Windows Vista: Installing SH3 and Patching 1.4b
 

Ok guys here we go, after a few hours of playing this is what i discovered. There is a problem with starforce and vista when you try and update game, hence why the patch dosnt work. However if you follow the instructions i'm about to give then you can get it to work.

1. Install Sh3 and play once.
2. Download starforce update tool.
3. Update Starforce.
4. Deinstall Sh3
5. Reinstall SH3 (not sure why but it works :) )
6. Patch to 1.4b ( The game should be upgraded by now )
7. Upgrade to GWX ( if you want, although not sure why anyone wouldnt )
8. Download and install Sh3 Commander
9. download and install Sh3 commander DWX patch

There you go, all the steps i took, and YES it did work on my machine, I will warn you my mate tried the same and had all kinds of problems with Vista but i think thats more down to his comp than SH3. He has trouble running anything on vista at mo :)

Hope you find this helpfull, the only problem i have is a slight graphics error where i get a black triangle now and again on horizon apart from the Sh3, GWx and commander works perfectly :)

Enjoy

This one: http://www.star-force.com/support/sfdrvup.zip

Yep that be the one, cheers mate, im useless and always forget the main links :)

Hi , does it work better under Vista ?

Well vanillia SH3 loads crazy fast....

....however, I CANNOT upgrade. I have loaded, reloaded, put on the starforce patch, the starforce removal driver.

I can get vanillia to work, and it works great, but I can't upgrade to 1.4, because:


This program cannot update the installed version of Silent Hunter III US DVD v1.0 to 1.3 because of the following reason:

C:\ProgramFiles\SilentHunterIII\data\Campaigns\Cam paign\Campaign\Campaign_LND.mis: unknown version.

at this stage, I don't know what to do, I've messed with this thing for the last day or so. Is this something that someone can email me this file? Is mine just corrupted?

Hi dean, yep you seem to get that error now and again, I installed Fresh, following each step above in sequance, I don't know what i did that chanaged it but It did install to 1.4b no probs. All I can say is dont give up hope as it does work. You do need to update starforce seperatly then deinstall Sh3, before reinstalling Sh3 then it does seem to work, As to how it plays, very quickly, like i said i do have the odd graphics glitch but not enough to detract from the sim, and I sure this is more to do with new Vista graphic drivers than Sh3 itself. In Fact every game i have managed to run on vista, plays better and quicker with higher graphic options on than XP, They may have got something right at last, of course i do get more system crashes but what do you expect with a new OS, cant have everything ;)

Mine but it s a 1.4 Campaign_LND.mis

It s good to know because all the benchs i ve read till now say that there aren t performance improvements in games compared to XP

I've gotten games to update by going in and removing the offending file. Of course, do so at your own risk. You could cut/paste the file to another location to be on the safe side.

Hope this helps...

JP, thanks for the help, but that did not work.

I am trying to reload the game again fresh. I keep thinking it will work one of these times.

If anyone reloads or has a fresh copy of SH2, I'd love to have this file. At this stage, I am kind of at a loss as what to do. (this after about 15 game loads over the weekend.)

I have the "fix" you need Dean.
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Windows XP.... Home or Professional. ;) By the sounds of things, that's the only way your computer will let it load.

Yeah, haha. :)

Actually, I have SH3 working now.

1. Delete everything releated to SH3 from your computer after you burn your mods, campign files, etc., to a cd. Somehow Vista finds any files on your computer when you try to update.

2. Reinstall SH3.

3. Load 1.4.

4. Load GWX.

5. Load SF updates.

6. Restart the computer.

7. Everything should work.

SH3, seems to me at least, to run better and load faster with Vista.

Worked for me, running RC1 (still waiting for my copy of RTM from Intel).

I am currenty struggling with this problem myself. I'm glad to hear that some of you have been able to get it to work. I had pretty much given up on it and was just about to gripe about it here on this forum when I noticed this thread.

Install, remove, install, remove.... repeat as neccessary until it works!!?? This is a pretty lame solution. Why can't they just hurry up and make a Vista friendly patch? It would seem like a relatively simple thing to do. Like it or not, Vista is here to stay, everybody knew it was coming. There is no excuse for the lack of support.

I like Vista so far, IMO it is far superior to XP in every way. All my favorite games run fine including SSIII (except that I can't get the damn patch to install). Another thing I noticed with the patch is that it says that it is updating it to v.1.3 not 1.4b... Is it a 2 part install? Either way it always fails before installing any patch at all.

:damn:

The patch is 1.4b not 1.3 just that a typein error I guess.

Theres no way in H--- that I'll buy a piece of 'Bill & company' crud like VISTA untill all the dung is out of it, and by the looks of it sofar it will be a few years and many heartbreaks and flattened wallets. Oh but Bill's wallet will be fatter. :down:

I believe it says it's a patching SH3 versions 1.0 to 1.3 -> which means that it'll take any version between 1.0 and 1.3, and patch it to 1.4b. Don't you just love the English language?

Yeah... if I had to buy Vista, I'd walk away laughing too. Since I work in the Comp. Tech. industry, I usually get handed a copy of MS' latest version for free or near-free.

Vista itself isn't too shabby at this point... problem is, it's not great. There's not much I can point to and say "This is THE reason you need to buy Vista." It's better, but it's mediocre better (if that makes sense).

They did change security around quite a bit, and they're starting to play better with permissions. So a lot of your older programs... well... they might not play well with Vista.

The patch to 1.4b didn't play well... it wasn't able to delete some files when I ran it. Even though my user is an administrator (I ought to change this), I still had to right click and "run as administrator" to get the patch to run correctly.

I installed SH3, clicked the icon, i get the starforce error. Downloaded the SF update and it says "No installed protection drivers to update"? Installed all 4 patches. Installed them 1 at a time and tried to get the starforce utility to update and it just wont.... any ideas???

Bonez