Hello!

I wanted to play BGE again after oh so much time and the game wouldn't start at all on my system. I have windows xp SP3 installed right now.

The errors were immediately on start with no sign that the application works in any way. I couldn't find anything on the net and I almost gave up but then remembered that I turned DEP (data execution prevention) on for security reasons.
I added BGE.exe to the exceptions and now the game works with no problems!

I believe DEP is on by default in windows xp x64 and vista but I cannot test this.

I hope this helps!

But I can't even install it. It just shuts down and deletes everything (on Vista).

I can't speak as to what to do on vista...

Personally I would try first running it as an admin.
Than copying all the files off the cds and running setup in compatibility mode.
Also since the game exe seems affected by DEP maybe the setup goes through the same process. Try adding that to exceptions.
Finally since it looks like only 5 files are needed by the game it may be possible to unpack the setup files manually and running them like that.
I'm not sure about what DRM, if any, is present but ubisoft could provide some already made no-cd fixes... Don't ban me!

Oton, I can't say for certain but it might be enough to just set bge.exe (or whatever executable the game uses) to run in XP compatibility mode. I don't remember having to do anything special to get the game to work on Vista though.

It's probably true.
I don't know how the exe interacts however since disabling DEP resolved my problems I guess it addressees a memory space beyond what it should.
In XP the whole thing was a mess anyway but MS resolved many such security problems in vista by enabling many security features by default. New software shouldn't have any problems but I'm afraid this game uses some DRM or something that behaves in a weird way.
I really don't want to start a copy protection debate but I would like Ubi more if they released a small patch to remove it. The game is old enough, don't think it's still being sold in stores so it shouldn't damage their sales numbers anyway.

I should probably also mention that I'm not sure if the DEP I enabled is hardware supported or only software-enforced. It may wall be that there is a difference.

quote:

Originally posted by OtonVM:
I really don't want to start a copy protection debate but I would like Ubi more if they released a small patch to remove it.

Ubisoft doesn't really care enough to release such a patch. They dropped support for the game completely the moment they realized it was a commercial failure, even the newer versions on Steam are in need of a patch to make it compatible with newer hardware.

Heh... I can't say I understand business at all...
"Ah, BGE was a real failure... Let's make a sequel!" Bah... I guess when you're out of ideas...

Still, won't new people want to play the original? I know I would.

quote:

Originally posted by OtonVM:
"Ah, BGE was a real failure... Let's make a sequel!"

This is really an exception and certainly not an easy decision for Ubisoft to make, if it had been a success then we would have gotten the sequel the year after the first game was released.