Microsoft Chat "Comic Chat" in WINE Installation & Display

[oarion7]

Been trying to figure this out on sporadic occasions over the last ten+ years. Trying to install and run "Comic Chat" (Microsoft Chat in Comics Mode). I've googled this extensively over the years and this time I think I've made at least a little more progress with regards to troubleshooting research.

Running wine-1.6.2 on Ubuntu 14.04.

Unlike previous attempts years ago, I can now actually run the install executable mschat25.exe. I am able to click OK/yes to install, then the installation program appears to get interrupted. Nonetheless, the "Microsoft Chat" directory is successfully created under Program Files.

The newly generated "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Chat" directory contains two files which do not appear to exist in the equivalent installation folder on my virtual Windows XP system. These are "chatmig.dll" and "icchat.tlb."

I am able to successfully launch the installed "CChat.exe" from Program Files, and everything looks and works fine except that comic panes do not generate correctly at all: there are large black shapes in place of legible chat balloons and comic pane frames.

What it looks like:
http://i35.tinypic.com/jku4pk.jpg

What it should look like:
http://kurlander.net/DJ/Projects/ComicChat/FromVWG.jpg

When

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wine start "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Chat\CChat.exe"

is executed from the Linux terminal, the following output is generated:

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err:ole:TLB_ReadTypeLib Loading of typelib L"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Chat\\icchat.tlb" failed with error 1006
fixme:ole:RemUnknown_QueryInterface No interface for iid {00000019-0000-0000-c000-000000000046}
fixme:imm:ImmReleaseContext (0x10110, 0x17eb78): stub
fixme:storage:create_storagefile Storage share mode not implemented.

It would seem to me that, perhaps, if I could get the installer to work correctly, then that may resolve these issues. I have riched20, MS .Net framework 2.0, and IE6 installed via winetricks.

When running the installation executable (mschat25.exe), which as I mentioned seems to get interrupted but does generate the Program Files directory, I get the following output in the terminal:

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~/.wine/drive_c>wine start mschat25.exe 
fixme:exec:SHELL_execute flags ignored: 0x00000100
~/.wine/drive_c>fixme:advpack:set_ldids Need to support changing paths - default will be used

After that point, the installation hangs indefinitely without anything in the GUI and I have to run a ^C to regain control of the terminal.

Also, if I launch the working version Chat program in my virtual Windows XP box, and run "tasklist /m" while it's running, I get the following output:

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CChat.exe     748 ntdll.dll, kernel32.dll, ADVAPI32.dll,       
                                 RPCRT4.dll, Secur32.dll, GDI32.dll,          
                                 USER32.dll, COMCTL32.dll, ole32.dll,         
                                 msvcrt.dll, OLEAUT32.dll, WSOCK32.dll,       
                                 WS2_32.dll, WS2HELP.dll, SHELL32.dll,        
                                 SHLWAPI.dll, WINMM.dll, IMM32.dll,           
                                 WINSPOOL.DRV, comdlg32.dll, oledlg.dll,      
                                 comctl32.dll, MSCTF.dll, msctfime.ime,       
                                 RICHED32.DLL, RICHED20.dll, MSRATING.DLL,    
                                 WININET.dll, Normaliz.dll, urlmon.dll,       
                                 iertutil.dll, unidrvui.dll, VERSION.dll,     
                                 xpsp2res.dll

If I cross check these files with a list of all system files in the equivalent wine installation, the following system files from the above list do not exist anywhere ~/.wine:

• WS2HELP.dll
  msctfime.ime
  iertutil.dll
  unidrvui.dll
  xpsp2res.dll

Interesting that iertutil.dll does not exist in wine installation, as that is why I installed IE6 to begin with.

I'm curious about this "tlb" file error and dll list comparison. Sometime around Julian Assange's talk show on RT I maintained a blog for a while documenting how to imitate Microsoft Chat using a combination of shell scripts and weechat plugins, with the hopes that an actual developer might take up the project, but it was too time consuming for me to continue. Would love to run this once in a while in the one chat room that still has active users, without having to boot up a VM

Thanks for any advice anyone may have!

[dimesio]

Running wine-1.6.2 on Ubuntu 14.04.

You need to upgrade Wine; 1.6.2 is four years old and long out of support. The current stable release is 3.0. https://wiki.winehq.org/Ubuntu

[oarion7]

Running wine-1.6.2 on Ubuntu 14.04.

You need to upgrade Wine; 1.6.2 is four years old and long out of support. The current stable release is 3.0. https://wiki.winehq.org/Ubuntu

Thanks, after upgrading to wine-3.0:

The installed CChat.exe will no longer execute at all.

I responded to this by deleting ~/.wine and creating a fresh win32 prefix at ~/.wine

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WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/.wine winecfg 

Attempt to run installation executable mschat25.exe and result seems to be the same from attempt documented in the first post. Creates Program Files directory but seems to not complete and hangs without GUI forcing ^C

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~/.wine/drive_c>wine start mschat25.exe 
0009:fixme:exec:SHELL_execute flags ignored: 0x00000100
~/.wine/drive_c>002f:fixme:advpack:set_ldids Need to support changing paths - default will be used
^C

Using the latest version of wine, the newly installed CChat.exe executable does not load at all.

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~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Microsoft Chat>wine start CChat.exe 
0009:fixme:exec:SHELL_execute flags ignored: 0x00000100
~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Microsoft Chat>002e:err:seh:setup_exception_record stack overflow 1936 bytes in thread 002e eip 7bc47838 esp 00240ba0 stack 0x240000-0x241000-0x340000
^C

I went ahead and used winetricks to install riched20 and ie6 (without the former there are problems such as not being able to use the space bar)

This time I ran wine CChat.exe instead of wine start CChat.exe and to my surprise, comic panes loaded correctly! Everything else seems to be working as well, including the download feature for custom characters being used in the chat room.

I will admit my ignorance here and consult wine documentation to figure out the difference between wine CChat.exe and wine start CChat.exe. Although the leader of the pack I'm not the only one who's been trying to do this for years, so I'll have to write up some documentation somewhere as well.

Also, in case someone sees this later, I'll mention here as is mentioned elsewhere that due to this IRC software being so out of date, it might crash when you attempt to join a room on modern IRC servers. There is one server still dedicated to MS Comic Chat users, easily searchable online, and I am able to connect and do everything fine

Comic Sans font, you were created for one thing and one thing only, welcome back to your one true purpose in the world.

Thanks, dimesio