Heroes III keeps crashing in Windows 7

[corleone]

I've installed the soundfix in this forum and I still can only get about10 turns in, then it crashes on a repeating sound; i'm running it in windows 7; i've tried it just in windows 7; as well as in compatibility mode for xp sp3 and xp sp2....

anyone with any suggestions???

Thanks,

Corleone

[GreatEmerald]

Does playing without sound help? Do you have the latest sound drivers?

[Variol]

I had not trouble with mine when i played last week. Make sure your patches are up to date as well.

[corleone]

I tried turning off music (although thats no fun); it goes longer; eventually crashes on a sound effect; tried without both; goes longer.

Running an ASUS Motherboard with RealTec 97 Audio. Not Creative; but has worked fine with XP; Upgraded to Windows 7; now doesn't seem to work. Checked ASUS site; have the latest drivers; latest Heroes 3 patch 1.4 (as far as I know)...

Any other ideas?

Thanks

[Narzoul]

I'm not sure if you refer to the sound fix that was made by me, but if you do, I recommend you to uninstall it and install the newer version that I've just released today. Here's a link to the topic for you: viewtopic.php?t=8031 (I haven't updated the first post yet, so look for the new patch in the newer posts).

As a side note, this fix is not some sort of bugfix for crashes and such in the game. It's simply meant to enable full quality music playback, as normally the game plays the music in crappy 22050 Hz mono quality instead of 44100 Hz stereo, as it's supposed to be. So if you have crashes even without this fix, it's unlikely that installing this fix will help.

[Sir Alock]

This may sound silly but why don't people use a dual-boot system! It's easy as hell to set up. Currently, I'm using Vista (64) & WINXP in a dual boot. When it's time for Windows 7, I'll install WINXP once again! Why do thru the hassle to play all of are old games?

[GreatEmerald]

Well, having no delays between switching through OSs is always a good thing. Though for some games that's necessary, for example, Win7 seems to have strange EAX handling that it doesn't take the place you're standing in into account for some odd reason, so I'll have to make my dual boot into a triple boot rather soon I guess.

[Sir Alock]

GreatEmerald: Yes...It's a tad of a PITA to swicth operating systems, but when I decide to play either HoMM 1, 2 or 3 it's not like I'm playing for 30 minutes. It's @ least 2+ hours worth. It's worth it in the long haul, just less issues. I guess it takes 90-100 seconds to boot up in WINXP.

[GreatEmerald]

You could also use VirtualBox and other emulators to do that, but unfortunately they only support software rendering and occasionally OpenGL.

[JackintheMox]

Though for some games that's necessary, for example, Win7 seems to have strange EAX handling that it doesn't take the place you're standing in into account for some odd reason, so I'll have to make my dual boot into a triple boot rather soon I guess.

A little off-topic, but what do you mean by "Win7 seems to have strange EAX handling that it doesn't take the place you're standing in into account for some reason"? I assume you are talking about IA-32 architecture memory registers when you mention EAX "handling", so I'm curious as to what you mean by this. If not, please disregard!

[GreatEmerald]

I'm using Win7 x64, and by handling I mean that it doesn't work correctly under all of the given circumstances... For example, some games work just fine, while the others don't update the sound setting while moving through different rooms...

[Aenain]

Hello everyone,

As Windows 7 is becoming more and more popular, I am a surprised to see so few posts about playing Heroes III on it...

Are there a lot of people for whom it works with no problem ? I experience the same crashes with looping sounds, and I have tried everything I could think of... Sometimes it does not crash for ten or more minutes, and sometimes three times almost in a row.

Compatibility modes don't make a difference, it even seems to work better if I simply run the game with no compatibilty mode at all (tried Windows XP SP2 and Windows 2000 and it doesn't improve). I don't think playing with the music on makes the game crash more often either.

It's still playable (managed to finish an XL map today :p), but annoying... At least it works better than it did on Vista (was unplayable). And on Windows XP, I remember putting the slider for DirectX hardware acceleration on no acceleration, otherwise it would crash too often (this was on my former computer tough).

Also, I think I have read somewhere that for some people, the GOG version crashes on Windows 7 too... and I don't really feel like re-purchasing the game. I've also got Heroes III Complete for MacOS 9, and it never crashed, but I don't have an old Mac anymore.

Any feedback would be appreciated.

[GreatEmerald]

It works just fine. I think your installation might be corrupt. Also, are you running WoG?

[Salamandre]

As Windows 7 is becoming more and more popular, I am a surprised to see so few posts about playing Heroes III on it...

Heroes is by far more popular than WIN 7, thus those who want to play it stay away from Vista and WIN7. (I don't get why people complain while they insist on using incompatible programs)
XP for ever.

[Aenain]

It works just fine. I think your installation might be corrupt. Also, are you running WoG?

It might indeed be corrupt, but then it would be the installation or play disc, since I have had problems with the game on Windows XP and Vista as well, and on another computer.

I also thought it might because of my sound card driver, although I am supposed to have the latest one (it's from feb 2008 and I haven't found a more recent one.) All other games, except some old ones, work fine. Or maybe because of the safedisc protection : I noticed that sometimes (really at random) Heroes III fails to launch and there is an error about heroes3.icd and dplayerx.dll files (I play with the disc in my dvd drive). However, I just have been able to play an entire game without a single crash.

I am not running WoG, never tried yet.

[GreatEmerald]

Yea, sounds like a disc problem. Is it scratched?

[Mirez]

I have the same problem, everything goes well but after half an hour or something like that the game crashes

it's not a disk problem I guarentee

[ByteBandit]

I found I had the same problem. Evidently Microsoft did nothing to improve playability for Heroes. LAME!!!!

Jim Vogan turned me on to this method instead:

Install HoMM 3 and WoG in 'My Documents.' And by God that did the trick! All my files installed there unlike in the Win 7 OS Program Files x86. While in x86, I had missing H3/WoG files and no docs for saved games and constant crashing.

Installing H3 in My Documents using Win 7 reminds me of playing H3/WoG in XP mode. No stuttering, no delay, no crashes. The way it should be.

[GreatEmerald]

Thinking about it, I do sometimes get WoG errors... Interesting... I thought that they were so rare that it was supposed to be like that. I guess I should try moving the folder and see what happens.

[ByteBandit]

Moving the folder did'nt work for me. The path still goes to C/ program files x86/ H3 and you'll still experience the problems you had before. Do a clean install to My Documents. Reccommended.