Recently i tried to play this game on Windows XP but with no success then i tried the no cd patch and it worked, but the downside to this is there is no music on the game.

Would it be possible for someone to make a fix for the exe so it will play with the cd? maybe with a hex edit.

When you start the game without the no cd patch, the game tries to boot up the cd then screen goes black and goes back to the desktop.
Maybe there is a problem authenticating the cd or something else.

Thanks
Rich

Hi,

I have the same problem. just recently bought the game "War of the Worlds" on ebay. I'm still trying to find a no-cd patch for it though. Where can I get a copy of that ?

I did follow a link from the manual and managed to leave a question on the Atari website asking of they had any patches for the game.

Steve

Hi,

Just in case you're still interested I managed to sort out my problem. I managed to find the patch I was looking for and downloaded it.
The downloaded file is called WOW.exe and is about twice the size of the one on the War Of The Worlds CD.
The trick is that if you rename new WOW.exe WOWStart.exe and move it into your War Of The Worlds program directory the game runs perfectly, including the music.

Steve

sorry for the long wait to reply i never thought anyone would answer
but i did try that and the cd audio still doesn't play even if you go to the in game cd player at the menu screen.
it says no cd inserted. also when you are playing there is no cd audio.
the patch i got was probably designed for illegal copies to play without the cd's
maybe you thought the menu screen was cd audio but thats built into the game sfx.
if not could you send this patch to me at rjmacarthur@msn.com

p.s i also bought mine of ebay are you fan of war of the worlds?

No problem. I'll email you the copy of the patch I found. I've been playing the game now for the past couple of weeks with no problems. The in-game CD player doesn't make any sounds, but if I want to play the audio files on the disc I just run with Windows Media Player. In-game music plays just fine though.

One important thing is that if you have multiple CD players in your system you have to install and run the game from the player with the lowest drive letter. If you're not then you have to re-install and start again.

Fan of War of the Worlds ? Sort of - I've been reading Wells, Verne, Wyndham, Azimov and Clarke since I was about 11 (a long time ago now).

woah after searching the net for hours and getting stressed at the thought of not being able to play this game again someone finds the patch required

I would appreciate it greatly if you could email me a copy of the file i need to get this game working in winxp to hinch@furious-angels.com

thanks alot

I've also been looking around for a patch to make WoW run on XP. Don't suppose any of you guys would mind sending me the link to this patch or send it to me via e-mail?

thebritt2001@hotmail.com

It'd be much appreciated!

I'm a massive fan of Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds, always have been since I was a nipper, and I'm gutted I can't run the game on my laptop (which runs XP)

Could someone mail me htis patch? That'd be fantastic if you could!

My e-mail is mspaull@europe.ea.com

My thanks in advance!

Same here lol! If someone could sling me a patch thatd be great.

seventhsun_2k@hotmail.com - if you could have the subject line obviously to do with the game thatd be great.

Hi

I've been dying to play this game again, but it won't run on xp!
Can anyone e-mail me the no cd patch? cymru_00-9@tiscali.co.uk

Thx

You can find the WOW.exe file on this website http://spacetarget.com/games/pc_war_of_the_worlds.shtml

I cant believe how many other people still want to play this game! Well actually i can cause its great! Did a quick search on the net in case someone had written or found a patch for XP, never really believed i'd find one! Cheers guys! If this isn't the patch that the music works for, can someone post a link to that too though?

I'm still having problems getting War of the Worlds to run.

I've downloaded the patch and the game now *tries* to start at least, but it's bombing out with three alert boxes saying;

DDERR_NOCOOPERATIVELEVELSET

then,

Create surface Failed

and finally,

LoadShadesTables: Invalid colour depth

The readme mentions a "DDERR - Out of Memory. Unable to create surfaces." problem and suggests closing all other applications to create more space in memory, but I've tried that (and I have 1GB of memory) with no joy.

I also tried running it on my old Win98 PC (without the patch, obviously) but I get the same problem.

Annoyingly, I played the game before (a couple of years ago) on my girlfriends crappy old laptop without any problems! Typical!

Anyone out there encountered this and solved it?

Thanks a lot.

After playing around with this, the solution is so simple.

Firstly, download patch from above website (posted eariler).

Copy ***** to installed folder like specified.

Right click on ***** file, click on the compatibility tab, tick the box and select Windows 98/ME mode.

Load the game and you have access to all resolutions with no errors (apart from the usual game bugs)!

Hope this helps!

Chris.

Hi

I too have managed to get hold of a copy of this reputedly wonderful game, and I too cannot get it to work on Windows XP!

I have tried everything mentioned here at least twice, but am still stuck on either nothing happening at all or the three error messages of doom (DDERR_NOCOOPERATIVELEVELSET, Create surface Failed, LoadShadeTables: Invalid colour depth)

Now I am getting quite annoyed with it! Any suggestions? An idiots step by step guide on exactly what to do would be appreciated

It seems there are so many different ways of *****ing/making it work, I'm not exactly sure which is the one I need to use.

I am running Win2K on a PIII 600Mhz.
Using the patched version of wow.exe (I didn't need to rename it to wowstart.exe as someone previously suggested) I could only run at 640x480 (but at least it ran). I found a fix so that I can run at 1024x768.
This involves editing the registry. In the following section :

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Rage\Jeff Wayne's 'The War Of The Worlds'\1.00.000\Screen

I changed the 'Size' and 'Support screen size' from 640,480 to 1024,768.

This seems to work, although the lower res intro and menu screens look a little odd stuck up in the top left corner (i.e. the screen resolution is set to 1024x768 but these windows are designed at 640x480 so other than looking a bit small they are exactly the same as the old ones).

I am probably going to have a bit of a fiddle to see if I can get the screen to change in the way it should do (i.e. using the settings in the game without getting the DirectDraw errors), but at present I am happy running like this as I don't really want to chenge resolution once I am happy with the setting (I am probably going to try the 1280x1024 next as this is my current working resolution).

John.

hi i tried to download the patch from the link above but it apears that they are no longer hosting the file, does anyone know of anuther site with it or could you sent it to seigedelarouge@btinternet.com?

thanks in advance.

Amazing! Im so happy right now. Downloaded the patch and the game works. I remember being so excited when this game came out and the fact that on the final level it continually crashed and I never completed the game did irk somewhat. But now I have the chance to get to the Martian base once again and no doubt indulge in some crappy Vox32 animation

Im also going to try for the ridiculous resolution registry change; Im just happy there are people out there who appreciate the same flawed genius that this game was. And that there are people with more knowledge on how to get old crappy but brilliant games to work. Superb.

Could someone email me the patch too, please? to jrs@nwn.de
I tried the link, but it didn't work. Just kept getting the unauthorized message, even without dl-managers and cookies on.
Thanks already!
Btw, also got it on ebay. ^_^

could someone please email me the patch to gombar2003@yahoo.co.uk

Could somebody please send me a copy of the patch to m.sharp@boltblue.com as I have a frustrated teenager pestering me to use the game on our new XP machine

Thank you

I have found the fix. It can be found through a google search for "wow.exe2 and "xp" or at one of two sites (one given in an earlier reply to this topic)

1)http;//spacetarget.com/games/pc_war_of_the_worlds.shtml
2)http://m1011.gamecopyworld.com/gcw/games/pc_war_of_the_worlds.html

surprise, surprise they are the same site

you do not need to follow all the instructions

simply download the zip file containing the patch to your desk top

double clicking on the zip file will run the game, but you can copy it to the folder containing the original exe and overwrite it

if you want autoplay to work rename the exe to WOWStart.exe

you may need to run the game in Windows 98/Me compatibility mode

the screen and game music work fine but if you want to listen to the cd tracks you can only do it through Windows Media Player not from the game menu

PS You may want to back up the original WOW.exe and WOWStart.exe before you start!!!!

I don't suppose anyone has had any success in getting the cd audio to work? The game seems very dull without the music when browsing the map and going into battles.
Using something like Winamp or Windows Media Player is not very useful either as the cd tracks are timed events.

Rich

Edit: When searching through the registry to try and find a way to get the cd audio to work i found a hidden network mode.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Rage\Jeff Wayne's 'The War Of The Worlds'\1.00.000\ "Enable Network Mode" change the value data to 1 and next time you start up you will be given various methods of Multiplay.
[Edited by whitesnake on 2004-12-16 07:59:38]

Hello,

I've just joined and I'm interested in seeing the problems people have had in getting the game to work on XP and 2000.

I've been writing some software to resolve a lot of the usual problems that all players of Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds PC Game experience. I have experienced them too and I got so fed up I wrote a comprehensive tool to fix them.

I've finally finished it, I have had it play tested by a few die-hards and it works. It's called the WOTW companion.

I've put a copy of it on ebay, item number 8155667585, here is the link if you are interested.

http://my.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?MyeBay&LogUID=undertonesdeanie&CurrentPage=MyeBaySelling&ssPageName=STRK:ME:LNLK

A full description is on the item but by the time you read this the auction may have gone, don't worry, from time to time I'll submit another.

I've also created a web page that will describe the software in some greater detail. Put this link in your browser please.

http://www.aqqc35.dsl.pipex.com/WOTW/wotwmainscreen.htm

The software does a lot! Have a look and contact me for details.

I'm also interested in buying any copies of the game CDs that you may have lying about. I have a few on my Christmas list who are looking for a copy and I am tired of loaning out my single copy.

Merry Christmas.

Dean

Hello , it's a amazing news i can play my game AGAIN !!
This new patch from GAMECOPYWORLD works nice with the windows98 compatibility .

For the music problem , i try to make a image with Alcohol 120 , then the CD PLAYER in the game reconize there are tracks , play them but we can lesson them . I have try many things like add a folder named "human music" with the wav tracks in it , or make vox files ect ...

The thing is the game ask the cd to start ( then you don't need it if you resume a saved game ) but don't recognise the music ?


Whitesnake you have made a DRAMATIC discover , NETWORK GAME !!!!
From this place you can tweak many things , possibility the way to solve our MUSIC problem !

Coupe827 , your program looks promissing and cool even if we can tweak everything by ourself from the registery ( so much new possiblity )

This game is the best SF strategic game ever ( with the XCOM serie) . JOY !!!