Windows Vista issues and the Total War Games

I thought I would share with the Guild some of my experiences with Windows Vista trying to play Roman Total War. (Moderators: if there is a more appropriate place for this post, please move it at your convenience, and I apologize for the inconvenience to you.) I've noticed that various guild members have made complaints about the new Windows OS when they were playing Shogun TW and some of the other products. I've had problems too, and it took me awhile to get a handle on what was happening. When I first got my new Dell XPS 1710 laptop, I didn't really have a lot of problems. But the more I received upgrades from Microsoft to the Vista OS, the more problems I began to have. Things like jerky performance, stuttering unit movement in the combat phase, skips in the music when I took possesion of an ancient wonder. It just got annoying. At first I thought it was a memory problem. But I upgraded to 3Gig of memory and the problem didn't go away. I have more than one copy of the RTW game CDs, thinking that I had a faulty disc, but switching game discs didn't solve it either I finally figured it out to my satisfaction.

From what I can tell the problem lies in two areas within the OS - the Windows Firewall and the User Account Control feature in User Accounts folder. Microsoft, as some of you are aware, made some huge security 'improvements' in their new OS over Windows NT and Windows XP. Much of the upgrade was designed into the User Account Control features that you will find in your Control folder/User Accountants folder. Vista users see the activity of this security when they try to execute a program application and a mini window pops up telling you that Windows needs your permission to proceed. That's User Account Control in action. It's annoying. All this extra security is not necessary if you don't use your compuer to access the Internet. But most of us do.

User Account Control has its hooks deep in the security profile of every file and folder. I'm not an OS programmer or designer so I can't describe in detail how they're doing this. But the bottomline is - if you want Roman Total War, or Shogun total War, to behave without the jerky performace, stuttering music and other performace problems; you have to go into the User Accounts folder inside your Control folder and turn off the User Account control feature. That, and turning off the Windows Firewall, and I seemed to get my old good game performance back. I also noticed that once I shut down those features in Vista I had a net gain in available memory of between 15-18Meg.

One thing to be wary of if you shut down User Accountant Control - if you've been playing under Vista with UAC turned on, your saved games are not being saved in your Saves folder under The Creative Assembly folder where your RTW game was loaded. Instead, the saved games are being placed inside a separate The Creative Assembly folder that was created under your 'UserName' folder. When I first brought the RTW game up after turning off UAC and tried to load a saved game, there were no games in my 'Load Game' menu. Also, all my game settings were turned back to their 'out of the box' defaults - 'restricted camera movement', medium unit size, etc. To solve my saved games problem I simply located where they were being saved and 'moved' them into the Saves folder under The Creative Assembly folder where the game source code is located. Then the next time I started the game, they showed up in the 'Load Games' Menu screen. When UAC is turned off, this is the normal Saves folder where RTW will save your game. But, as I said, when UAC is turned on, Vista saves your games in a 'The Creative Assembly' folder that it creates under your 'UserName' folder that I believe is under the Documents and Settings folder.

Again, all this added security design under Vista is HUGE overkill if all you're doing with your PC is playing games or doing work without Internet access. And, it's hugely expensive in the amount of memory required to manage files and folders this way. But that's the price you pay with Vista and having the extra file security from hackers, crackers, SPAM, and such. Perhaps a Microsoft software engineer could justify why he thinks all this extra security is necessary for a simple PC. But I'm thinking the next time I buy a Dell desk top, I'm going to ask for the box without an operating system and then load Windows XP on the PC when it arrives in the mail. My desktop is using XP, but I don't have a very fancy video card on my XPS 400, so I can't enjoy all the nice features of RTW like I can on my laptop.

Windows Vista is a real loser in my book. :thumbsdown: It is definitely not game friendly, and my employer (the Dept. of the Interior, US government) has no intention of switching over to Vista for the foreseeable future. If Vista is messing with the performance of RTW and STW and the rest, it's likely messing with the performance of a lot of other PC applications software. Microsoft needs to work the bugs out. Anyway, be warned. Turnoff UAC in Vista and you should see some improvement.

Windows OS experts, please supplement my comments with your own. I'm certainly no expert on Vista. But this is how I managed my RTW performance problem, and it appears to have resolved it.

Very nice analysis Guyus :bow:

The item about the saves is of the most interest to me. It explains the problems I've had in the past directing Windows Vista users to back-up their saved games for a re-install.

Since this is a bit of technical information, and it's criticising an OS, I'm going to move it to the Hard&Software forum. I was considering the Apothecary, but that's more for technical support questions rather than this. Also the Hard&Software forum goers will probably be able to add to your views in a fairly dramatic way.

:burnout:

This mirrors my experiences.

I purchased an XPS M1530.

As soon as I found out how to disable UAC, I did. It does not help in any way. Windows Firewall is always off on my machines.

Problem is, after downgrading, it seems my laptop is less capable, at least with internet connections :shrug: Rome Total War plays fine though.

Turning UAC off is the first thing I do after installing Vista, never recommend to leave it on, I'm using the Windows Firewall in Vista and haven't had any problems with it, once I can get hold of a better one I might use that though.
Overall I like the OS but most here knew that already.