Getting Silent Hunter 5 (CD version) to work on Windows 8.1

[gap]

After some trials and about half an hour of googling, I finally got SH5 working on my PC. During my serches on the web nowhere I found a step-by-step, complete and up-to-date guide, but all the information is sparse on various threads and forums; so I told myself I would share my little experience, so to spare to other players the hassle of having to find by themselves how to tweak their SH5 installation before they are actually ready to play/mod it. Maybe The Berster might be interested into integrating his guide with this one.

Here's what I did:

• Installed the game, by letting the installer to choose the default options (install path: C:\Ubisoft\Silent Hunter 5).
  
• When the installation process is finished, the diagnostic tool is run automatically. In my case, a problem was found: apparently my system matches all the minimum requirements, except for graphic driver version. That's curious, as that application is several years old, and I update my drivers regularly. A quick search on the web confirmed that I could ignore that error.
  
• After closing the disgnostic tool, I ran the following excutable, found in SH5 installation disc: E:\Support\DirectX\DXSETUP.exe. Probably not necessary, but I did it just in case my PC was missing some old version of DirectX required by the game. In any case, no harm can be done to the computer, since the updater doesn't overwrite newer file versions.
  
• Similarly, I ran E:\Support\VCRedist\vcredist_x86.exe. When prompted to do so, I chose to repair Visual C++ redistributable 2008.
  
• At this point it was time to run the game updater, found within the game installation folder. Stabdard path is: C:\Ubisoft\Silent Hunter 5\Support\GameUpdater\gu.exe
  
• The updating process takes several minutes, during which not only the game is updated to v1.2, but also the game launcher should be updated to the latest version. In my case (but apparently I am in good company) during tbe process the launcher got corrupted, and I ended up with a window saying that "Uplay Launcher has Stopped working".
  
• I surfed then to the Uplay website and got the most up-to-date Uplay installer from there. The download button is found at the bottom of the page. Alternatively you can get it from here (direct link). In the past, unistalling U-play and removing any leftover, was required before re-installing it, bit this isn't necessary anymore: I just installed the laucher on top of the broken one.
  
• Last step: I set C:\Programs (x86)\Ubisoft\Ubisoft Game Launcher\UbisoftGameLauncher.exe and C:\Ubisoft\Silent Hunter 5\sh5.exe to be run as administrator. In addition, I thicked "Disable scaling on High DPI" on sh5.exe. Both flags are availble from file properties (right click on the excutables to their properties), in the compatibility tab. I am not fully sure about the benefits of running the said files as administrator, but as the disabled scaling is very important. Before I did it, when I ran sh5.exe, the intro movie was playing without sound, covering part of the screen. There was no way to minimize/stop it, and when it finished, I was back to the desktop with no loading screen.

Now everything looks okay, so it seems I have joined once more the number of SH5 players on subsim

[THEBERBSTER]

Hi Gap

Quote > apparently my system matches all the minimum requirements, except for graphic driver version. That's curious, as that application is several years old, and I update my drivers regularly. A quick search on the web confirmed that I could ignore that error.

I think the reason for this is that it is looking for specific types of gpu’s with a minimum of 512mb.
Our systems today will probably exceed the minimum requirments, but back then guys would have had systems with less powerful gpu’s that SH5 would have struggled with.

However with our current mega mods you really need a minimum of a 2gb gpu.

Quote > "Uplay Launcher has Stopped working".

This is a common error nowadays.
This is easily rectified by running the Ubisoft Game Play Launcher’s 32 bit application as Administrator.
Running it as administrator means that you do not need to go looking for a new game launcher.
See my tutorial post #173

I personally run all the SH5 applications in administrator mode i.e. SH5.exe,GFP,OFEV, JSGME.

It’s just odd that the game launcher problem and tonnage bar not working all seems to have happened around the same time.

I played for a couple of years quite happily with none of these problems then suddenly, someone somewhere has changed something for whatever reason and this is what happens.

Peter

[gap]

Thank you mate