Try the VESAFIX utility from this thread.

No luck with the VESAFIX utility--I get the same single frame of the video compressed at the top of the screen.

You will have to build a few other machines anyway 😀

Especially for Wing Commander 1 and 2.

As simple as the solution sounds, just play Wing Commander 3 with a different video card.

I have a game PC with the following configuration:

Soyo SY-7VBA133U Motherboard
Intel 933 MHZ Pentium III CPU
3dfx Voodoo5 5500 AGP Graphics Adapter (OEM)
ATI-TV WONDER PCI Card
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! Platinum (SB4760)
D-Link Fast Ethernet 10/100 Mbps Network Adapter DFE-530TX+
256 MB 133 MHz SDRAM

The Voodoo5 is BIOS Version 1.06 and is using the Version 1.04.00 Reference Drivers in all three of the Win98 SE partitions on the hard drive. When I install the Sound Blaster Live!, I install the drivers on the CD-ROM and then apply the sblw9xup.exe update from Creative Labs.

When I tried to run the WCIII Demo in Win98 SE in a partition using DirectX 7.0a, I get the dreaded Exception 0 error regardless of whether I use the -V command line switch or not. I then right-clicked the executable icon and created a (DOS) PIF. I then accessed the PIF's Properties, clicked the Program tab, and clicked Advanced. I then clicked the "MS-DOS Mode" box and left the default "Use current MS-DOS configuration" selected. After clicking OK to close the dialog box and again clicking OK to close the PIF Properties, I attempted to run the program with and without the -V command line switch.

With the -V switch, the video starts and plays full-screen to completion on my Samsung 18.5 inch LCD display and then repeats until I hit the ESC key at which point I am in the cockpit. If I execute the demo without the -V switch, the video plays, but it only occupies the upper 40% of the screen. Again, the video plays repeatedly until I press the ESC key at which point I am in the cockpit. So the video will play on a Voodoo5 under the right circumstances. I don't have any sound in the video since I haven't bothered to set up the MS-DOS configuration files since I last re-installed this particular build.

I have a document that describes my build procedure. The following installed items MIGHT have some bearing on what codecs are installed above and beyond those provided by Win98 SE itself:

CyberLink PowerDVD Version 3.0
WinDVD 2000 Version 2.6.4
Microsoft Media Player 6.4 (mpie4ful.exe) and Codec package (wmp6cdcs.exe)
Apple QuickTime 6.52
RealPlayer 10-5 Gold Version 6.0.12.1509
DivX 5.2.1

Hope this helps.

As an aside, my procedure for getting WCIV DVD to work with the Voodoo5 is documented here:

http://www.wcnews.com/chatzone/threads/wc-iv- … -win98se.17804/

I expect to have a better solution for Wing Commander 1 and 2 on faster machines soon... now that we've been able to get the source code to HCl;)

Thanks for the information, akula65! I have the same result in Windows 98 (although no exception 0 error, it works right off... I *think* that happens when it tries to run the speed test in the installer.) I guess that's good enough for me--would have been cool if there was something I could do to get it all working together properly in one piece.