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Dominion Storm over Gift 3 on Windows 10: Sold Out CD Edition won't install

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First post, by Carrera

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Short (OK long) preamble:
As you can see I joined this place back in 2003.
At the time I was a system admin, building networks and running LAN parties. I started building all my PC from 1992 onwards. Apart from programming there really wasn't much I hadn't dabbled in (I was a forum mod for 3dfx's official forum and a beta tester before they went poof).

A few years later kids started appearing around the house and I literally mothballed absolutely everything and also started down a totally different career path.

When my son wanted a PC in 2020 I gave up trying to to figure it out and paid someone to build it. Maybe I am old or I have been hit in the head too much (I did some amateur go kart racing and have the record of destroying the most go karts) but I simply could not figure it out. I am completely aware that things have changed in over 20 years...

I only point this out because what I am about to ask is probably very very simple and for many here an eye-rolling "how stupid can he be?" situation so I beg for mercy...

I bought this game as a "Sold Out" edition, i.e, 2 CDs because I still am nostalgic for physical media (I have a record player, 2 cassette players, 3 VCRS [PAL and NTSC] as well as a few DVD and Blu-Ray players...).

I would prefer the games run "as intended" from the built in CD/DVD drive in the laptop but if making an ISO makes things easier I would but I have no idea how.

What I have done:
Scoured the internet for a how-to guide
Searched here and elsewhere about this game in general.

Frankly nothing seemed to fit my situation so I simply tried installing it and it brings up the error "The installation requires Windows NT4 Service Pack 3 or higher".

I am guessing it is a compatibility

My free time is severely limited so spending hours trying settings and messing around with programs that may or may not help is only mildly appealing to me. Probably because I am just old and in my mind it must be simpler than this. Recently I simply wanted to extract a few scenes from a commercial DVD that I happen to know the author/director/producer of and he insisted it was ok and that there was no copy protection on it (I was promoting his work at a classic car event) and I could NOT get ANYTHING to work... something that 20 years ago on my Athlon would have taken maybe 2-3 hours I spent days on and I just gave up...

The computer is a laptop with Windows 10 home on it. It is the "family" laptop so madding the registry so that other things break is really not an option... also a reason for me not being too excited about modding the OS...

My hope is to learn how modern OSes work with these CD-based games so I can get them to work on this laptop and make it look like I am doing work... šŸ˜€

Thanks muchly in advance!

Reply 1 of 7, by MagefromAntares

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This error is most likely caused by incorrectly detecting the Windows version to be older than the minimum required, you can right click the exe, go into the compatibility tab, tick the "Run this program in compatibility mode for" and select either "Windows 95" or "Windows 98 / Windows ME" (Based on the release date of the program) as an option then try running it again.

"A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it." - Dune

Reply 2 of 7, by eddman

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Copy the "setup" folder to the HDD, replace "setup.exe" with the one from here, and run it from there.

Reply 3 of 7, by Carrera

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Thanks for the feedback... I will give them both a try... I presume in order to set compatibility I have to copy to the hard drive as well....?

Reply 4 of 7, by MagefromAntares

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Carrera wrote on 2026-05-08, 12:27:

Thanks for the feedback... I will give them both a try... I presume in order to set compatibility I have to copy to the hard drive as well....?

Actually on Windows 10 I'm not sure, my Windows 10 machine doesn't have a CD drive, my old rigs have šŸ˜

"A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it." - Dune

Reply 5 of 7, by Carrera

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MagefromAntares wrote on 2026-05-08, 12:36:

Actually on Windows 10 I'm not sure, my Windows 10 machine doesn't have a CD drive, my old rigs have šŸ˜

Neither does my son's computer.. šŸ˜‰

Reply 6 of 7, by A Black Falcon

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I also wanted to install this game from the original CDs on Windows 10, and Compatibility Mode does nothing; set it to Win95 mode or Win98 mode or what have you and it still gives that same Windows NT version error message and the installer quits.

However, the InstallShield replacer eddman linked worked. After copying the setup folder to my hard drive and replacing the original Setup file with the updated more compatible one, the install went through and worked fine. I know errors like this are common in Win9x game installers but hadn't actually done something like this before I don't think, so thanks for the help, I wasn't sure whether there was an installer fix that would work, and there is!

Once installed, you need to use compatibility settings to get the game to boot. It only seems to work in Windows XP SP3 compatibility mode and with 8-bit color and all the other checkboxes selected other than the bottom one, 'register this program for restart', which isn't needed.

However, there are two problems. First, while I found the 1.2 patch installer on Patches-Scrolls.de, after installing it the game once run is still saying 1.00 on the main menu, so probably the patch installer doesn't work either. Unsurprising. I'm sure that a prepatched install is required. I know they are available for download online, or I'm sure my old WinME computer would be able to create one but it'd be nice if I could do it on a modern PC as well (without a VM). Ah well. I got a 1.2 install download from the internet and that solved that issue.

The other problem isn't so easy to solve. Second, none of the movies work ingame. The logo movies don't play either. The video files are on the two CDs in Cine folders, and they are all .smk Smacker videos. You can watch them just fine outside of the game with a compatible video player installed on your computer, but ingame nothing happens, it skips them. That's kind of annoying unless it's a fixable issue (can the Smacker files be updated like the installer?). Looking around the internet I see some old mentions that the game can only recognize a disc drive D for both movies and music, but this can't be entirely correct -- the music works, and my disc drive with the CD in it is drive M. Only the movies don't work. No cinematics appear in the Cinematics (to rewatch movies) option on the main menu either.

You can also copy the Cine folders to the game folder of course but this doesn't make them play ingame.

Oh, and the game does have a CD check, it needs the first disc in the drive to play. It won't boot with the second one.

Last edited by A Black Falcon on 2026-08-14, 03:22. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 7 of 7, by Carrera

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A Black Falcon wrote on 2026-08-13, 04:44:

I also wanted to install this game from the original CDs on Windows 10, and Compatibility Mode does nothing; set it to Win95 mode or Win98 mode or what have you and it still gives that same Windows NT version error message and the installer quits.
.... snip
Oh, and the game does have a CD check, it needs the first disc in the drive to play. It won't boot with the second one.

Thanks!
I still have not had time to get to this but having this input should help!

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