winecfg: add note about 32 bit prefixes to dialog

Jason Overland jasonoverland at gmail.com
Wed Mar 25 20:07:49 CDT 2015


On 03/24/2015 03:35 PM, Stefan Dösinger wrote:
>> Context behind this:  To run Simcity 2000 I change my Wine prefix
>> settings to mimic NT 3.5 so that it uses a different file chooser
>> dialog which doesn't crash the game (for whatever reason).  This
>> last time installing things I was confused about why I didn't see
>> the option for NT 3.5 until slackner reminded me on IRC that I need
>> a 32 bit prefix to have that option.
> Somewhat offtopic to your patch: Is this a known bug in the game? Does
> it crash in Windows XP or newer unless you set Win9x or Win NT
> compatibility? It may be a good idea to investigate the actual crash.

It's fine in Windows XP without any compatibility settings, but it silently crashes in Windows 7.  This is something I'd like to investigate and I've dug a bit into the comdlg32 code but I'm not really sure where to look.  It seems to be related to a "custom hook" on file dialogs which is something I'm not familiar with.  Since the crash is a null reference I'm wondering if there's a good way to look for nulls that Wine could be passing to the game.  The game appears to use MFC file dialog classes so I'm wondering if the bug is in how the game is using them or in actual MFC code (or Wine/Windows).
>
>> So, I thought it might be useful if the dialog could have a note
>> explaining why those options aren't there if you're running from a
>> 64 bit prefix -- and thus this patch.  To make room for the text I
>> made the applications Listbox 20 pixels shorter.
> - From a user interface point of view, what do you think about adding
> those old Windows versions in the listbox, maybe with a different text
> like "Windows 98 not available in 64 bit", and programming the code to
> set the dropdown field back to the last setting if the user decides to
> choose one of those settings? Or instead of having the modified text,
> pop up an error box and set the setting back.

I had actually considered the option of having the versions in the listbox with an error pop up if the user selects an incompatible one, and I think I like it better.  But I wanted to get my feet wet and this patch was a quick and dirty way of getting something working and seeing what people think of the problem I'm trying to solve, if not the solution.  It sounds as if people like the idea of having all the options + error pop up, so I'll probably go ahead and do that and resubmit the patch.



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