Wolfenstein 3D will no longer start

[Guest]

Hi, I have not played Wolfinstien 3d in years. I decided to go on the internet and see if there were still websites for it. Boy was I surprised by how many there were. They got me even more interested in playing since they had new levels, etc...

So I decided to install the game. After I installed it I fired it up. It showed that screen where it checks for your joystick, keyboard, mouse, memory, etc...

But it never leaves that screen. It gets stuck at that screen. I don't have to restart my computer or anything, (I can hit ctrl+alt+del to close it) but it still is stuck.

Info that might help is that I have a Pentium 200, a PC ProPad 4, an NEC keyboard, a Soundblaster cards (one of the newer ones, im not usre what its called) an NEC mouse, Windows 98, and 64 mb of ram.

Can anyone tell me what the problem is and how to fix it? Please, i really need your help.

Any help is appreciated.

[Scotty]

Try rebooting into Safe Mode or pure DOS, run Wolf3D, and select PC Speaker and no joystick. Then, reboot to Windows and try running it again. This will help narrow down what's the problem. I've found my joystick with throttle/rudder crashes a lot of DOS games that try to read it as two joysticks, and soundcards are big offenders for causing lockups.

If you have a PCI soundcard, the DOS emulation may be incorrectly set or nonexistent. DOS emulation tends to have bugs, anyways. If you have any kind of regular PnP soundcard, it may be using resources that Wolf3D can't address. I've always had to use A220 I5 D1 to get Wolf3D to work on my computer. You can get an idea of what resources your soundcard is using by opening a DOS window and typing SET and checking out the BLASTER line. Later versions of Win95, and Win98 will set this at boot if it isn't in Autoexec.bat.

There are too many soundcards, versions of drivers, available system resources, etc, to really get into a troubleshooting discussion, though. Hopefully, you'll be able to narrow down the problem and come up with a fix.

[This message has been edited by Scotty (edited 03-28-99).]

[Guest]

Even though I didnt say this (maybe I should have) i did try it in DOS. It didn't work there. It had the same problem. This is probably the doing of Windows 98 as I had no problem with this game before that.

Sometimes I wish I had never even boughten this Windows 98 thing. ARRRRGGGHGHHH!

If anyone else has had this problem and has another method of fixing it, please tell me.

[Guest]

My rule of thumb: play all games originally written for DOS in "pure DOS" - not a DOS box. Too many glitches otherwise.

But make sure you have DOSSTART.BAT configured to load your sound drivers, etc. Otherwise you won't get any.

[Guest]

I have experienced (and still am) problems with my sound when I play ROTT and Duke Nukem 3d. The music works fine but the sound doesn't. It never did this before when I had Win95. My early 90's games ,like Wolf3d, don't seem to be affected by this. The only reason I have Win98 is so I have a computer when Y2K hits. I have had many problems with scanners with Win98 too.

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Samus Aran

[X-human]

Also reinstallation helps, try installing in DOS.

Y2k? That's no reason to switch. Linux is KING!

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The One and Only -=[X-human]=-
www.gibbed.com/gznews/ (http://www.gibbed.com/gznews/)
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"There was a prince and a princess living happily in a kingdom. But there was a jealous devil from the dark world, named 'X'. 'X' turned the prince and princess into two stone paddles." Story Text, Bad Omen

[Guest]

I am positive now that it is my soundcard. I am using Creative Soundblaster 16 Plug and Play. Does anyone know where I can find the faq or how I can disable my sound?

[Aurora51]

not your soundcard. something else. I can Run Wolf just fine, and I have the same card u have.

[Scotty]

It could be a driver or resource issue. In pure DOS, the drivers CTMMSYS.SYS and CTSB16.SYS have to be loaded in Config.sys, and MIXERSET.EXE should be run from Autoexec.bat to set the volume controls. The BLASTER variable has to be set, too. Setting this in Autoexec.bat has caused trouble for me in Windows with some soundcards, though. (I have everything REMmed out of my config files when running Windows) Using a boot disk or a shortcut that boots DOS in a custom configuration can be used to work around this, though.

In Windows, PnP may be forcing the card to IRQ 9 (the BLASTER line would probably read A240 I2 D3... in this case) When I've had a soundcard problem like this with Wolf3D, I've usually had erratic or no sound, rather than a crash. I've always had to use A220 and D1, with either I5 or I7, to get Wolf3D sound to work.

I'm not sure what your problem is. I've never had Wolf3D crash on a Creative Labs ISA SoundBlaster before, but anything's possible.

[Guest]

Wasn't a fix for game problems when running Windoze opening the Windoze Explorer and then executing the game from there? I forgot what game that it worked for, but that might be something else to try if you still can't get it working.

Y2K? I pity the poor fool who believes that crap. Why would a computer explode when the clock strikes 2000? I've heard that's what's gonna happen from some mental cases on TV and such, on New Years Eve I'm gonna sit right in front of my computer.

Linux IS better, I'm gonna get it soon... can't wait!

[This message has been edited by StevenVI (edited 03-29-99).]

[Joe Siegler]

Your best best to get around this problem is to start the game like this..

WOLF3D NOEMS NOXMS

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Joe Siegler
3D Realms Entertainment
http://www.3drealms.com
http://3drealms.3dportal.com/ubb/faq.html (For info on using this UBB)

[Guest]

Is there a way to set my DOS irq? When I try to change it in Windows it says that its conflicting. My soundcard IRQ is 10.

[Scotty]

If you have a conflict, you're out of resources, or some of your cards can't use the available resources, or some of your resources are manually assigned (not necessarily a bad thing if it's done properly and intentionally)

I've found a good place to start is disabling unnecessary onboard hardware in the BIOS. If you don't need 2 COM ports, an LPT port, a USB port, a PS2 port, and 2 IDE ports, go into the BIOS and disable whatever you don't need. Make sure you know what you're doing, or find someone that does know what they're doing, before going into the BIOS and changing settings.

Even if you can free up some IRQs, you may still have trouble. If the BIOS is assigning IRQ 5 to the USB controller at boot, you won't be able to assign your SoundBlaster here, even in pure DOS. You'll have to watch your BIOS setup screen at boot to see if this is an issue. Again, don't change any settings unless you know what you're doing.

Another option that some BIOSes support is resetting configuration data, so everything can be reassigned. The previous warnings apply if using this option. I've found this useful when I've added new hardware, and Windows can't figure out how to assign resources properly. I guess this is why Windows-bashers call it "Plug-n-Pray." Thank God my new 56K non-WinModem actually has jumpers. http://3drealms.3dportal.com/ubb/images/icons/smile.gif

I had issues like this when I first put together my own computer. 16 IRQs only go so far. Hopefully, if USB finally becomes popular and useful, it will be possible in the future to disable more onboard hardware, or not use it at all, and put stuff like COM/LPT ports, keyboards, and mice on the USB, so the remaining IRQs can be saved for add-on hardware.

[Delphi Dude]

You can disable the automatic configuration using the control panel system applet, and manually set it to something like this :

I/O 220h
IRQ 5 (or 7)
DMA 1
DMA 5 (or 3, depending on how old your SB16 PnP is)

This setting works for me, for 100% of the old DOS software I'm running under Windows 95.

As far as the conflict goes, if your system has an Award BIOS, you could try setting IRQ 5 (or 7), and DMA 1 and 5 (or 3) to Legacy ISA / Non PnP.

And one last thing, Scotty mentioned the CTSB16.SYS and CTMMSYS.SYS drivers. CTMMSYS is only required if you intend to use SBMixer. And you can use the following snipet from my config.sys file.

devicehigh=c:\hardware\sb16\ctsb16.sys /unit=0 /blaster=a:220 i:5 d:1 h:5 p:330
devicehigh=c:\hardware\sb16\ctmmsys.sys /unit=0

ctsb16.sys initializes your SB16, using the following parameters :

a:xxx - I/O base
i:x - IRQ to use
d:x - low DMA channel
h:x - high DMA channel (might not apply)
p:xxx - MPU port I/O base

[Joe Siegler]

Most of the standard stuff I spout about Duke3D doesn't apply to Wolf.

The reason is Wolf does not recognize a sound card with an IRQ higher than 7. In 1991 when the sound code was written, that was the norm.

------------------
Joe Siegler
3D Realms Entertainment
http://www.3drealms.com
http://3drealms.3dportal.com/ubb/faq.html (For info on using this UBB)

[Guest]

I swear to god I almost smashed my keyboard just a few seconds ago. I swear. Ill tell you why:

Ok, I FINALLY figured out how to get the sound problems fixed in DOS mode. DOH! Not enough memory! DOH! So I said to myself "It should work in WIndows. Just got to figure the sound out for Windows." I got the sound fixed in Windows. I said OH HELL YEA! WOOHOO! My celebration was halted when I got the "NOT ENOUGH MEMORY" error. NOOOOoOOOOOoOOOOOooOOOOOooOO! I got to fix my memory now.

[Scotty]

Wolf 3D needs about 585K (I'm guessing here) of the first 640K of memory, so you'll have to tweak your Config.sys and Autoexec.bat files to free it up. Type MEM /C /P at a DOS prompt to see what you have loaded where. Make note of the size, too, since you'll want to make sure the bigger files make it into the UMBs.

If you go into DOS on a regular basis, make sure you have DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS, DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE RAM, and DOS=HIGH,UMB in your Config.sys file, and make sure you use DEVICEHIGH to load device drivers in Config.sys and LOADHIGH to load TSRs in Autoexec.bat. Make sure the calls for the bigger files are listed earlier than the smaller ones. If this doesn't free up enough memory, change the RAM to NOEMS in the EMM386.EXE call. This will give you a little more conventional memory at the expense of having no EMS memory. EMS is basically an obsolete concept, but some old games need to have it, so you should keep the RAM in if possible.

If you never (or rarely) boot or exit to DOS, you can REM out the EMM386 call, the device drivers and TSRs. This stuff will just waste memory, since Windows manages its own memory and uses its own drivers.

I just checked my memory, and I have about 600K of the first 640K free. I have all memory wasters REMmed out, since I pretty much live in Windows.

[Guest]

Hmm...I remember I used to have a boot disk that did all that. I used it for all my old dos games. I just gotta search through my 700 billion disks and find it again.

If I can't find it, I'll try what you said Scotty.

[Guest]

Finally I found that old boot disk. I had to reconfigure it a little bit but finally I have gotten Wolf3d to run on my computer. Only one more problem. The digitized sounds wont play. Thats something I would have to work out on my own, as I am sure no one could help me without having my autoexec.bat and my config.sys.

Thank you to all who have helped me in my quest to get Wolfenstien to work on my computer. All your help was greatly appreciated.