Month: January 2022

The problem is, since the server shutdown, the game would be stuck in “connecting to Autolog servers”. The solution can be found in their community forums as well which is: block any access for its .exe file to the internet using your firewall rules. Well, that was simple, wasn’t it? 🙂

Getting Need For Speed SHIFT 1 and 2 to work in the year 2022 in Windows 11 is not easy. As my original DVDs no longer read properly, tried to get the game, digitally, but it has been both unlisted in Steam and removed from Origin in May 2021.

Anyway, after finally getting keys, how to solve the “error contacting the license server” problem for SHIFT, see here.

For SHIFT 2, if you use the Steam version check how to install the PhysX engine / repair installation when using the steam version.

In the Origin version, I found PhysX in this folder: EA Games\SHIFT 2 UNLEASHED__Installer\customcomponent\Game_CustomComponent

As it was already installed, just selecting “repair” copied in the DLL file that the game was missing.

It may surprise, but actually, the game runs in Windows 10 and 11 but as I still have a PCI Sound card (because the onboard sound of my 2010 Asus motherboard has a buzzing interference sound (common for those cheap on-board sound chips back in that era and before), once you have the game practically running, you will be created by a blue screen “Driver IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL”.

Here is what I have done using the original CD release: (In my case from France as it was the only one available but the game still can be switched to English)

1. Install Patch 1.2
2. Took care of the copy protection issue
3. wrote a batch file with a warning to first switch the main audio device and communications device to anything else than the X-Fi Xtreme Gamer to avoid the bluescreening happening because I forgot to switch that before starting the game!
4. I reported the bug in the Windows 11 Feedback hub, perhaps it will somehow being care of in the future just like Driver: San Francisco somehow suddenly works in Windows 11 🙂
   
   I am aware that the latest patch version has the copy protection removed (yes, they did that officially!) however I wanted to use a version reported to work in Windows 10 before.

The game by default doesn’t give you an option for 3DFX om the first menu and hence will only run in software emulation mode and this still brutally slow in DOSBOX! So what is the workaround?

None of the ones I found on Steam boards helped. (It would just end in the option window closed)

So, here is how to do it:

1) Run nglide_config.exe, then selecting my native screen resolution and pick aspect ratio as 4:3.

2) Run the Game normally.
3) Select option 2 – Client
3) Want to change IP address? – No
4) Select option 1 – 3DFX

And voilla, you are in 3DFX mode without modifying any files of the game! 🙂

When I recently updated to Microsoft Office 2021 Professional, I wondered myself whether the “Microsoft Office Word Add-in For MediaWiki” published by Microsoft in 2010 still works.

Indeed it does, but the setup routine doesn’t detect Office 2013 and up.

I found instructions how to modify the registry so Mediawiki.txt filetype shows up in the “Save as” dialog window of Word 2013.

For Office 2021 (I am using its 64bit version), the following differences to above’s manual apply:

* path modifications mentioned have to be performed for the 32bit and the 64bit (Wow6432Node) section of the registry.
* The Office version’s path equals 16.0