the subject says it all really. any one able to do it? e-mail me if you have any idea... thanks.

e-mail me too

As the world's first person to successfully do it.. it IS possible to run privateer in windows and linux. The problem is... speed. You want a really fast processor, I'm talking p4 2+ghz here... my home pc which I did it on is a duron 1.3ghz with 448mb ram! running xp pro. it doesn't even make a dent. The game loads, has slightly dodgy sound, music works fine, but as I said... speed... it's too damn slow. If you DO have a fast pc, get either vmware, or virtualpc. they WILL run with priv. vmware needs /m3 added to the emm386.exe line of the autoexec.bat file. There ARE projects underway to get privateer running under windows and linux as a standalone program, but those projects are a long way off. The only other real hope right now is if someone writes a dos emulator that can implement all cpu/realmode instructions, but that isn't going to happen anytime soon by the look of things. Dosbox can't do it, and they're the closest yet. mario HCL Brito is documenting every thing about the JEMM memory which priv uses for its realmode hopefully he'll be able to use that to make priv run. I hope this helps you, I'm sorry the news isn't any better.

Why the hell do you need a fast processor to run a game built for 486s?

Good Question. What does Processor Speed have to do with this particular problem?

VMware really slows down your PC. You can run Win95 on the virtual PC, but not fast.

I had it working, but I used a boot disk and moslo. You can find good bootdisks at http://bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm They have cdrom support too. There might be a few additional problems though, like sound and memory but I'm working on it.

Hi i'm another one trying to work priv1 under XP. I've tried everything (vdmsound, dosbox, VMware, VirtualPc) but none of them worked. In fact, only vmware worked but with no sound (if i enable sound or music, the "fatal error D002-FFFF" message comes up). I also tried booting from DOS (installed on seperate hard disk) but the problem is that my sound card (SB Live!) isn't recognized by the game. Can anybody help me with all this? I REALLY want to play this great game again!

Hmm... I am going TDY for a while so don't have time to play w/it today.

You might try locking the IRQ & port on the card instead of going w/dynamic assignment. That might cause DOS to be able to read it... not sure.
If you have an ISA slot, you could try picking up an old SB card and installing it. When it comes up in XP, disable it. That won't prevent DOS from using it.

More to follow later if I can find something else.

I locked the card's IRQ at 5 from BIOS but it didn't work. I also tried SB16 emulation driver from creative. It works fine for most DOS games, but when i type "priv" and hit enter, the computer locks up. No error message. Same if i disable audio for the game. (The game runs fine with audio/music disabled, but with no sb16 loaded). And my board doesn't have an ISA slot( HEEELPP!!

A real easy solution to all of your problems is to go down to a second hand store or a garage sale and get an old 486 and put dos on it if it's not already there. Get on the net and find all the dos drivers for your devices. Then run Privateer. It'll work fine.

Another thing you could try is to get a different dos driver for your sound card.

have you guys looked into MYJEMM?

try going to vdm sound and downloading there program I am on the same quest as you. I heard xp tries to create a dos enviroment to get sound, but it sucks. Its a wondes the os was created by the same company. I heard VDM sound does a much better job. OOh its not wing commander, but freelancer is a modern game that has alot in gameplay as priv well as close as your gonna get e-mail me at MikeAaron321@aol.com if one of you wizards cracks this one.

Try DosBox http://dosbox.sourceforge.net You have to edit the .cfg file. EMS=false and pump the cpu cycles up to about 7500. I think the default is 2500.

Privateer indeed works with the latest Dosbox, but can't talk much about playing it while fps is something like 5-10 on a XP1700+... I surely hope that they'll tweak the next Dosbox so that Privateer becomes more playable!