be better.

Mirek

I'm not sure either if Windows Me is causing the problem or something else. I never heard anyone complain that the woodruff game got stuck. If it's a Windows Me problem it would be likely that more people would experience this problem, I guess.

I think I've just found some more info about my problem, though:

I tried to install a Woodruff patch today, but the game still doesn't run correctly. Now I get the message wloader.exe is causing errors in woodruff.exe. Does anyone know what wloader.exe is and where I can find it on my system? I couldn't find it on my system using the windows search function.

I did find this in Google and I think it's pretty disturbing:
Microsoft Windows Loader
wloader.exe
Added by a variant of the AGOBOT/GAOBOT WORM!

So I might have to post a message on the spyware warrior forums aswell. 😳

*Edit*: Well, I finally got some good news: I'm not infected.
The problem with the game is still the same though. 😖

You're assuming that there are other people who run Win Me and want to run Woodruff on it. In both cases you're looking at niche products. Me is the least used (and certainly least admired) OS Microsoft have ever released and Woodruff is a bona fida underdog 😀 So getting the two together might indeed be quite 'rare'!

Edit: Just dug out my copy of Woodruff and the Schnibble of Azimuth (UK release, shown as V1.0). I installed it (and WinG - eek!) and after setting res to 640*480 256 colours, the game plays without any problems. I run Win2K 2000 SP4. I remember me having a love-hate relationship with this game when I got it. It's *DAMN* hard but is really off the wall and I enjoyed playing it. I can't actually remember whether I'd finished it or not though 😦

Yeah your right, it's probably a rare combination. 😢

I've just tried to run Woodruff with the "Abandon Loader" and I ticked the box: 95 compatibility. It didn't work - it crashed again. 🙁

Can anyone recommend Bochs btw? I'm considering installing windows 95 on my machine with it, but I heard it's not newbie proof. 😦

NuclearTes wrote:

Can anyone recommend Bochs btw? I'm considering installing windows 95 on my machine with it, but I heard it's not newbie proof. 😦

Not me. I was never lucky with it. Though there are people with other experience.
I would recommend trying MS Virtual PC or VMWARE etc. (they have usually *free* trials - when I used Virtual PC quite some time ago, I think there was one month trial).
One more thing: it is still possible that your problem has nothing to do with OS, but with corrupted installation/bad version of the game etc.

Mirek

I'd have recommended Virtual PC 2004 save for the fact that it will not install/run on anything older than Windows 2000 🙁

Agreed about BOCHS - unless you like pulling teeth or are good at hiding pain then it's probably not the tool for you!

I don't think the installation is corrupt. I've tried to install it several times with exactly the same results.

Weird - I have Win95 and Win98 running on Bochs. It is a long time since I installed it, but I don't remember having any special problems....

Odd, I never had any trouble on XP, except having to change the winram= value to 0. I just tried it on my old machine that dual boots XP/Win98 SE, and in 98 it chokes on the intro. I will try experimenting more with it later on.

@Collector: Interesting, you're experiencing similiar problems in 98SE too. Maybe it's one of those microsoft security patches, but I don't know. I saw someone complain on another forum that his woodruff game didn't work anymore after installing Windos XP SP 2.

*Edit*
You know, If I can find a copy of windows 3.1, I might be able to play woodruff with dosbox.

*Edit*
Hmmm, Windows 95 is the oldest version of windows I have. 😵

I have found 3.11 in a Goodwill for a couple of bucks. I just tried Woodruff in DOSBox w/ Win3.1 and it seems to work pretty well, though I only just tried to start it.

I've got some news what's boggeling my mind: Woodruff does run without crashes on my dad's computer; it also has a ME operating system.

So it's probably an issue with the hardware and drivers. Woodruff was back in 1995 notorious for it's bad compatibility with hardware.