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Installing Commandos - A Tale of Woe
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I used to love Commandos; that is, the first game in the series, Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines. I often go back to play games from ten or more years ago, and this is the latest one I have a craving for.
Did I mention, I've just ordered a pretty powerful, expensive gaming laptop from Zepto? Some of its power, I think, might go wasted …
Anyway, the first thing I needed to do was find the disk. It definitely wasn't a DVD case, which meant trawling through boxes and boxes of disks, often with no names along the spines. Three hours later - with a sore spine and a significantly less tidy room - I gave it up.
If you see Commandos somewhere in this picture, please tell me.
—
So I was left with one option, short of buying the game again. I jumped aboard the online pirate ship, and torrented it -
Except, the torrent ran for three days, stopping at a pitiful 7%. So I scoured the net, and chanced upon another torrent, seemingly more obscure, and with far fewer seeders. I had little hope for this one, so I left it to run overnight and checked back in the morning.
And it was done!
Mounting the disk in Windows XP was no problem at all - and installing it only required me to set compatibility mode to Windows 95. Running it was another matter. It loaded fine, got to the menu screen, but the moment I moved my mouse, I was sent straight back to the desktop, with an inevitable error. No matter how I did it - and I was almost at the stage of playing with just my keyboard - it crashed. Unplugging the mouse, unsurprisingly, didn't help.
Cue me trying to run every single compatibility mode combination known to man.
—
Anyway, I'd just recently installed Ubuntu Linux onto a seperate partition on my PC's hard drive, and remembering WINE, I decided to give emulated Windows a try. If it didn't work in the real thing, I figure, how could it run under Linux? But surprisingly, anyway, it did… only at 200% speed. But I could live with that.
Two days later, I'd successfully completed the first four missions, the accelerated rate ironically doing little to help me get through the missions at any decent speed. But still, it was Commandos, I was playing it, and to a degree I had achieved what I set out to do. It was all good fun I told myself. It was all fine now.
And then it stopped working. "I CANNOT FIND DIRECT X 5" it casually told me. What could I do about it? Nothing. Support for this game under Windows is practically non existent, never mind an entirely different operating system.
—
While I was hunting around for a solution, one of the things I searched for was 'Windows 95 Emulation'. I wasn't expecting to turn up much, but one thing jumped out: Microsoft Virtual PC. It seemed like a long shot, but I had a strong need for Commandos by this point, and a Windows 98 disk kicking around somewhere in the pile depicted above.
Nice try. No Windows 98 CD key for you.
—
Windows Virtual PC allows you to run an operating system within an operating system - what better way, I thought, than to run it on the operating system it was intended for? Well, a similar operating system, anyway.
I learnt from a friend that to install 98, I needed a Windows 98 specific boot disk - thankfully these were readily available on the internet. I wasn't so lucky with the actual floppy disk; the first three flat out refused to show any signs of working, and I was about to give up for 'corrupted-file' errors before I found one (dated from about 1992) that actually worked. So I formatted my new virtual drive, and went through the archaic 98 install process, all in a window - which felt slightly weird to say the least. Typing 'format C:' in a command line was not something I felt comfortable with!
I'm glad I started with XP…
—
Anyway, to bring this tale of woe to a close; Commandos is now, for the time being, up and running on a virtual install of Windows 98, within a real install of XP. And believe me, it was worth it. If you play any game before you die, play this one.
Next thing I need to try is to install the game on a virtual install of Windows 98, on emulated Windows XP under WINE in Linux. But that's a whole new day. Right now, I'm off to play Commandos.
Update!
I recently tried installing this game in Vista. And it works straight out of the box. They must've done something right.
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6 comments for “Installing Commandos - A Tale of Woe”
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This is definitely one of my all time favorites I have all the games in the series and love them :)
Wow, I finally found someone with a simillar problem to mine. And a simillar soulution, too. After hunting patches for this great game on the internet, I resorted to Virtual PC (It's installing right now). I'm glad you made it work - it means I have at least some chance… so thank you :)
since you own the game somewhere, why not download a version of it online, and call it the "backup" version?
btw, very fun game, but extremely difficult for me back when i was 15. i remember they really increased the difficulty in the first expansion pack. mustave died 20 times in a row on that first level with the scuba diver, the raft, and the lighthouse
First thing thought of. ;)
"So I was left with one option, short of buying the game again. I jumped aboard the online pirate ship, and torrented it"
wow! i am stuck with the same problem, and thought of a similar solution, but instead of virtual pc, i tried vmware.
and commandos in win98, 98SE, and ME gives the "I can not find directx 5" error!
(and installing new directx versions doesn't do any help!)
don't know what would be the difference between a vmware and virtual pc machines for running this game, but well, with little hope, i'll try it!
You could have just used the no video no CD patch…