Help Installing RTW and EB for a Vista Newb

**Red_Russian13** · 01-13-2009, 01:24

Error loading mounts database. Then something about oliphants or elephants model not being found.

This is the error I get now that I've successfully installed RTW, 1.3, 1.5, EB 1.1 and then installing 1.2. EB 1.1 seemed to work fine. But that 1.2 install mucked everything up, apparently.

To answer the guy above me, I installed RTW in my "My Documents < My Games" folder, and it worked fine up until the application of EB 1.2.

Any insight oh wise EB friends?

**Tellos Athenaios** · 01-13-2009, 01:49

You should not install to any "Program Files" directory, with or without the "x86" suffix because RTW assumes certain things which are no longer true in/since Windows Vista. Incidentally the x86 suffix seems to denote 'for programs designed for the x86 architecture', or slightly less correct 'for 32bit programs'.

Your error message (missing oliphaunt models, I take it?) seems to indicate a corrupt version of the text file which manages mount models (descr_mounts ?). Or a mismatch between that one and the DMB... IIRC it has been caused once by a bad/corrupted download in the past, but that would be the 0.8 days...

**Red_Russian13** · 01-13-2009, 02:02

Originally Posted by Tellos Athenaios

You should not install to any "Program Files" directory, with or without the "x86" suffix because RTW assumes certain things which are no longer true in/since Windows Vista. Incidentally the x86 suffix seems to denote 'for programs designed for the x86 architecture', or slightly less correct 'for 32bit programs'.

Your error message (missing oliphaunt models, I take it?) seems to indicate a corrupt version of the text file which manages mount models (descr_mounts ?). Or a mismatch between that one and the DMB... IIRC it has been caused once by a bad/corrupted download in the past, but that would be the 0.8 days...

Hmmm...

Indeed, I installed "My Documents < My Games" and it worked just fine until I got to the EB 1.2 stage.

What would you recommend to fix the oliphaunt error? Should I re-download 1.1 and 1.2 and install them? Maybe I got a bad download of 1.2 since 1.1 seemed to work fine.

**Ferromancer** · 01-13-2009, 03:39

Don't install to the my documents folder, good lord, that's just as bad! Just install to something simple like C:\games\RTW

Also, if you have the patience, you could just start over with windows XP. Just borrow an old copy from a friend. Or try dual booting: just follow one of the zillions of vista/xp dual booting tutorials you can find through google.

**Red_Russian13** · 01-13-2009, 04:52

Originally Posted by Ferromancer

Don't install to the my documents folder, good lord, that's just as bad! Just install to something simple like C:\games\RTW

Also, if you have the patience, you could just start over with windows XP. Just borrow an old copy from a friend. Or try dual booting: just follow one of the zillions of vista/xp dual booting tutorials you can find through google.

Duly noted. May I ask why that's bad? I don't doubt your advice; just my own curiosity.

Certainly I can get this to work on Vista. No operating system is gonna boss me around! If I can just work around the oliphaunt issue, I'll be golden.

Thanks again folks.

**Tellos Athenaios** · 01-13-2009, 05:05

"My XXX" directories are indexed (semi-)regularly -- which means that to put large amounts of data may cause large amounts of overhead at unanticipated moments.

A case in point would be my sister installing the SIMS to her Desktop and making a couple of back up copies to the same place as well. XP would not boot since.

As an aside: Windows Vista is actually the better OS. It is cleaner than XP is: ever tried to fix an XP box from a live USB? Oh the horror of its C drive... Not to mention the way XP handles certain UI-based configuration things... Plus the 64bit version with lavish amounts of RAM and processing power does actually outshine the 64bit XP version on equivalent hardware. That's because XP does not consider caching that much; which is why XP runs better on little RAM, little processing power machines.