Can't get MoO III to work

Well, it has come to this. I sit here in front of my laptop screen, asking for help. Anyone who had a game that wouldn’t run regardless of any fixing effort knows how frustrating this is.
Well, my predicament is simple: after I install MoO III and click the game icon, the computer starts thinking for a while, showing me its distinctive CD icon, only to stop a few moments later and not even report why it hasn’t started it.
I have tried to install and run MoO III on 3 different computers, using different versions of the game(I mean different CDs) and still the same results. Also I tried patching the game with te 1.2.5 patch, vanilla and strawberry, but to no avail. I have also tried to do the compatibility thing in the exe files properties and have also set the admin rights…and still nothing.
The only thing that bothers me is that sometimes, rarely, the computer chooses to start the game (when I tell it to). I dunno why only sometimes.
Plz help or do something…anything

I have also posted this in the support section, in the hope of it being noticed by someone who can really help.

I have a couple of questions but I'm not sure if I can help. You said you have tried to use different MOO3 cd's on 3 seperate PCs, correct? What Operating System(s)? and lastly have they ever loaded and worked before (are these new PC installes)?

try the windows patch by bhruic
it need the color to be set to 16 bit
http://bhruic.dyndns.org/patcher/downloads.php
http://bhruic.dyndns.org/patcher/downloads/WindowMode.zip

try the 1024 mod
some laptops (most) dont like the 800 re the games has

the 1024+the window mod`s fix`s the problem on most laptops

the muubaa mod (and tropical 1.3) has the 1024 mos built in

i recommend you use the 1.2.5+strawberry+1024

1024=1024x768 MOD II: Battle At Aruspex
http://www.moo3.at/mods/link.php?id=150

I downloaded 2 MoOIII games via torrentz (one of them was uploaded by skyblazer, and the other by someone I don't know). I tried them both because I wanted to be sure that at least one of them worked. Afterward, I installed them both, but alternatively(I never had 2 instances of the same game installed) on three computers (one of them was my laptop). The laptop's OS is Vista and the other 2 PC's OS is windows XP sp2. Also neither of the PC's is the same "age" .The oldest one is an AMD thunderbird from 2002, if I remember correctly, while my laptop is new (Vaio , intel core2 duo, ati radeon etc...) and the other PC is somewhere inbetween. All the PCs but my laptop have had MoOIII installed and working at one time or another in the past (downloaded from different sources). So this is it...sounds actually a bit like Einstein's riddle...

I checked with prior installs and came up with the same results as danib suggested. Install game, patch 1.2.5, run install verifier. Copy this (install) to a good directory. From here you can mod a copy and if it doesn't work, blow it away.

Mod to no cd version, and this is where I get lost. I purchased the 2 CD "new" version, so I never had the problem. The downloaded versions for MP worked fine with the 1.2.5, Strawberry and 1024.

EXCEPT for the turn 100+ something crashes. Which we had to play through by dropping one or more players and then let them "back" in after a couples of turns.

Hope this helps.

Having the same problem.
I bought a netbook and thought that moO3 would run fine on it, since I managed to run even Civ4 on it. But it's far from fine.
I am getting these errors where the icon turns to that cd spinning and after a few seconds, the icon turns back to the arrow and don't run the game.

Oddily, I managed to run it once.

I've tried everything. I made an iso of my cd copy with my desktop, installed with the iso, got the 1.25 patch, installed Tropical mod. It ran after a few tries getting the cd spinning icon.
Thought that it was an issue with the exe not being patched with the no-cd patch, but when the iso isn't mounted, it asks for the cd and doesn't change the icon. When the iso is mounted with daemon tools, it goes straight to the cd icon.
Tried patching with windowed mode and 1024x768 patch and had no luck with them as well.

My netbook specs are: N450 processor, 2Gb mem and windows 7 and i tweaked the driver to change res to 1152x864.

What intrigues me the most is that it ran after a few tries with the cd icon...
Anyone got any solution for it?

This post has been edited by Miyagui on Oct 25 2010, 04:18 AM

I got the same problem, that the spinning cd-icon appear and the game don't run, and the only solution I found was a complete reboot of my computer. That helps for 3-4 days, then I have to reboot again to make it run. I have no idea why, tho.

Thanks for the info.

By "complete reboot" you mean something like formatting and re-isntalling Windows?

This made me think that maybe it's an issue with temporary files or some processes running... I tried running a temp files cleaner and closed all processes except for the essential and still getting the cd icon and no game launch problem.

It looks like something else...

This post has been edited by Miyagui on Oct 25 2010, 12:42 PM

Managed to make it work.
It was something about the exe file. I installed the Vanilla 1.6 and it worked like a charm.
But, don't know why, if I try to patch the exe that came with it, my antivirus detects two viruses... A worm and a trojan... But it don't find anything in the exe, in the patcher or any file alone...

So, the answer for this is simple try with Vanilla.
If that don't work, try different exes from different mods.

This post has been edited by Miyagui on Oct 28 2010, 02:35 AM

Good work! I haven't had to install in a long time but with two new PC's on the LAN I'll be doing that soon.

I'm not sure which mod I'll use though. Let me know what you think of the Vanilla.
Max

Thanks.

So far Vanilla looks good. Played up to turn 100 on a 250 stars map with 30 civs plus me and New orions in impossible difficulty, hadn't a chance to bombard or ground assault anything yet. Didn't play multiplayer too, so can't give any info on how it would work on a LAn.
It changes a lot of things, but still looks like the original MoO. End of turn times get a little slow at times (takes a little less than half minute to process end turn), but might be my netbook processor (if it doesn't slows, it ends turns almost instantly). Other changes are mostly bug fixes, so the gameplay remains almost unchanged.

From what i could see in tropical, the differences are on the tech tree and quantity of spy training. Couldn't see anything else, since the game refused to play, but in the end it looked like MoO with little tweaks on these 2 aspects.
Hope that helps.

way install moo3 if you have a working copy?
just copy the dir from 1 computer to the next

tropical 1.2 has some more then the 2 you wrote
tropical 1.3 has lots more then the 2 you wrote

on the extra time on sum turns
every 18 turns the AI makes new ship disgins and will need more time


can you tell me at what stage tropical failed ?
new game /exe run ?

i recommend strawberry it has some more mods that most player think improve the game and a better look

after you end the curent game
try muubaa, its a very good mod (even whit the small bugs in it)

This post has been edited by danib on Nov 11 2010, 06:10 AM

I have that mod, just not installed yet. So many mods so little time. Spent the last couple of weeks installing s/w on a new LAN PC and cleanign up the old ones. Also started to learn some tools so I can start modeling. I would like to make some of ships and stuff for modding. Plus a buddy dropped off WarCarft III for me to try. Not sure when I'll get to try any of it out.