Do they send you an email with the activation code and links and if so how long does it take.

Just been messing with my new 500gig harddrive and installed Windows 7 on one of the partitions. Whilst I was on there I ordered a game from Microids. Got the Activation Key and a list of all the download links. Downloaded the first two parts ok. Because I have hardly any progs on this partition I needed to boot back into vista because I had something else to do so I copied the Activation code and the link to the download page to my vista desktop and rebooted. Loaded browser and tried the link - "Gametap 404 Page not found." I think the mistake Ive made is instead of copying the individual links to the different parts of the download I actually copied the link of the page that contained the links:-(

I thought/hoped I would have recieved an email by now with hopefully the links on there but nothing up to now.

Anyone bought from them before?

Managed to find the links in my cache. Still never recieved an email from them. The game by the way is Still Life. I played it years ago on win98 machine but couldnt get it to work on my new(ish) Vista. Saw it on their site and it was cheap, and it states on their site that it will run on Vista. They fibbed. It doesnt:-(

I believe you're going to have issues with the game - so far as I am aware the downloadable versions still contain a release of StarFoce that's incompatible with Vista/7.

If you find that it plays, post back - more than a few folks have been having issues with this game.

I would have thought they'd have tweaked it for Vista. But you can try some of the usual Vista tweaks, like installing by right-clicking the Setup and choosing "Run as Administrator" and installing to your Documents folder instead of C:\Program Files.

I just get a black screen. Tried compatability mode and either get nothing (program is listed in processes using 50% CPU) or I get the following message -

"This application is not compatible with the installed operation system.
Please upgrade to Windows 98SE, Windows 2000 or better" Doh!

Tried moving program out of C:\Program Files. Nothing. Tried running the installer in compatability mode. Still nothing. I found a hack for the French version that is supposed to solve the issue, that didnt work.

@InlandAZ Do you know the name of the starforce file(s) as I dont see any that look they might be starforce.

Given that this is regarded as one of the very best Adventure games I would have expected Microids to have made a bit of an effort to produce a fix by now.

On a better note I downloaded the demo of Black Mirror to see if it works on Windows 7 and it does. Could never get my full version to work on Vista so I`ll have to dig it out and hope that works on W7 as well.

I've just emailed them. I`ll post back if the have a solution. Not hopeful though.

That is the symptom of Starforce - They are installed as device drivers (and hidden).

Doesnt look like this version uses starforce. Its got SecuROM library in there. There.s no protect.dll.

I'm not sure what that has to do with Starforce?

From the Starforce website -

2.4 How do I know which protection version is installed for the application I use?

Find the protect.dll file in the protected application folder (the file can have another name, but it always has the .dll extension), right-click it and select Properties. Select Version tab then. The protection version number is in the BuildSignature (or BuildInfo) section.

I'd never noticed it - but did find a reference to it in a Google search. For what it's worth, my own copy of the game does not install protect.dll - and it is definitely protected by Starforce.

Thanks for the info -

Does it install a file called paul.dll? The properties for it say - SecuROM PA Unlock DLL for Activate and Play.

It did not -

Don't you have the CD version, Inland?
That had StarForce v3.
Current versions may use different files.

I think mj2c has the download version of Still Life, which apparently uses a type of SecuROM.

I do have the CD version (the one with Starforce). SecuROM, so far as I am aware is Vista/Windows 7 compatible, so why it's not playing is a mystery (because the developer -- so the story goes -- released a you know what type of patch that allowed the game to be played under Vista. So it isn't the game itself, it's the Starforce protection that shipped with it.

MJ2C - have you tried installing the game to your User folder (assuming it didn't go there in the first place)?

Yep, it doesnt want to know. Never heard anything from Microids yet. They never even sent me an email with the download links and key for the game. Luckily I wrote the key down from the website when I was downloading it. Dont think I`ll bother ordering anything from their site again.

Is it possible that your spam filter could have gotten their emails? Can you try emailing them using another email address that doesn't have any spam filters?

I use Mailwasher, everything shows up on that. It would still be listed even if it was marked as spam.

Still not heard anything from them but I do have some good news. I managed to get it to work. How? Using VirtualBox with XP installed. VB has an experimental DirectX feature which, to be honest, I wasnt expecting to work very well but amazingly it does:-)

It's too bad Sun doesn't support the older versions of windows - I noticed the DirectX option the other day when I upgraded and installed Linux/Ubuntu.

VMware also supports DirectX for XP+ guests.