WineX + Starcraft -- can't create start menu link, and install fails

[psi42]

Hi all.


I've got fairly recent winex CVS, and I've been trying to get Starcraft Brood War to install. I've set up a fake windows drive and have gotten other games to work. However, the starcraft install fails when it is trying to create start menu entries:


Error:

Unable to create a link to C:\scraft\Starcraft.exe as
C:\WINDOWS\Start Menu\Programs\Starcraft\Starcraft.lnk.
Installation aborted.
Error 0: Success
at: LinkUndo.cpp line 165


If I click OK, it deleted all the files it just installed. If I kill wine, then starcraft works fine, BUT I can't install the Brood War expansion pack. It stops with the same error, and if I try killing wine then, the game install becomes corrupted and nothing works.

Any ideas?

~psi42

[bwkaz]

Do you have a <fake windows drive>/Windows/Start Menu/Programs/Starcraft directory?

How about just <that stuff>/Programs? The installer might be smart enough to create the Starcraft directory if it's needed.

Basically, if I had to guess I'd say that it's failing because it won't create mid-level directories before creating the file. Basically, it's a broken installer -- it fails doing one extremely non-critical thing (creating a shortcut, for crying out loud!), so it rolls back the entire install... :rolleyes:

Anyway, creating those directories might help.

[psi42]

Originally posted by bwkaz
Do you have a <fake windows drive>/Windows/Start Menu/Programs/Starcraft directory?

How about just <that stuff>/Programs? The installer might be smart enough to create the Starcraft directory if it's needed.


Yes, all those directories exist. In fact, it managed to install the "Blizzard registration.url" link in Start Menu/Programs/Starcraft, but it won't do anything with the .lnk files. :(

[bwkaz]

Maybe if you create an (empty) .lnk file manually in that directory, it won't try to do it itself?

I don't know, I'm just grasping at straws here...

[psi42]

Nope, no luck there either. :( Still the same error message.


<edit>Okay, I finally got it working (kind of). I linked winex to a "real" windows partition, and it installed fine. And in the grand spirit of these things, it didn't even create a Starcraft.lnk. A pity, really, as winex was perfectly capable of running starcraft without windows except for the link problem... :(

I'd be interested to hear if anyone finds a workaround. :)</edit>

~psi42

[bwkaz]

Maybe it's something with Wine's internals? There's a Win32 API function that you use to create a .lnk file, maybe Wine's implementation of it might just return a failure because it doesn't know how to do that.

Maybe when you pointed wine at a real Windows partition, it used the native .dll?

[psi42]

That would make sense.........


Anyway, I was able to move the starcraft directory to my fake windows drive and copied the changes winex made to user.reg and system.reg to my old configuration setup. Anyway, now it works.

And so...starcraft on linux through winex works great, but first I needed a windows setup just to get the install to work.

By the way, if anyone is trying to run those self-extracting CWAD files (for starcraft single-player campaigns) and can't get it to work with wine, rename the secwad exe file to patch_rt.mpq and run starcraft and it just works...

~psi42

[RallyMonkey]

Do you still have the config files you used to get it to work?

[psi42]

If you mean the registry entries, I probably do...

However, I believe you will need to run the setup binary in order to set the CD key properly... so you will need a real windows installation in this case.