[Eagle of Fire]

Originally Posted by http://starsautohost.org/sahforum/

Hey all.

Just returned to this old game after a long Hiatus (1.5 years or so) and discovered that I'd lost all my old Stars! stuff in a transfer (except, thankfully, my serial). So I download it again, only to find that my shiny new 64bit Vista SP1 computer refuses to run Stars 2.6JRC4, telling me that as a a 32bit application, it's not compatible. I tried 2.7JRC3, and still, no luck.

I find this odd, because WOW64 is meant to dynamically handle such problems, and in this case it didn't. A few searches failed to bring up any conclusive answer, but most of the partial answers seemed to be along the lines of "too bad", or "it works better if you install the game in the OS first".

So, I come you for help. The only solutions I can think of at the moment are either some alternative 32bit emulator, somehow convincing windows to recognise that it should be properly emulating the program, or some sort of patch. Does anyone who's mucked around with the Stars! program know what could be causing this? Some 32bit-only API, perhaps? Has anyone encountered and somehow solved this problem?

It's not a terrible tragedy if there is no solution available, as I have a 32bit XP laptop that can run it just fine, but this isn't just a concern for myself as it is for the who Stars! community, as the industry-wide transition to 64-bit may mean that some day it will be very difficult to play or get into Stars! for new players. Is there some way to future-proof it?

Originally Posted by http://starsautohost.org/sahforum/

Stars! is a 16-bit application. It already runs in XP in "compatibility" mode. AFAIK Vista by default excludes support for 16-bit applications (or maybe just the 64-bit Vista, but IIRC some players reported running Stars in Vista within the dosbox (emulator of DOS machine for Windows without proper support for DOS games). Check sourceforge for it, and please report of you succeed.

Originally Posted by http://starsautohost.org/sahforum/

I have been able to run Stars! on a Vista 32bit machine without any problems but have not been able to run it on a Vista 64bit machine. So I would guess that your friend has a 64bit version of Vista. The only workaround that I have been able to come up with is to use some kind of desktop virtualization software and run windows xp as a virtual machine. Microsoft has one called VirtualPC which is a free download. You do need to have a Windows XP installation disk though.
Good Luck

Originally Posted by http://starsautohost.org/sahforum/

As a note, it also runs just fine on win 7 beta (64 bit).

Originally Posted by http://starsautohost.org/sahforum/

Upgrading your Vista to XP, or waiting for Windows 7 would be other, more long-term options.

Conclusion: Vista blows so much, it can sail its own ship...

I hope you don't have Vista 64 bits.