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Fallout 3 - says game not installed

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zootal Tuesday 13 March 2012 at 2:35
zootalAnonymous

I'm trying to get Fallout 3 working. The setup works fine, steam downloads it, etc. but when I try to run the Configurator or the game itself, the Fallout 3 configurator screen appears, but instead of being able to play or even configure Options, INSTALL is the first option, and options is disabled. If I click that option it tells me Fallout 3 is not installed, etc.

As near as I can tell, there is something wrong with the prefix that POL created, as Ican get this to work in my own prefixes.

For testing purposes, I do this:

Using the directions from WineHQ:

I create a clean prefix, using wine 1.4:
Use winetricks to install cc580 (comctl32), d3dx9, directx9, vcrun2005
copy msasn1.dll to system32 directory, overide it set to native
Install games for windows (must make sure wine process is dead before you do this)
Set windows verison to winxp (this probably is not necessary)
set xlive.dll to native

Launch! The game still tries to install dotnet.3 the first time it runs, but I cancell the install because I've never been able to get dotnet 3 to install without crashing, and FO3 doesn't need it anyhow. Now FO3 works beautifully.

So now I have a working wine prefix that FO3 will run it. I copy the entire prefix over the Fallout3 prefix that POL installed. Since POL requires Steam to be in Program Files directory, I create a link to my Steam install, so POL thinks Steam is where it wants it to be.

Run POL, which is still set to use the 1.3.26-xliveless2 wine version, try to start FO3. Runs beautifully.

I conclude that for reasons unknown to me, 1) FO3 works with wine 1.4, and 2) the prefix that POL creates has something wrong with it that prevents FO3 from running. Manually configuring a prefix as described works.

Is there anything I can tell you about my working prefix that would help?