More windows10 bullshit

Talk about anything and everything in this section

NO SPAM/ADVERTISING PLEASE IN ANY FORUM

Post Reply
User avatar
BlinkofanEye
Member
Posts: 354
Joined: February 28th, 2018, 8:06 pm
Location: WI
United States of America

More windows10 bullshit

Post by BlinkofanEye »

So I'm in the process of eBaying my higher spec used laptop. Along the way, I take out the SSD from that laptop and put it in my older one (the one I went back to playing on that has Windows 7 --- I have two bays in it) and turns out that, because they're both made in a similar model line, by HP, that my older laptop just straight up boots Windows 10 from a hard drive where W10 was installed on another (similar) laptop.

Of course, first thing I think of is, "So did my DC problems with Windows 10 come from the hardware (probably dedicated graphics card) on the newer model laptop? Or was it W10 itself?" So I install BF/DC ***MULTIPLE TIMES*** on this original laptop with the W10 drive, and every single freakin time I have the same problem. Game boots, I can join a server, I can pick a spawn point, but then immediately upon spawning my mouse and keyboard no longer work, except for the escape and tilde buttons.

I read somewhere that this might be a result of the profiles getting carried over. And oddly enough, even if I delete every single instance of BF/DC on the drive that I'm reinstalling DC/BF on, somehow the game retains my BlinkofanEye profile. So I think that may be it. I can't figure out how to get the game to forget that I'm blinkofaneye. I have no idea why I suddenly have this problem. I've tried installing outside of Program Files, but it still retains my BlinkofanEye profile. I've tried deleting the whole profiles subfolder, but still it comes back. WTF?

Spanks to anyone with suggestions.
Vote for map al_nas?
Yes (7)
Yes (8)
User avatar
Trench
Admin
Admin
Posts: 2908
Joined: May 22nd, 2012, 3:19 am
Location: Dallas / Fort Worth
Contact:
United States of America

Re: More windows10 bullshit

Post by Trench »

Two places that profile could potentially still be coming from:
  1. The Battlefield 1942 game itself has some "what if I'm not running as an administrator" support that alternatively reads and writes the profile information to the Documents folder, instead of trying to write to the "C:\Program Files" area at all. I can't remember the name of the folder in Documents, and it's never done that for me personally. But helping someone else with their problems we saw the settings were being written there.
    • Generically, for any Windows application and not just Battlefield 1942, if an application attempts to write to a protected area like "C:\Program Files", Windows will intentionally lie to the application and say "you've been able to write successfully." Just so Windows can stay compatible with old applications that made bad assumptions like this.

      But the "successfully written files" actually go to "C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files" instead of being written to "the real C:\Program Files" area. During future attempts to read from "C:\Program Files", Windows first checks whether any previous writes were redirected to VirtualStore, and uses those files instead so the application sees the data it last "successfully wrote."

      So you would want to check and clear that area too for any "C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\EA GAMES" subfolder that might have been created when BF1942.EXE was attempting to write to the Program Files area.
      User avatar
      BlinkofanEye
      Member
      Posts: 354
      Joined: February 28th, 2018, 8:06 pm
      Location: WI
      United States of America

      Re: More windows10 bullshit

      Post by BlinkofanEye »

      Thanks trench I’ll try that tonight. Last night I successfully got BF to stop the above behavior and upgraded it to no longer booting the game at all. IT HAXX
      Vote for map al_nas?
      Yes (7)
      Yes (8)
      User avatar
      BlinkofanEye
      Member
      Posts: 354
      Joined: February 28th, 2018, 8:06 pm
      Location: WI
      United States of America

      Re: More windows10 bullshit

      Post by BlinkofanEye »

      Yeah must've been one of those residual profiles in there. Works now thanks.
      Vote for map al_nas?
      Yes (7)
      Yes (8)
      User avatar
      BangBangOw<CP*SF>
      Member
      Posts: 337
      Joined: May 22nd, 2018, 7:31 pm
      United States of America

      Re: More windows10 bullshit

      Post by BangBangOw<CP*SF> »

      Yeah Windows 10 certainly is less friendly with 1942 than windows 7 was.

      I have two installs now that don’t even start lol, messed them up with modding or whatever, but I have like 10 1942 copies total on my laptop.
      User avatar
      Trench
      Admin
      Admin
      Posts: 2908
      Joined: May 22nd, 2012, 3:19 am
      Location: Dallas / Fort Worth
      Contact:
      United States of America

      Re: More windows10 bullshit

      Post by Trench »

      Same as with Windows 10, with Windows 11 the only "difficulty" I'm finding is just the DirectPlay requirement no longer being a DirectX component that Windows has available by default, as it was in older versions of Windows. Everything else about the security hurdles of Windows itself, the deprecation of the SECDRV copy protection, etc., is still the same in Windows 10 and later as it was in Windows 7.

      And the "difficulty" with the DirectPlay requirement -- which itself is actually easy to install -- is just variance in when exactly Windows will pop-up with "DirectPlay needs to be installed, click here to proceed with installing". I've seen it come up when starting the already-installed game, but at least on Windows 11 I've also seen it come up when simply installing the game.

      But the big problem is that sometimes, even though Windows is putting up the "DirectPlay needs to be installed, click here to proceed with installing" prompt, that prompt is not visible. I can prove Windows is indeed putting up the prompt under a debugger, but it's just sometimes "behind a black screen" for whatever reason. Even though performing another new installation on the same hardware and same video card driver can just as easily show the prompt successfully instead of being hidden. Just seems random or timing-related as to when there will be a problem.

      So pre-installing DirectPlay, instead of waiting for Windows to prompt for it when you're running or installing an older game that needs DirectPlay, can avoid some hassle.

      What I don't have experience with is trying to install Battlefield 1942 on a machine with "weird" or more customized display resolutions. Everything I install on supports 800x600 in addition to 1080p and 4K. So there can certainly be more hassles than I'm experiencing.

      But of course it sounds more like you have installations which were working, but have now simply become borked after the fact.
      Post Reply