GK II Beast Within CD Won't Read Win ME
 

Hi,

I recently aquired an older pc with Windows ME and have been using it to play some of my older adventures. When I tried to install GK II, the installer doesn't launch. The cd drive is set to autorun. When I went into My Computer to manually launch setup.exe, it says that there are no items to show in the folder. However, it does show that a disc is present, and that 565mb have been used, with 0mb free. I have tested the disc on a friend's pc, and it works fine. I have also run a few other of my older games (i.e. broken sword, grim fandango, last express, etc), all without issue. If anyone knows how to get the computer to display the files that are on the disc so that I can run it, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks.

Rich

Ahoy there - welcome on board :)

This might sound stupid but... can your drive read pressed DVDs at all?
I read between your lines that you have a 1 disc version - this is only possible if it is an unofficial DVD conversion not a CD. It's simply impossible to stuff 6 CDs without serious ripping on one CD...

I suggest you checking out these pages (XP patches mainly but might help with ME, too):

http://www.gabrielknight2k.tk
http://home.earthlink.net/~infernofi...GKII_Setup.htm

Welcome to the forum. :)

Sounds like a bad disk. Can you try it on another machine? If it can't be read on the other machine, either, then you know there's a problem with the disk.

It's not a bad disk. I've tried it on a friend's pc, and it worked fine. And I have the official 6 cd version, and I get the same result no matter what disk I insert. It's not that the pc isn't reading the discs at all; it shows that there is a disk in the drive, and that the correct number of mb's are being used. It just won't display the individual files, so I can't manually launch the installer, and when I use "run" in the file menu to run setup.exe, it says that the file is not found. That's the most frustrating part. The pc is reading the disk and displaying its capacity as if the files were there, it just won't show them.

Hmm. That's definitely weird.

There should also be a DOS version on the same disks (it's installed using install.exe). This is a little backwards, but could you try rebooting in DOS (I think WinME allows you to do this?) and installing the DOS version from a DOS prompt, rather than within Windows?

Emily,

WinME won't allow you to boot to DOS unless you hack the system files. So let us have Cwoet try it with a DOS7 boot disk first.;)
I have a specialized one here with all "Swiss Army Knife" utils one might need:

http://loogoos.hu/php/download.php?view.438

Cwoet,

if CDs are recognized under DOS, it proves that something is wrong with the installed WinME's (Microsoft) drivers, as the file system of GK II CDs are neither UDF nor hybrid (which COULD be a reason for lack of recognition).

Ah, okay. I don't have much experience with ME but I figured it would let you, since win98 does.

Cwoet, one other question for you - your friend's machine that you tried it on, was that machine also running ME? Some games have very strange problems with ME, and although I haven't heard of this one before, I'm wondering if the operating system could be the problem.

EDIT: I just reread your first post... do you also have a newer machine with XP on it? If so, you should just play GK2 on that. It runs fine.

Emily, you are not in shape... you don't usually give up so easily! :devil:

An older comp dedicated to classic games is a very good idea, WinME is definitely NOT, WIN98SE is the pinnacle of the line and one should stuck to that BUT GK2 should run well on ME, too.

Cwoet,
if you have no luck and it comes to a reinstall, put up Win98SE instead. It is more compatible with older, problematic DOS games.

I'm always looking for the easiest possible solution. ;)