Author Topic: How to: Running Mechwarrior 4 on Windows 7  (Read 1685 times)

MadCatBob

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How to: Running Mechwarrior 4 on Windows 7
« on: 08 February 2019, 13:00:30 »
Hey all!  My hard drive recently started showing signs of death, which led to a new hard drive and a new installation of Windows 7.  I was craving some Mechwarrior, so I pulled out my discs and installed MW4: Vengeance. 

But I couldn't get it to run.  The program just kept crashing within seconds of clicking on the icon.  No splash screen, sometimes not even a "This program has stopped working" message.

So after a few hours of fighting, some googling, and tinkering a bit with Windows, I have MW4: Vengeance, Black Knight, and Mercs all running happily on Windows 7 and I wanted to put the method up here in case anyone else tries to get them to work.

Two notes first:

#1:  This method was used to get the programs running from their original discs.
#2:  Do this stuff at your own risk.

So, first things first, install MW4 from your discs.  I did not run the autoplay install, instead browsing to the setup.exe file on the disc and running it as administrator.

Next, download the patch(es) for your respective program(s).  As far as I know there is one patch for each version of MW4(Vengeance, Black Knight, Mercs).

Third, head over to this link.

 Microsoft Security Update 

It turned out that MW4 used safedisc drm to ensure that the discs in the drive were legitimate, but the service that safedisc used had been disabled in a Windows 7 update some years ago.  This was the reason for all the crashes I experienced.  In order for MW4 to run, this service has to be enabled and started.  This is a security risk, though, so again, enable this at your own risk.  I wrote a couple of batch files, one to enable the service before I started playing, and one to disable it when I was done.  Once the service was enabled, MW4 started right up.  I did not have to change compatibility settings or run the game as administrator. 

I hope this helps someone.  :)

Also, credit to PCGamingWiki's Mechwarrior 4 Page for tipping me off to the whole safedisc problem.

« Last Edit: 08 February 2019, 13:05:04 by MadCatBob »