Dear Community !

At first I'd like to say hello and many thanks for that great Simulation. I liked it as a Demo but I love it as the full monty, it is just great, but I start to repeat myself. Now to my problem:

I have two operating systems on my puter, Win98SE and Win2000Pro.

Win98SE is mainly for Games and for messing around. Normally I play LFS from this OS.

The Win2000 partition is for work and I leave it as untouched as possible.

Due to some sound issues with Win98 I gave LFS a try with Win2000 (same Installation !!!). It appears to me that it is running more stable in terms of frame rate and the sound is also much better with Win 2k. And since LFS doesn´t messes around with the OS I decided to stay with Win2k for LFS. NOW comes the problem:

The game was already unlocked under Win98. When I started it up in Win2k (as I said, from the same location than it was with Win98) it was again in Demo status. Still no problem here. So I unlocked it again under Win2k. BUT when I started it up again under Win98 it was back in Demo status. Now that I have only one unlock left I would like to know if it is possible to run LFS from two operating systems from the same location or do I need two installations, one for each OS ? Can I have both unlocked then ? Apparently it is quite impossible to run both at the same time.

Thanks !

Johannes.

Each windows installation (be it w98/w2000 or w2000/w2000) needs its own LFS.

Which I still wonder about, becuase I have 3 installs of windows on this PC, all 3 using the same CD and serial, and 2 them share 1 account successfully, but if I go to use this one in that LFS, it says demo, same way with those 2 using this S2. Its odd, doesn't bother me any but still a really weird thing.

Adding this post in case people with the same problem search for Vista instead of Windows XP or 2000.

I'm getting the same issue with a dual boot Win XP and Vista system. Only one copy of LFS on the computer, but both Windows installs access it. If it's unlocked in one OS it then locks in the other.

No great problem, if it's fixed by having one copy of LFS per operating system.

a sort of dirty way to do this would be by unlocking it on one windows
copying/pasting the /data/misc folder
rename the copied misc folder to somehting more obvious (misc_2k or whatever)
unlocking it on the other win
and then from there always rename the misc_* folder to misc for the windows install youre using right now (probably could be automated via batch)

a much simple solution would obviously be to just copy paste the entire lfs folder and be done with it

Simply install a copy for each partition and unlock both.
Downside of this is that whatever you download or create for one will be missing from the other (skins, sets, spr/mpr, etc)
A simple copy paste solves that as well.

I was about to post this issue afresh and found it via search.


This STILL happens. Are there any plans to fix it at all?

It seems stupid to have 2 copies of the same game in different places on the same physical hardware just so you can keep both unlocked!

Windows 98?
Do you know its a more than 10 year old OS right?

Quote from ColonelK :

This STILL happens. Are there any plans to fix it at all?

Fix what precisely? Anyway, this is not likely going to happen. I percept the current locking scheme behavior rather like a design feature than a bug. Just imagine unlock is valid and bound to HW+OS combo. If you replace one of those, LFS would deliberately revert back to DEMO in sake of security measure. S2FULL/DEMO status is persisted somewhere in customer file under data/misc folder, that explains the issue you're experiencing with OS changes.

Having and maintaining two separate S2 installations (or at least misc folders) isn't such a big deal, is it?

Ditch win98 already is my advice.

Windows 2000 is the better platform to use because it supports DX9 and is still updated by Microsoft (until 2010) Besides, it's much more secure than 98.