American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

Ok, well the title says it all. I HAVE installed the Windows XP patch and this game used to work before on my old computer. I play from a copy but the original disk does the same thing.

I start it up and can get to the scenario screen, although the screen looks messed up and is missing graphical information. When I click on a scenario it starts up plays for about one second and then dumps me to the desktop.

I know "Chickamauga" was always my "fussiest" disk in the Battleground system. Repeated installs results in the same thing. I seem to remember that you might need some kind of .dll file that goes into a Windows directory somewhere IN ADDITION to the Windows XP fix. Does anyone know what files these are or can help in some other way?

Col. Gilbert Collins
Army of Alabama
III/I/II Brigade

If you installed the bgc.exe file that eliminates the need to have the original CD in the drive it should work. I know mine would not work on my first XP machine with the original install. After I set it to run the game in WIN98 mode with the modified bgc.exe it worked ok.

Gen. Ken Miller



Army of the Shenandoah

BGC was the only game that used Safedisk copy protection. The version of safedisk TS used was not compatible with Windows XP and TS never patched it. The bgc.exe has the safedisk copy protection removed. The .dll you refer to may be the fix for Gateway computers. Maybe your game files are corrupted. You may want to install over again.

Lt. General Dirk Gross
XIV Corps/AoC

Ken:

How could it possibly work without the disk in the machine? What if you had done a regular install like most people and some of the information was still on the disk? How would it work? Wouldn't this only work if one had done a full install?

I did a custom install and installed all the music and sound files. A regular installation doesn't do that to save HDD space. Since I don't use the video files I left them off and turn them off in the game. So the game doesn't have to access the CD for music and sounds. I believe you still need to have the bgc.exe in a Battleground Chickamauga folder, at least I put it on my all games disk. The new bgc.exe only gets rid of the requirement to have an original CD in the drive. Once the game does the check to see if you have the disk in the CDROM the only other time it accesses it is for sound and video files if you didn't put them on the HDD.

Gen. Ken Miller



Army of the Shenandoah

Ken:

Ok, when I take the disk out of the machine and try to start the game IT DOES ask for the disk, so it is looking for something. When I do put it in the opening ad logo will come on but then will dump me to the desktop. It is most curious.

Gilbert Collins
Army of Alabama

Col Collins,

Check the bgc.exe file in your game folder. Mine is 594 KB with a date of 2/19/2002. If yours does not match this date than it's likely you failed to overwrite the original exe file which is dated 12/8/1998 and is only 156 KB.


Gen. Ken Miller



Army of the Shenandoah

Ken:

I checked the file. It is the correct one. 594 KB and 2/19/2002.

All I can think of now is a corrupted file on the original disk? If that is the case I'm sunk.

Gilbert Collins
Army of Alabama
III/I/2nd Br.

Col Collins,

I do have the bgc.exe set to run in Win98 compatability mode. If you haven't done that go into the folder where the file is located, right click on the file and click on Properties. Under the Compatability tab put a check in the Run in compatability mode and set the pull down menu to Win 98/Me. If that doesn't help than I'm out of ideas.

Gen. Ken Miller



Army of the Shenandoah