MM7 on Win11 with Greyface problems

[xyllia]

So, I updated my PC back in January, and I last played MM7 back in October on my previous PC.

My previous PC had Win10 on it, as it was 5+ years old.
My new PC has Win11 on it.

MM6 and MM8 will boot, but MM7 has serious problems that I can't figure out why. The first time I tried booting it up, despite me having installed Greyface's patch, it was running as though it was not, it had the old UI style.

So, I installed Greyface's patch again and it STILL was using the old UI.

I then downloaded the installer from GOG, installed it on a different drive, and then downloaded Greyface's patch, and installed that into the correct directory.

Now, the game will boot, but only sometimes. Sometimes I get nothing at all, sometimes I get a box that comes up pure white (it looks like an 800x600 window or thereabouts, my native resolution is 1440p) window that disappears after about 3 seconds. Every once in awhile, the game will actually boot and play (I always run it windowed and then I maximize the window). It seems 100% perfectly normal when it actually decides it wants to run, I couldn't tell that there was anything at all wrong with the game.

I've tried Right Clicking the shortcut and running as administrator, but that didn't change anything. I still see the blank white window.

It seems to have a better chance of booting on the first couple attempts of an OS session, but if I don't shut my computer down it probably won't boot, at all, for the rest of the OS session.

I've also tried compatibility mode for different OS's, none of that worked.

Is there some kind of new trick you have to do for Win11 to actually get it to run? And why doesn't this happen with 6 or 8?

[Eksekk]

What are your graphics card settings in mm7setup.exe? Are you running it in hardware mode? Is there file "ErrorLog.txt" in game directory?

You can also try to toggle various "seems-important" options in mm7.ini. And upload your current options on some sort of pastebin and send here.

[GrayFace]

The first time I tried booting it up, despite me having installed Greyface's patch, it was running as though it was not, it had the old UI style.

That almost always means that it wasn't running in hardware more.

What compatibility option is set for mm7.exe? It should be visible in Properties through right click menu.

[xyllia]

It is set to Hardware Mode (odd, the first time I tried running the setup.exe, the program did nothing and didn't even appear, had to try it twice).



Wow, lots of errors.

As for the compatibility mode, I tried Windows 7 and Windows 10, two OS's I've known to run MM7 on before, neither worked (both did the same thing as running no compat mode at all).

[xyllia]

I think I fixed it.

After a bunch of googling, I came across a website that instructed me to turn off Discord overlay (I never even use the stupid thing anyway).

It will now boot 80% of the time and only occasionally crashing which is way better than it was before!

[xyllia]

Then again...

I played for awhile after booting and closing the game like 20 times to make sure the problem went away and now, after eating supper I tried to boot it again and it will not boot at all.

[Allester]

Tossed her a couple of my .ini files and some of the settings I used to test out and see if it was settings in her .ini that were causing the issue.

[Novi]

Make sure the game is not installed in Program Files (it modifies files in its folder and might not have access if it's there)
Set both MM7.exe and MM7Setup.exe to Windows XP compatibility mode (SP2 or 3)
Make sure to use HW mode
Lastly, make sure BorderlessFullscreen is set to 1 and UILayout=UI in MM7.ini

[xyllia]

Already did all that.

It's installed in C:\GOG Games\ and I tried compat mode (Windows wants to give it XP SP3 by default), and I do have it set to HW mode, and those settings are indeed set.

Interestingly, it will run in SW mode, but of course that forces fullscreen and that will cause the old UI to come back.

Another interesting thing to note, is when I was messing around changing it from hardware to software back to hardware, a few times I booted it up, I got the "Init -- Failed to create d3d device" error a few times before it went back to just silently closing the program before it appears on screen.

This prompted me to update my GPU drivers, but sadly that didn't work either.

I noticed the file that's most often the culrpit (according to MM7's error log file) is WinMMbase.dll, so I also tried a sfc /scannow and that didn't do anything (that file was not missing or corrupt according to SFC).

[xyllia]

So... I completely uninstalled it, and reinstalled it, downloading it fresh from GOG and then downloading the latest Greyface patch and it runs.

.... about 2-3 times, absolutely fine. I did 2-3 hour play sessions.

Then it does the white box thing again after the 3rd time. I tried to launch it again, and it booted and played fine.

And now, it's back to white box every single time I try. I really do not get what's going on here, lol. This makes no sense. It's almost as if the game is corrupting itself, somehow.

[xyllia]

Another update:

I got the game to run again, took a couple tries. I played a couple hour session, and had to stop for supper and an RL chore or two.

Came back to it, and tried some 20+ times and just kept getting white box or nothing at all. Said "screw it" and played a little Destiny 2, watched some youtube, etc.

About 4 hours later, came back and tried it.... and it boots up fine, no problem.

I have never seen a program act like this, lol.

[Eksekk]

I suggest to run (windows key + R) "dxdiag" and upload screenshots of every tab. Maybe there's something wrong with directx.

[BMJedi]

I have a Windows 11 computer that I finally got to run MM 6-7-8, but it crashes randomly two or three times an hour on all three games. It does the same thing with several of my older games. I finally decided that Windows 11 just doesn't like retro gaming.

Luckily I still have both my old Windows 7 computer and my old Windows 8 computer. I found that my Windows 8 computer plays all the MM games with rock solid stability. So, I keep both PC's next to my screen. When I want to play a newer game, I use the Windows 11 computer with the stronger processor and graphics card. When I want to play MM, I move all the connections from one box to the other, and use the Windows 8 computer.

It's a bit of an inconvenient hassle, but if you haven't solved your issues yet and still want to play MM, and you have old computers still in your possession (I never throw one out due to security concerns), it might be a way for you to play again.

[Eksekk]

How about virtual machines? They're resource hungry and annoying to set up, but once you do this you should be able to play without problems and you'd not have to switch all connections between machines.

[Tomsod]

You could also dual-boot different Windows versions, which requires at most an extra HDD instead of an entire computer.

[Entity Black]

I confirm I have the exactly same problem on Win 11 as OP describes. First few couple of times game was running perfectly fine. Then I had problems to run it. Setup does load, but after launching the game it crashes. Anyway after 1-2 tries it managed. Now it doesn't launch no matter how many times I try.

I tried multiple compatibility modes on both exe files but no luck.

Event viewer report:

Code: Select all

Faulting application name: mm7.exe, version: 1.2.1.0, time stamp: 0x42ee0733
Faulting module name: WINMMBASE.dll, version: 10.0.22621.1, time stamp: 0xd08c645a
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x00005293
Faulting process id: 0x0x2B6C
Faulting application start time: 0x0x1D9C563DC1A22FD
Faulting application path: C:\Users\[...]\Games\Might and Magic 7\mm7.exe
Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\WINMMBASE.dll
Report Id: e022c34e-e0ac-4b69-86ae-05a47023e4eb
Faulting package full name: 
Faulting package-relative application ID: