Win11 - if MPEG2/VirtualMidiSynth refuse to work

[Jeff Paine]

After wasting way too much time trying to get this working, the counter-intuitive solution is to actually disable compatibility mode for OVERSEER.EXE. Now all of a sudden it will load MPEG2 codecs and the MIDI devices.

In fact, once you get it running, try uninstalling ffdshow/Stinky's/whatever you installed for MPEG2, as well as VirtualMidiSynth. Turns out I didn't need either of them, the only problem was that OVERSEER.EXE is set to use Windows 95 compatibility mode by default.

[Jeff Paine]

Turns out, if you launch the game from Steam, Steam will reset the compatibility mode back to Windows 95. Follow my guide to fix that. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2907441939 to fix that

[Dartagnan]

I use Win11 and in my case only this method works:

- downloaded and installed ffdshow rev4532;
- downloaded the game;
- downloaded dgvoodoo2 and copied the setup and the .ini files of the MS folder in the directory game;
- opened dgvoodoosetup and unchecked all options about vsync and aliasing;
- right click to check properties of overseer.exe in the steam game directory and unchecked compatibility mode;
- opened the game from the .exe file in the directory.

[nafcom]

Originally posted by Jeff Paine:

Turns out, if you launch the game from Steam, Steam will reset the compatibility mode back to Windows 95. Follow my guide to fix that. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2907441939 to fix that

Unfortunately does nothjing for me. In Windows 11 24H2 it simply runs according to task manager and simply automatically closes.
And yes, I did install the .NET 6.0.11 Desktop Runtime beforehand as it told me to do so.

Also, word of caution, this suggestion in another thread made the game no longer run at all, just a black screen, since the uninstaller does not work in Windows 11 for this program, I had to resort to recover from latest Windows System Restore point!

Originally posted by Hiei-:

Download DVD Express Player : http://www.metzomagic.com/Help/download/DVDExpress.zip and install it on your system. Then, in-game, choose "mediamatics dvd express" as the MPEG-2 decoder and magic, videos will work (ffdshow is not even required with that so you can disable it when it ask you if you want to load ffdshow).

[nafcom]

Okay, I got it working!

The trick is, it does have compatibility mode for Windows 95 set but since Windows 11 does not support this, it doesn't display it as set.

The trick is to set it to another OS like Windows 8 or so, and then send it back to "None". Then confirm and it will work as mentioned in above's guide because all necessary video and sound codecs are already shipped with the game installation and are inside the game folder!