Windows 7 and RRT3 Success

[Durango]

I have been running Windows 7 since the first Public Beta came out last January. I switched over to the Release candidate when it came out in April, and I am pleased to report that other than an initial problem with network drivers for the Beta version I have had nothing but joy running this new system. It is smooth, secure, and beautiful to look at, but more importantly it runs Railroad Tycoon 3 right out of the box, no tweaking necessary. I installed all the upgrades/ patches one by one holding my breath each time and each time Windows 7 ran the game perfectly. It even runs Milo and Company's unofficial 1.6 patch with no complaints. The only small glitch I noticed is when the game switches from the opening movie to the Main Screen and between the Main Screen and normal game play, there is a fair amount of video stuttering- switching between resolutions. This is especially noticeable if your normal desktop resolution is set very high, mine is 1920x1200 because I use a 22" flat screen, and RRT3 has a top resolution of 1600x1040. But this does not affect actual game play and I have had the same thing occur occasionally under Windows XP, so I think it is probably a problem with the way the game itself deals with switching resolutions.

The machine I am running this on is very low grade at this point. It will not run Vista reliably at all, I tried it and switched back to XP, until the Windows 7 beta came out. Windows 7, on the other hand, runs very well with all the bells and whistles turned on, even though this machine is at the bottom of the minimum requirement range, which I believe says a lot about Microsoft’s having learned their lesson about Bloatware this time out. Since this is not my principal gaming machine I have not installed many of the other games other posters have mentioned. Windows 7 will run RRT 2 with no problems, and I also ran Gothic successfully, but not as extensively as RRT3, and 2. The only reason I have not gone ahead and installed Windows 7 on my main machine is that I still only have the release candidate and I would have to do a complete format and clean install for it and then again for the Final version when it comes out October 22. So I'm holding off until then, but I will go to Win 7 as soon as possible.

I highly recommend Win 7 to anyone who is running Vista now, Win 7 is able to install right over the top of it. For XP users, the only big caveat is that there is no direct upgrade path for XP, you have to reformat and do a clean install. Having said that, Windows new installation routine makes the reformat/clean install process very easy. The release candidate installed from scratch for me in less than 30 minutes an a slow computer. Of course the real time consuming part is reinstalling all your other programs. What I normally do in such cases is buy a new hard drive and install the new OS on that then use the old hard drive as a file backup. That way I save time and aggravation trying to remember if I backed up everything I need, before I wipe out the old system.

[Knave]

Thank you for posting the results. I am sure it was a real nail biting session. I wasn't prepared to give up my old railroad games for vista. Stubborn that way. They really should have come out with an xp upgrade for 7. Like you said, sounds like they may have learned something from being bloated for so long.

[Sugus]

This all sounds really good!
I think, that I'll going to forget Vista as soon as possible and switch to W7! Means: waiting for W7 SP5 and switching thereafter ... (as a 59 old SW engineer I'm very experienced with "new" OS's presented by MS).

[Jancsika]

What is the compatibility setting of the game's *.exe.
On Sid Meier's Railroads! I had to change it to Vista Service Pack #2.
Jancsika

[Gandar]

So I bit the bullet and squandered my hoarded little cache of cash and purchased an i5 750 system with a 64 bit win 7 O/S in the boxing day sales I have a 1 gb nvidea card and I should now be able to play a nearly 8 year old PC game, I got home and loaded it up with RRT 3 and it plays pretty good apart from a little problem with the mouse but the O/S will not overwrite the RRT3 exe with the C to C patch OR the 1.05 patch. What am I doing wrong and how do i overcome this tragedy. Help is needed I had visions of Trainmaster dancing in my head and I can't even get coast to coast.

I have tried running the patches as the administrator and it seems to have unzipped the file now but I am still getting version 1.00 on the screen and no coast to coast banner.

[Gandar]

Well, I finally managed to patch up to 1.05, by unzipping the patches first, then renaming the RRT3 exe, ver 1.00 and the same for ver C to C and dragging the new files across to overwrite. All should now be peaches and cream but for a minor little problem it crashes and won't play at all.
I shall carry on plugging away I remember I hated XP also 98 and 95 in fact the only windows I really liked was 3.1 and that was because I ran all my games in dos.
I am ticked off because we are going to Florida for the first time next week, and I had dreamed of going for a walk in above zero temperatures and coming back and playing RRT3. My wife thinks I am nuts for wanting to take a desktop computer on vacation, she sent me out to buy a little laptop, but when you run a big map with 150 trains I didn't think a laptop that I could afford would hack it.