Q126114: Ultimate Haunted House README.WRI Contents
Article: Q126114
Product(s): Microsoft Home Games
Version(s): 1.0
Operating System(s):
Keyword(s):
Last Modified: 08-NOV-2001
kbreadme kbmm
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The information in this article applies to:
- Microsoft Haunted House for Windows, version 1.0
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SUMMARY
=======
This article contains a copy of the information in the README.WRI file included
with Microsoft Gahan Wilson's The Ultimate Haunted House.
NOTE: This Readme document refers to the Microsoft Download Service (MSDL). As of
12/31/1998, the MSDL service is no longer available. To download support files,
visit one of the following Microsoft Internet sites:
http://support.microsoft.com/support
ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/softlib/mslfiles
MORE INFORMATION
================
Gahan Wilson's The Ultimate Haunted House Read Me File
Microsoft Corporation
December 16, 1994
To read this file on-screen, use the Page Down and Page Up keys. You
can also print the file by choosing the Print command from the File
menu in any Windows word processing program. This README file
contains important information on the following topics:
Section Description
Problems Setting Up Gahan Wilson's - The Ultimate Haunted House
Running In Low Memory or Running Slowly
CD-ROM Problems
Video Display Problems
Audio Problems
Skipping the Introduction
Problems Setting Up Gahan Wilson's - The Ultimate Haunted House
Installing on Non-Windows' Program Manager Systems
Most Tandy Sensations use WinMate as their default desktop shell.
WinMate may cause a conflict with the setup procedure and needs to be
disabled by changing the shell= line in the SYSTEM.INI file to read
as follows:
shell=progman.exe
To change the shell= line in the SYSTEM.INI file:
From the Windows Accessories group, run Notepad.
Open the SYSTEM.INI file and comment out the shell= line in the
[boot] section by typing a semicolon (;) at the beginning of the
shell= line. This is the line loading the Tandy WinMate shell.
Create a new line under the commented shell= line reading as
follows: shell=progman.exe.
After saving the changes to the SYSTEM.INI file, exit and restart
Windows. The WinMate shell will now be disabled and your shell will
now be Program Manager.
Run Gahan Wilson's - The Ultimate Haunted House Setup.
Upon completion of Gahan Wilson's - The Ultimate Haunted House
Setup, you can change your shell back to the WinMate desktop, if so
desired:
Edit the SYSTEM.INI file again by commenting out the
"shell=progman.exe" line (adding a semicolon to the beginning of the
shell=progman.exe line).
Remove the semicolon (;) in front of the previously commented
"shell=" line that loads WinMate.
Running In Low Memory or Running Slowly
Gahan Wilson's - The Ultimate Haunted House uses your computer's
system memory to display pictures. Gahan Wilson's - The Ultimate
Haunted House requires you have 8MB of RAM memory in your system. If
you find Gahan Wilson's - The Ultimate Haunted House runs slowly or
if you encounter out-of-memory errors, Gahan Wilson's - The Ultimate
Haunted House probably doesn't have enough memory. Consider doing the
following to improve your computer's performance:
Close all unnecessary applications.
If you are running Windows for Workgroups, Run without network
support by typing "win /n" at the DOS prompt.
Make sure you have the most recent versions of SmartDrive and
MSCDEX (SmartDrive 5.0 and MSCDEX 2.23 are the most recent versions
at the time of this release). The most recent version of SmartDrive
can cache the
CD-ROM drive, greatly improving performance. Make sure smartdrv is
after MSCDEX in your Autoexec.bat. For information on the current
SmartDrive
settings type "smartdrv" at the DOS prompt. For help with SmartDrive
type "smartdrv /?" at the DOS prompt or consult your DOS User's
Guide.
Determine how much memory your computer has available by typing
"mem" and pressing ENTER at the DOS prompt. You need a minimum of 8MB
of total memory to use Gahan Wilson's - The Ultimate Haunted House.
If you do not have at least 8MB of memory, you may not be able to run
Gahan Wilson's - The Ultimate Haunted House until you add more
memory.
When using Windows 3.1, we require you run Windows in Enhanced
mode while using Gahan Wilson's - The Ultimate Haunted House in
order to improve performance. To see if you are running Windows in
Enhanced mode, from the Program Manager Help menu choose About
Program Manager (or from the File Manager Help menu choose About File
Manager). In the bottom section of the dialog box, you should see the
phrase "386 Enhanced Mode." If you do not see this phrase, you can
force Windows to run in Enhanced mode by typing WIN/3 or WIN/E at the
DOS prompt when launching Windows. Windows for Workgroups always runs
in Enhanced mode and no message is displayed in the About dialog box.
When running Windows in Enhanced mode, set up a permanent Windows
swap file on your hard disk. See your Windows User's Guide for more
information.
Defragment ("clean up") your hard disk by running a
defragmentation program (MS-DOS 6.2 and above includes the program
"defrag").
CD-ROM Problems
Do not remove Gahan Wilson's - The Ultimate Haunted House compact
disc from your CD-ROM while the program is running. If Gahan Wilson's
The Ultimate Haunted House program cannot find the data files it
needs from the compact disc, you'll see a message telling you the
correct
CD must be in the drive to continue. To find the source of the
problem, do the following:
Make sure Gahan Wilson's - The Ultimate Haunted House compact disc
is correctly inserted into the CD-ROM drive.
Make sure you have the most recent versions of SmartDrive and MSCDEX
(SmartDrive 5.0 and MSCDEX 2.23 are the most recent versions at the
time of this release). The most recent version of SmartDrive can
cache the CD-ROM drive, greatly improving performance. Make sure
smartdrv is after MSCDEX in your Autoexec.bat. For information on the
current SmartDrive settings type "smartdrv" at the DOS prompt. For
help with SmartDrive type "smartdrv /?" at the DOS prompt or consult
your DOS User's Guide.
Make sure Gahan Wilson's - The Ultimate Haunted House program is
looking for the compact disc on the correct drive. Check to see if
the drive letter for your CD-ROM drive has changed. You can use the
Windows File Manager to determine which drive letter is assigned to
the CD-ROM drive. The Select Drive command in the Disk menu will say
"CD-ROM" next to the CD-ROM drive letter.
If you have an external CD-ROM drive, make sure the drive is
connected to your computer, plugged in, and turned on. If you still
see the error message after checking the points above, check the
documentation that came with your CD-ROM drive or contact the company
that supplied the drive.
Make sure your CD-ROM drive is MPC2-compatible. An MPC2-compatible
drive "has an average seek time of less than one second and can
transfer data from the compact disc at 300K per second while using
less than 40% of the CPU bandwidth." Check the documentation that
came with your CD-ROM drive to make sure it meets these requirements.
An incompatible CD-ROM drive will slow down the performance of Gahan
Wilson's - The Ultimate Haunted House.
Video Display Problems
Gahan Wilson's - The Ultimate Haunted House is a 256 color
application. In order to view Gahan Wilson's - The Ultimate Haunted
House properly, you need a video card which supports 256 colors in at
least 640x480 resolution. Gahan Wilson's - The Ultimate Haunted
House requires you run in 256 color mode. If your computer is running
in 16-color mode, and your video card will support 256 colors in at
least 640x480 resolution, you should run Windows Setup to change the
screen driver to see Gahan Wilson's - The Ultimate Haunted House at
256 (8-bit) colors. Check your Windows documentation for information
on changing video drivers.
If Gahan Wilson's - The Ultimate Haunted House is too small on your
screen, you are probably running in a resolution greater than
640x480. To make Gahan Wilson's - The Ultimate Haunted House fill
the screen, run Windows Setup* and change your video driver to run in
640x480 resolution
with 256 colors. You will need to restart windows. Gahan Wilson's -
The Ultimate Haunted House will now fill the entire screen.
* - (Some Video display adapters have a separate program you may have
to run to change the display mode, see your display adapters user
manual to check how to change your display resolutions)
Make sure you are using the most recent Windows video drivers for
your video card. These may be obtained from your video card
manufacturer.
To find out what video driver you are using, go to the Windows
Program Manager Main group window and double-click the Windows Setup
icon. To the right of "Display" you will see the name of the video
driver currently in use.
Screen Savers:
If you are running a screen saver of any kind, Gahan Wilson's - The
Ultimate Haunted House will continue to play unless you pause the
game (CTRL-P) manually. Gahan Wilson's - The Ultimate Haunted House
will continue to count down time unless you pause the game manually.
Dell S3 Drivers, versions 1.3 and 1.3a:
If you have a Dell computer with S3 video and are using the Dell S3
video drivers version 1.3 or 1.3a, you should install the latest
driver. For details on installing this driver, contact Dell.
ATI Mach Drivers
Gahan Wilson's - The Ultimate Haunted House is incompatible with
some advanced features used by some video cards such as the Mach32
chip set running the ATI drivers. For information about ATI video
cards contact ATI Technical Support at (416) 756-0711.
ATI Ultra Crystal Driver:
The ATI ULTRA CRYSTAL driver will allow you to select a 256-color
1024x768 display for a video card having 512K of memory. However,
512K of memory will not support 256 colors at this resolution.
Because Gahan Wilson's - The Ultimate Haunted House requires 256
colors to run
properly, you must select a driver supporting a 256-color display.
You must also make sure the video driver is compatible with your
specific video card. For details on selecting an appropriate driver,
see your ATI documentation or contact ATI technical support. A
256-color SVGA driver is included with Windows for Workgroups. For
details on installing this driver, see your Windows for Workgroups
documentation.
Obtaining Updated Drivers
Contact the manufacturer of your video card to determine if newer
Windows display drivers are available. Another option for obtaining
updated drivers is the Microsoft Download service, an electronic
bulletin board accessible via modem at (425) 936-MSDL(6735).
Drivers provided on the MSDL are compressed with the PKWare
utilities, and are in the form of executable files (.EXE extension).
It is best to download the file or files you need into an empty
directory on your hard disk or a blank formatted floppy. To
decompress these drivers after downloading them, either:
From Windows File Manager: double click on the filename (e.g., the
appropriate file ending in .EXE) you downloaded.
From the DOS prompt: change to the directory containing the
downloaded file, type the filename, and press ENTER.
The following video cards have been tested and give good results with
Gahan Wilson's - The Ultimate Haunted House:
Model Bus Date Driver Notes
Actix ProStar VL VLB 8/18/93 1.42 Note 1
ATI Graphics Ultra ISA 3/19/93 2.3
ATI Graphics Ultra Plus ISA 4/25/94 2.3
ATI Graphics Ultra Pro ISA & VLB 4/25/94 2.3
Blackship Color DesignerA3 VLB 7/8/93 1.32
Diamond Speed Star Pro ISA 2/17/94 1.08
Diamond Speed Star VGA ISA 4/14/92
Diamond Stealth 24 VLB 6/3/94 3.00
Diamond Stealth Pro VLB 10/6/93
ELSA Winner2000 Pro PCI 6/23/94 1.22
Hercules Dynamite Pro ISA 12/1/93 2.10 Note 2
Hercules Dynamite Pro VLB 12/1/93 3.00
Hercules Graphite Power ISA 4/6/94 2.10
IBM XGA Display MCA 11/12/93 2.11 Note 3
Matrox MGA Power Graphics PCI 3/28/93
Mitac MVA-CL5428-1MB VLB 3/15/94 V1.43
Number Nine 9GXe Level 10 ISA 2/9/94 V3.11 Note 4
Number Nine 9GXe Level 11 VLB 2/9/94 3.10.061 Notes 4, 5
Number Nine 9GXe Level 14 VLB 4/7/94 3.15 Note 4
Number Nine 9GXE64 VLB 6/22/94 1.19.04 Recommended
Orchid Celsius VLB 10/1/93 1.32 Recommended
Orchid Fahrenheit 1280 Plus VLB 3/1/94 rel 7 Note 6
Orchid Fahrenheit VA VLB 4/29/93 5.01
Orchid Kelvin 64 PCI 3/14/94 1.1
Orchid Kelvin 64 VLB 2/23/94 1.21
Orchid ProDesigner IIS ISA 3/1/92 2.0
Paradise WD90c33 VLB 6/28/93 1.2
Standard 1Mb-24X ISA 3/19/93 1.30
STB Horizon VL Pro VLB 6/29/93 1.3
STB Lightspeed PCI 12/1/93 1.1
STB Pegasus VLB 11/29/93 1.3
TrueVision Bravado 8 ISA 1/15/92
Note 1: Driver version 1.53 sometimes hangs when playing certain
transitions. Driver version 1.42 is recommended.
Note 2: Does not always properly display QuickTime digital video in
16 bit (thousands) and 24 bit (millions) color modes.
Note 3: Does not draw extremely wide arcs properly.
Note 4: There is sometimes sound break-up or distortion during
complex transitions using most sound cards.
Note 5: The cursor sometimes disappears when using a large virtual desktop.
Note 6: Video snow appears during some palette transitions.
Audio Problems
Audio problems can have many causes. Other applications playing
sounds may interrupt sounds in Gahan Wilson's - The Ultimate Haunted
House, because your computer cannot play two sounds simultaneously.
This is generally a temporary clash that will resolve itself.
However, a few
applications that play sounds, such as some screen savers, may remove
audio capability from all other Windows applications. If you suspect
you have such an application, turn it off or do not run it while
running Gahan Wilson's - The Ultimate Haunted House.
Sounds play, but not very well
Distorted or "fuzzy" sounds have several possible causes. A likely
cause is simply your speakers are not of high quality.
It is also possible the software settings on your sound board are
causing distortion. For example, if the sound card volume or "WAVE
file input" is set to near its maximum, it will produce amplification
distortion, just as it would on a stereo system. To find out how to
change your sound board settings, check the documentation that came
with your sound board
Your CD-ROM drive should be MPC2-compatible. An MPC2-compatible drive
"has an average seek time of less than one second and can transfer
data from the compact disc at 300K per second while using less than
40% of the CPU bandwidth." Check the documentation that came with
your CD-
ROM drive to make sure it meets these requirements. An incompatible
CD-ROM drive may work but give lower-quality sound or cause the sound
to be interrupted while playing.
Sound doesn't play at all
If you don't hear any sounds, make sure the volume for your speakers
is set to an audible level. If the volume is set to an audible level
and you still hear no sounds at all, something may be wrong with your
sound board setup. Check to see the driver is installed correctly
and, if necessary, reinstall it. Refer to the documentation that came
with your sound card for more information on installing audio
drivers.
Please note Gahan Wilson's - The Ultimate Haunted House requires an
MPC-compatible sound board to be installed and is not intended to run
with drivers which use the PC internal speaker, such as the
unsupported "PC Speaker" driver. Such a driver will in most cases not
play any sounds, and if the driver setup option "Enable Interrupts"
is not checked, your system may crash. If you have both a sound board
and the PC Speaker driver installed, it is preferable to un-install
the PC Speaker driver.
Media Vision cards
A small number of Media Vision sound card drivers (Pro Audio
Spectrum cards) may cause problems. If you have a Media Vision card
and don't hear speech but you hear music, you may need to upgrade
your driver. Contact Media Vision Technical Support to find out how
to obtain a new or updated driver.
Ensoniq Soundscape cards
The Ensoniq Soundscape card will not play sounds with the driver in
the Windows driver default configuration. Try the following
suggestion to improve audio performance.
Problems with WAV files under Windows
If you are having trouble hearing sound with WAV files, check the
following:
Go to your Drivers applet [Control Panel] and double-click on
Soundscape DVD MIDI, WAVE, AUX. Ensure that you have WAVE A setup as
0 and that WAVE B is setup to Disable [Note: if there is something
else in your system that is using those DMA channels, you will need
to use another DMA setting such as 3].
Contact Ensoniq Technical Support to find out how to obtain a new or
updated driver.
Sound Cards - General
The following sound cards have been tested and are compatible with
Gahan Wilson's - The Ultimate Haunted House:
Sound Card Notes and comments
Compaq Business Audio
Creative Labs SoundBlaster
Creative Labs SoundBlaster Pro
Creative Labs SoundBlaster 16
Creative Labs SoundBlaster AWE32
Gateway 2000
IBM M-Audio Driver version 1.3 - Note 1
MediaVision ProAudio Spectrum
MediaVision ProAudio Spectrum 16
MediaVision ProAudio Spectrum 16 Pro
Microsoft Sound System Version 1
Microsoft Sound System Version 2
Orchid SoundWave 32
Reveal Forte 16
Roland Rap-10
Note 1: IBM computers having the M-Audio sound card should use driver
version 1.3 or higher for best results. Older versions of this driver
don't play some sounds in Director or AVI movies. The version 1.3
driver does not pass the 16-bit sounds test for Director. Testing has
revealed
8 bit sounds are corrupted when played after a 16-bit sound. At the
time these release notes were written, version 1.3 (dated 1/10/94)
was the most recent driver available from IBM.
Skipping the Introduction
To skip the introduction, click the mouse button anytime while it's
playing.
Additional query words: kbhowto ensonic 1.00
======================================================================
Keywords :
Technology : kbZNotKeyword kbKidsSearch kbHauntedHouse
Version : :1.0
Issue type : kbinfo
=============================================================================
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