Read this topic and make sure any question you have isn't answered here before you post a new topic.

There is also an unnofficial URW FAQ available here that contains a lot of handy information. Be sure to check that out as well.

Q: When I start up the game in Windows XP, my screen goes black. What can I do?

A: The problem here is that you are, apparently, playing an old version of the game, from the DOS era. The newest version is made for Windows environment. Get with the times and download it now! ;)

If, however, you are already using a Windows version of the game, you've got a real problem there, but since it can't be considered to be a Frequently Asked Question anymore, I suggest you just post a new thread and ask about it.

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Q: There's no sound. Or at least there aren't as many sounds as before. Why can't I hear any sounds?

A: Turn on your speakers. Seriously, though, the newest Windows version does not yet have quite as many sounds as the DOS versions used to, so it's not exactly anything to panic over.

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Q: So uh... I lost my registration key/program. Can any of you send me yours?

A: NO!

Now that we got that absolutely clear: E-mail Sami Maaranen. You know, the guy who made the game The address is urw@iki.fi. If you really did have a key/program and you just lost either, he'll know and send you new ones. Don't ask for reg keys or the program on the forums. You have been warned.

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Q: There's an error in your FAQ! And there's stuff missing, too!

A: That's not a question. (Don't you just hate it when FAQ writers do this)

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Q: There's an error in your FAQ and many questions aren't answered. What can I do to fix these things?

A: Post any corrections here or send them to me as a private message or via ICQ. If you use ICQ, mention these forums in your first message so I know you're not a spammer.

Hm, about this "Speedset", does it apply to other games as well. And ohm, I suppose you can't use it in Dos... And how to run UrW with that VDMsound? Lot to do for me, trying to get UrW to work on Win.

I downloaded VDMsound, tried to install it, choose the language, pressed Ok and BLAM, it says this: "You must be running as an Administrator to install VDMsound."
What is this?

First of all what Windows OS do you use? Also are you using multiple accounts on your computer, otherwise it may do something like that, if so just sign on to the original account and try it from there, but I do not know if that will work. Sorry if I did not help much I am not very good with technical issues.

I think I found out the reason, seems like all of this posts advises are for XP, mine's 98.
Well ya technical people, tell me, how to get UrW to work on Windows 98? And the sounds would be good too. My soundcard is C-Media PCI Auto Legacy Driver.

Let me ask you this, why should those of us that actually payed go through the entire process that you've layed out before us? With your "Oops I accidentally ..." post you seem like quite the smartass, so why, might I ask, should I have to work hard to get a game to work that should work in the first place?

Well excuse me. It's just that we've had warez-d00ds begging for reg keys before, and I just want to make clear that we don't want any of that here and that the right place to direct any registration related questions is the author's e-mail address.

Oh, come on... The game is pretty old school, so it's hard to guarantee that it will work on all modern setups. The purpose of this FAQ is to make your "hard work" easier in case the game doesn't happen to work on your setup, not to force you to go through any complex processes. Besides, if you've actually payed then you must've been able to test the game beforehand, right? I mean, you didn't just go to the website and go "Oh this game looks great, I think I'll order it without even trying the shareware version", did you?

Err... yeah. Delayed reply. So sue me.

Q: There's no sound? Why can't I hear any sounds?

A: Turn on your speakers. Seriously, though, you might want to try a program named VDMsound. Install it and run the game using it and you might be able to get the sounds working.

I had sounds that worked occasionally. Very funny... NOT. I'll see if I get that problem fixed... This piece of chocolate WinME is driving me nuts someday. though I'm pretty sure that I'll find a solution to this problem by my self I wouldn't mind good advices.
Anyone else had similar difficulties?

Okay another Windows XP error here.

I downloaded the trial version with no problem at all. Unzipped it just fine into it's own little folder on my desktop. But the problem doesn't start until I try to install the sucker onto my PC.

It gives me an error stating:

"C:\Docume~1\"my name"\Desktop\URW\INSTALL.EXE
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\AUTOEXEX.NT. The System file is not suitable for running MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows applications. Choose 'Close' to terminate the application."

It also has an ignor button but might as well nickname it "Close Clone" cause that's what it does is close down the window. I have no idea what could be causing this problem since other people who seem to have Windows XP have installed the game so I'm pretty much lost here. HELP! lol

Sounds to me as if your autoexec.nt and/or config.nt files are corrupted or deleted. There are some viruses and spyware programs causing that, so first I would run a full virus scan and then use Ad-Aware to wipe out any nasty spyware/adware pests.

After finished with that, replace the old config.nt and autoexec.nt files found in the C:\Windows\System32 folder with working ones that you can find in the folder C:\Windows\repair.

Those files are necessary for Windows to run 16-bit DOS applications, which URW definitely is.

Theres a fix for that.
Search for a file names autoexec.nt and copy it to your system32 folder.
This problem comes up if you install SP2.

I'm using windows xp and the game doesnt react to my keyboard at all, however this problem doesn't occur with dosbox, but in dosbox its so slow you can order a pizza and eat it before the game has loaded completely, and raising cycles doesnt help.

You need a powerful computer to run it decently in DOSBox, and even then you'll have to raise the cycles all the way to 15000 or 20000. Try it out.

Nope, tried raising cycles up to 150000 and still didnt help. I'd really appreciate it if anyone had any idea how to fix the keyboard thing.

Change the CPU emulation to "dynamic". It speeds it up considerably. Check the DOSBox documentation for how to do it, all I can remember it was done by editing some configuration file.

A little better but still far from playable. But thanks anyway.

edit. I got it to work decently by tweaking the config files a little, thank you Jussi for your help.

edit2. And now I also solved the keyboard problem by unplugging my steering wheel (Guillemot Ferrari)

Howdy, I recently "upgraded" to XP (Well the stuff I do for work does run much faster). But now URW doesn't work. I have dosbox installed, core=dynamic and 25000 cycles but it still runs really slow. (my guy moves in slow mo). How powerfull a computer do you need to run URW in dosbox? I have 766 MHz any suggestions for what has worked for people? The game is really choppy if that helps at all.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Concerning the registration code...

I bought my copy back when UrW was on Albret's Armory, I think it was, so there is no more record of my registration. :(

Good thing I backed that sucker up 4 times in three places. B)

Woah, 25000 cycles?

For one, turn that down!

I run a P4 at 2.2GHZ, and I run URW in dynamic at about 11000, with a frameskip of 1, sometimes 2 or more if I have a lot of stuff running in the background (which I usually do...)

Basically, what's happening is, you are bogging down your computer by trying to process so many cycles at once.

Take it easier, your CPU will thank you! ;)

You do realize that the post you replied to is almost five months old? :P

Narcissus

That makes two of us. :blink:

Oh yeah.....HATE IT!
I have win98SE and my sounds work for some time but sooner or later it stops working. Restarting the game doesnt work and i have to restart the whole combuter if i wanna hear anything again....It really makes me mad.
Too bad i dont know much about combuters...Noidea what to do really.. :(

Any ideas?

The game works just right for me if I do the following on my XP machine:

1. Run that fixVGA thing someone linked to in another thread.

2. Run the game through VDMS

Hello,

I am trying the game and it looks very interesting, however it allways quit itself, last time it was when I asked a maiden to sing to me, an error message apeared but I could not read it cause my desktop was full of horizontal lines which did't went away until I restarted.

I really wan't to try the game, please help.

You should provide details on your system, specifically what OS you're using, if you're running it in DOSBOX or natively, etc.

windows xp home edition 2002, Mobile AMD athlon™ 1500+530Mhz, 368mb of RAM.

About DOSBOX and native, I don't know what those things are. To run the program I just double clicked it, I did not download other programs to run it.

That's probably you're problem right there. At the very top of this thread there are things that expalin what to do to make it run in XP. If those don't work for you after you try them, I bet I can help you, but try those first.

Exactly, and if you need help with DOSBox, I'm sure a lot of us can help you with that, as well.

(I use DOSBox for UrW, TES: Arena, and, oddly enough, Princess Maker 2 from time to time...)

[off topic]Princess Maker 2 rocks![/off topic]

Ok, I am using Dos BOx now, the game runs well with hi CPU cycles, however only at low CPU cycles the sound is correct, at hi CPU cycles the sound is like cut, a dog bark does not sound "bark", it sounds: bbbbb.... bbaaaaa...... aarrrrrr.... rrrrkk..... kkkk...

Hope I explain myself well with this, thanks for the help!

It looks like a number of the problems here might become a moot point...

Three cheers for Sami and the update! Hip hip hurrah!

Yep, download the new windows native version.

Now that we have the new Windows version most of the questions in the FAQ instantly became obsolete, since they all involve running the DOS version in a Windows environment, which I certainly hope nobody is trying to do anymore.

Therefore I've wiped out or edited the old questions to better suit these modern times. If new technical problems arise, I'll just add those to the FAQ instead.

Nobody's going to miss the old stuff that was removed, right? I mean, it really is obsolete now. Outdated. Useless. I mean, why would anyone want to run the DOS version in a Windows machine now that there's a Windows version available?

Oh, fine. Here they are:

Q: When I start up the game in Windows XP, my screen goes black. What can I do?

A: There are several programs you could try.

First of all, before downloading any extra stuff, try starting the game with the -gfxfix parameter. You might also want to set up the game to start in full screen mode.

If that doesn't do the trick, try running the game with DosBox might help.

Third, there's a program named vgafix.exe. You'll need to have Service Pack 1 for Win XP installed, and getting the program to work properly may require some tweaking. It will also alter your system files, so be sure you know what you're doing.

hopefully one of these will do the trick.

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Q: You mentioned something about -gfxfix parameters and starting in fullscreen and stuff... How am I supposed to do those?

A: There's two ways.

1. Right-click the icon you use for starting the game and choose "properties". From there, go to the tab named "Program" and look for the line of text that reads C:\URW\URW.exe (or whereever you installed URW to) and add a space and -gfxfix after it so that it reads "C:\URW\URW.exe -gfxfix". And now that you're in the program tab, set the program to start in fullscreen mode.

2. Go to command prompt (by for example choosing "run" from start menu and typing cmd). Change to fullscreen mode by pressing alt-enter (you can go back to windowed mode by pressing alt-enter again). Go to the URW directory (cd c:\URW\ ) and type "URW -gfxfix" without the quotes.

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Q: There's no sound? Why can't I hear any sounds?

A: Turn on your speakers. Seriously, though, you might want to try a program named VDMsound. Install it and run the game using it and you might be able to get the sounds working.

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Q: The game runs too slowly! How can I make it run faster?

A: Try a program named Speedset, which you can find for example from The House of the Underdogs, along with many other wonderful tools for classic gamers. Use it with a positive number, like 0.1, or higher if the game is still sluggish. It's easy to overdo the speed, so start with numbers clearly under 1.0

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Q: I didn't understand any of that. How do I use speedset?

A: Go to command prompt as explained eariler and run Speedset from its directory with "Speedset 0.1". Then start the game from command prompt as described before.

To be honest, I think I'll stick with the DOS version until the Windows port (?) is more stable.

In fact, I don't think I've even updated to the point I can farm yet. :unsure:

There seems to be a memory leak in the windows version.
I caught it stealing over 1.1G of ram and I don't think that is intended for the program.
Such a memory leak could lead to a fatal crash and data loss (or just kill your character).
I have a screenshot of my Task Manager to prove it.

How do we talk to a NPC?

On a US keyboard layout,

Press shift + 3, then select the "Talk" option. (Or just push T)

Then follow the on-screen prompt.

I don't think neohemp understands that all those questions you answered on the first page of this thread, are the simple questions that everyone asks.. and instead of answering them everytime someone asks about them, they can just check the forums, and read them.. if they need further help I'm sure you guys that run the game can surely help.. I'm trying the game out for now, if I like it I'll get it.
if I don't like it, then its just not my style of gaming.. but keep up the good work, I like to see RPGs all over the internet.. and don't listen to cave mouths like neohemp..

In case anyone is wondering, he missed one letter in "Shift+3". ;-)

Soy spammer muchos stupidos! Soy even more stupidos than Njerpez. Los moronicos action pumppos! Scorchio!