Uable to launch the game on Windows 11 PRO 24H2 version

[jifeisheng0322]

A few days ago I installed the latest Windows 11 Pro 24h2 version and I found that I cannot logon this game, the game is hang... but it worked before I upgraded to Windows 11 Pro. I played for more than 6 hours. How to resolve this issue? Thanks in advance!

[XL_JUSA]

i have same broblem. trying to launch game and it freezes my whole computer. only original red alert does this

[DutchForce1]

same here. been able to play it once yesterday, but now it freezes on a black screen, or (ironically) on the 'please wait'-screen... Only way to gain control over windows again is hit windows button, then press alt-F4 to shut down RA (nothing seems to happen, but it does) then hit the windows button again, sign out of windows and sign in again.

[DutchForce1]

I just managed to start RA with the startup option -dxlevel 80

[DutchForce1]

dxlevel 80 worked only once. Guess it was coincidence

[DutchForce1]

set to -dxlevel81 it worked twice now.

[jifeisheng0322]

Originally posted by DutchForce1:

set to -dxlevel81 it worked twice now.

Thank you very much for helping to resolve this issue! But I think the steam should release a fixpack patch to fix this issue, instead of customers having to set it manually. Thanks again!

[Nyerguds]

That's not a valid command line argument for this game... that's for TF2.

[DutchForce1]

i'm sure they'll fix it a.s.a.p., in the meantime we're able to conquer with this command ;-)

[DutchForce1]

Originally posted by Nyerguds:

That's not a valid command line argument for this game... that's for TF2.

maybe it's coincidence, on my sons computer it's the same. It works only with this command line argument. I don't know why, i'm no software engineer, came across this solution through try and error...

[IoneGoat]

I have this issue as well.

[IoneGoat]

Originally posted by DutchForce1:

dxlevel 80 worked only once. Guess it was coincidence

well you are more knowledgeable than me. How i go about doing this work around? idk what you mean when set to dxlevel

[Moff]

I was trying to start the game for the first time today using the launch options mentioned above, setting the .exe to run in compatibility mode for Win95 (as if that has ever been useful...), running as an admin, disabling Steam overlay, and downloading the latest version of DDrawCompat to replace the game's ddraw.dll, but none of that worked.

I found and installed a community patch, "Patch for existing installations (Windows)" on https://cncnet.org/red-alert, and it seems to work okay. While Steam can still launch it directly, the community patch creates a launcher .exe which you can use to configure it beforehand.

[Nyerguds]

Originally posted by DutchForce1:

set to -dxlevel81 it worked twice now.

Just a general note...

Launch options are extra startup instructions given directly to the game itself. These instructions are never the same on different games, except maybe if they're from the same developer and/or on the same game engine.

RA does not know any "-dxlevel" argument. The arguments of the game are completely known, since we got its source code.

[Truehare]

Originally posted by Moff:

I was trying to start the game for the first time today using the launch options mentioned above, setting the .exe to run in compatibility mode for Win95 (as if that has ever been useful...), running as an admin, disabling Steam overlay, and downloading the latest version of DDrawCompat to replace the game's ddraw.dll, but none of that worked.

I found and installed a community patch, "Patch for existing installations (Windows)" on https://cncnet.org/red-alert, and it seems to work okay. While Steam can still launch it directly, the community patch creates a launcher .exe which you can use to configure it beforehand.

Hey, thanks! I'd tried everything and nothing worked, but this patch did it.

[noob³]

Ty the patch from cncnet.org worked for me too. I am on W11