Knights and Merchants.net Forum

Hey all. I just remembered about the game lately and decided to dig for the CD and play it again.

Last I played it was about 5-6 years ago and back then I had Windows 98. The game back then was enjoyable and took some of my time

So, I installed it to my current PC with Windows Vista and it installed correctly and works when I run it
the problem is though that the game is painfully slow. The mouse is laggy (clicks don't respond and the movement of the cursur is a bit skippy) and the FPS looks as if its about , 5-10.
Any suggestion for making this game run well again ingame?

There's a Vista thread a little below this one but I'm sure not whether or not it will help...

Upgrade to XP.
Or, in fact, if you get KAM running in a virtual machine with XP or win2k, it will run better than natively in vista. (that is how bad vista is, therefore you would do better to upgrade to XP - don't worry, you can dual boot, so you don't have to lose Vista)

Well, I don't wish to dual boot and all that. (I don't have the XP disk with me atm and I really don't hate Vista, except for this)
A fix for this would of course be much appreciated as I only had this problem with Knights and Merchants (other old games like lets say, Caesar III work well for me)

But once I get my Windows XP Disk back, I might as well Dual Boot but could you please give me a good guide for dual booting? (don't wish to screw up)
Thanks

You can try the VM solution until that time (just download a free volume licenced XP or something like that). If you use VirtualBox it will not harm anything.

For dual-booting you may need a Vista dvd as well, then again maybe not.
In short: make sure you have enough 'real free -' or 'free NTFS -' space on your harddisk, install XP there, and make sure your bootloader will see XP.

http://www.raymond.cc/blog/archives/2007/10/06/how-to-dual-boot-vista-and-xp-with-vista-installed-first/
http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp
http://www.google.com/search?q=dual+boot+xp+vista

If I were you I would remove Vista altogether. Nothing good will come of it - it's slow, huge, and it insults your intelligence. No it is not safe. The only improvement compared to XP is the graphics, but with a good skin XP isn't ugly either (though you won't get glass, but glass is not the reason you use a computer)
Vista is slow. Even on my computer. (3,3GHz quad core (originally 3GHz), 4GB 800MHz ram, 8800GTS 640mb see other thread for details)

I didn't ask for your opinion about Vista and I have no intension of switching back to Vista, after all this is the only problem I am having with Vista and is not worth switching back to XP. :roll:

But that is a whole seperate argument so back to the topic please.

'VM solution'? Could you explain to me what is it? :

Yes it is. This is not a random opinion, it is based on experience and facts.
But it's your own choice if you want to cripple your computer with extremely slow OS's like Vista.
If you do not have any trouble with it then don't switch, but you will have trouble as soon as you do anything "out of the ordinary" such as deleting a file or running a program that is not from Micro$oft. (or updating your anti virus software)
This is easy (and will remind you of the easy-of-use of XP).
Get VirtualBox (no you don't need a link, there is google)
Install it (unlike many programs, it is rumored to actually work on Vista)
Get an XP cd (download using ?Torrent)
Create a new VM on it with 512MB ram and 128MB video memory
Then on the VM: install xp, install K&M, play K&M

Word of warning: on some (recent) builds of VirtualBox, K&M does not work. You can try VM ware instead if virtualbox is still broken, but VM ware is harder to use.

Piece of cake.

Ok I have got my hands on Windows XP Essentials and Dual Booted it on my PC. Now the problem is that when I try to start up K&M, a black screen just appears for one second and without error switches back to the desktop.

I had updated the Video card drivers for WinXP but didn't work
Any suggestion to fix it? (I tried compability mode, but I don't think that is the problem since it starts well even at Vista)

I think there's a patch for download that may fix this.

http://www.knightsandmerchants.net/support/downloads/

ok, haven't read much of this topic so somebody may have already mentioned this, but i found the easiest way for me to play kam under vista with no problems is to use virtual pc 2007. you have to install it, set up a virtual engine and install your operating system on it, but i did it and its worth it for the amount of time i spend on this

the download is here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloadS/details.aspx?FamilyID=04d26402-3199-48a3-afa2-2dc0b40a73b6&displaylang=en#filelist

easier than dual booting maybe? don't know haven't tried it ever but iv been using this for a while now and no problems at all really as long as you set it up correctly.

other than that, don't know about any other solutions, just thought i'd try and help

Or better yet, http://www.virtualbox.org/
Free, non-microsoft, actually has features.. etc

TPR works on the latest VirtualBox with XP installed on it

Virtual PC should work of course (if you don't mind the missing features)

Playing the game at 800x600 allows the game to run at around 95% speed for me is quite good. Virtual PC completely messed up when the game was constantly changing resolutions when going from the game to the main menu and vice versa (windowed mode worked, but I prefer full screen). VMWare didn't even support resolution changing at all and took the cheap way of adding borders around the screen.
Perhaps I should give VirtualBox a run.

it works:

You can switch to full-screen mode of course, but then you can't take a screenshot so I couldn't show that.. (besides, since you wouldn't see VirtualBox anymore, it wouldn't be any kind of proof)

ps: I'm running XP x64 as host (yes it's skinned) and normal XP as guest. 64bit guests are possible.. but rather useless (unless you were planning to give it more than 3GB ram)

Okay I got it up and running and all, but I couldn't find any option to change the host resolution to that of the guest OS (to eliminate borders when full screen). Anyone mind enlightening me where it's hidden?