Installing WA on Virtual PC

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If you cannot get Worms Armageddon working on your computer (due to e.g. hardware compatibility), you can install it in a Virtual machine. A virtual machine emulates an entire computer with all its hardware, separating the game from your real hardware/operating system and its problems or incompatibilities.

Virtual PC is a free desktop virtualization software from Microsoft. The following guide describes the necessary steps to set up a Windows virtual machine in Microsoft Virtual PC and install Worms Armageddon on it.

Prerequisites

You will need:

  1. A computer powerful enough to emulate a virtual machine (at least 512MB of RAM)
  2. A working Internet connection
  3. A few gigabytes of free space on your hard drive
  4. A copy of Windows 98 or newer on a CD

Setting up Microsoft Virtual PC

Go to the Microsoft Virtual PC page and download the application. Install it after it has downloaded.

Creating the virtual machine

Start up Microsoft Virtual PC. You should be greeted by the New Virtual Machine Wizard; if the wizard does not appear automatically, click the "New..." button on the Virtual PC Console.

Follow these steps to create your virtual machine:

  • Page 2: select Create a virtual machine;
  • Page 3: enter a name for your virtual machine;
  • Page 4: select the operating system which you will be installing. For Windows ME, select Windows 98.
  • Page 5: select Adjusting the RAM and increase the suggested memory size by 64 - 128 MB.
  • Page 6: select A new virtual hard disk

Where not specified, leave settings to their defaults.

Setting up the guest operating system

First, insert your Windows operating system installation CD in your CD drive.

If your CD is not bootable, you will also need to insert an MS-DOS boot floppy disk with CD-ROM support. You can create one on a computer running Windows 98 or ME. If one is not available or if it is not working properly, you can download a self-writing boot disk image from here.

Double-click your virtual machine in the Virtual PC Console to start it.

If your CD is bootable, the virtual machine will boot from the CD and Windows Setup should start.

If your CD is not bootable, the virtual machine will boot from the floppy drive and an MS-DOS command prompt will appear.
If you are installing an operating system older than Windows 2000, you will need to partition/format your virtual drive and start setup manually. Follow these steps:

Step 1 - create a primary partition
  1. at the command prompt, type FDISK
  2. select Y at the "Enable large disk support" prompt, if one appears
  3. select 1 to create a new partition
  4. select 1 to create a new primary partition
  5. select Y to mark the partition as active and use all available space
  6. press Escape as prompted after the operation has completed
  7. if FDISK does not automatically reboot the virtual machine, select Action → Reset from the Virtual PC menu to reset the virtual machine
Step 2 - format the partition
  1. back at the command prompt, type FORMAT C:
  2. select Y to confirm
  3. enter a volume label if desired
Step 3 - start setup
  1. back at the command prompt, type D: to switch to your CD-ROM drive
    • Note: some bootdisks may mount the CD-ROM drive to other letters than D: (for example X:). If entering the command above gives an error, try other drive letters.
  2. with some CDs, you may need to navigate to the folder containing SETUP.EXE - use the MS-DOS commands CD to navigate to a subfolder and DIR to list the contents of the current folder
  3. type SETUP

If are installing Windows 2000 or a newer version from a non-bootable CD, follow these steps to start Setup manually:

  1. type D: to switch to your CD-ROM drive
  2. type CD I386 to change the current directory to D:\i386
  3. type WINNT to start the DOS-based installer

Installing Windows onto the virtual machine should be fairly straight-forward. If you are unsure about something, select the default option. If you encounter difficulties, please consult your operating system installation guide.

Note: all changes are being done inside your virtual machine, and do not affect your computer. The Windows installation will format your virtual hard drive, not your real one. From your computer's point of view, all changes will be made to the virtual machine files.

Follow the setup process until the virtual machine starts to your Windows desktop.

Installing Worms Armageddon

Take out your Windows installation CD and insert your Worms Armageddon CD. W:A installation should start; install the game in your virtual machine as you would do normally.

After the game is installed, you will need to update it. In your virtual machine, open Internet Explorer and go to wa.team17.com. Click the Update button in the corner, and download and install the latest Beta update. Agree to download and install any required intermediate updates.

Note: if your virtual machine is not able to access the Internet, try the following: in the virtual machine's settings, on the Networking page select Shared networking (NAT) for Adapter 1.

If you encounter difficulties, please consult the more detailed installation guides available here.

Virtual Machine Additions

Depending on your guest operating system, Virtual Machine Additions may be required to play W:A. Windows XP does not require Virtual Machine Additions to run W:A, however older operating systems do.

Also, if you use the same virtual machine for other tasks, Virtual Machine Additions may considerably improve your experience. However, some Virtual Machine Additions features are not compatible with Worms Armageddon.

If you find that after installing Virtual Machine Additions, the camera and mouse pointer move erratically within the game, you will need to disable mouse pointer integration. To do this, open the virtual machine's settings (from the Edit menu), and on the Mouse tab uncheck the Use pointer integration checkbox.

Remarks

After following these steps, W:A should be able to run well on the virtual machine.

If something in this guide does not work for you, you can also try other free virtualization software:

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