ukneilw
Member
After 5 months of trial and error, process exploring, and general headaches I am pleased to say I have managed to get BVE working on Vista from a clean install (upgrade installations should work already if you had BVE before.)
Please note if after following these instructions you have a white screen in BVE then the problem is with your graphics card drivers and you should look through the thread for more info. I do not have a solution to this but can tell you that my ATI2600HD works fine as did an older ATI X1300 card which I used to have.
Here's how you do it:
Vista x86 (32 bit)
Vista x64 (64 bit)
If you get problems after doing this, try turning off UAC as sometimes this helps BVE to run. I wont give detailed instructions how as Microsoft already do that. On your start menu, go to Help and Support and type in "how to disable UAC", choose the how to turn off User Account Control topic and follow the instructions.
If you are interested, the technical reason behind why this did not work out of the box is Microsoft stopped providing backward compatibility for DirectX 7 and DirectX 8 starting with the Vista DirectX 10. The only way around this is to copy the 2 support files across from Vista or download them and register them manually. The d3drm.dll file seems to cause a secondary crash if not present, I have no idea why this is not in Vista.
I tried BVE on NWM on a few runs and it is fine - the only problem I have encountered is that if you run it windowed, the on screen text such as reverser, speed, FPS, etc displays in english with what looks like japanese behind so you can't see it. Running BVE full screen is fine though.
If you still have problems, post them here and I will see if I can help.
Have fun,
Neil
Please note if after following these instructions you have a white screen in BVE then the problem is with your graphics card drivers and you should look through the thread for more info. I do not have a solution to this but can tell you that my ATI2600HD works fine as did an older ATI X1300 card which I used to have.
Here's how you do it:
Vista x86 (32 bit)
- You need to download 3 files, or if you still have XP copy them across to your Vista installation. Those 3 files are:
dx7vb.dll
dx8vb.dll
d3drm.dll
You can find them on your XP installation under the Windows\System32 directory. The download links are:
http://www.dlldump.com/download-dll-files_new.php/dllfiles/D/dx7vb.dll/5.03.2600.2180/download.html
http://www.dlldump.com/download-dll-files_new.php/dllfiles/D/dx8vb.dll/5.03.2600.2180/download.html
http://www.dlldump.com/download-dll-files_new.php/dllfiles/D/d3drm.dll/5.1.2600.0/download.html
- Now that you have those 3 files, you need to put them in the Vista system32 directory, this is usually C:\Windows\System32 - best way to do this is to move them using Windows Explorer.
- Go to the Start Button, choose All Programs -> Accessories -> Command Prompt. You should get a black window titled "Administrator: Command Prompt" - if not, right click Command Prompt in the start menu and choose "Run as administrator".
- In the command window, type in the following (note that <enter> means press the enter key):
cd c:\windows\system32 <enter> (assuming windows is on your C: drive, if not put the correct letter in.)
regsvr32 dx7vb.dll <enter> Click OK on the window that comes up saying dllregserver succeeded
regsvr32 dx8vb.dll <enter> Click OK on the window that comes up saying dllregserver succeeded
exit <enter>
That should be it - give BVE a try.
Vista x64 (64 bit)
- Follow the steps above up to and including opening the command prompt. However, instead of copying the files to c:\windows\system32, copy them to c:\windows\syswow64
- In the command window, type in the following (note that <enter> means press the enter key):
cd c:\windows\syswow64 <enter> (assuming windows is on your C: drive, if not put the correct letter in.)
regsvr32 dx7vb.dll <enter> Click OK on the window that comes up saying dllregserver succeeded
regsvr32 dx8vb.dll <enter> Click OK on the window that comes up saying dllregserver succeeded
exit <enter>
BVE should now work on Vista x64.
If you get problems after doing this, try turning off UAC as sometimes this helps BVE to run. I wont give detailed instructions how as Microsoft already do that. On your start menu, go to Help and Support and type in "how to disable UAC", choose the how to turn off User Account Control topic and follow the instructions.
If you are interested, the technical reason behind why this did not work out of the box is Microsoft stopped providing backward compatibility for DirectX 7 and DirectX 8 starting with the Vista DirectX 10. The only way around this is to copy the 2 support files across from Vista or download them and register them manually. The d3drm.dll file seems to cause a secondary crash if not present, I have no idea why this is not in Vista.
I tried BVE on NWM on a few runs and it is fine - the only problem I have encountered is that if you run it windowed, the on screen text such as reverser, speed, FPS, etc displays in english with what looks like japanese behind so you can't see it. Running BVE full screen is fine though.
If you still have problems, post them here and I will see if I can help.
Have fun,
Neil
Last edited by a moderator:
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