Running games installed in Windows

Pseudo_Bob · Post by **Pseudo_Bob** » Sun Jun 01, 2008 8:19 pm

So I have Guild Wars and World of Warcraft installed and running on Windows on my computer. I just got Wine (and Ubuntu, for that matter,) running on the computer, and I was hoping there was a way to access the files in windows so I wouldn't have to take up twice the disk space on my hard drive. Can anyone tell me how to do this (if it's possible)?

Evil Jay · Post by **Evil Jay** » Sun Jun 01, 2008 8:39 pm

Pseudo_Bob wrote:

So I have Guild Wars and World of Warcraft installed and running on Windows on my computer. I just got Wine (and Ubuntu, for that matter,) running on the computer, and I was hoping there was a way to access the files in windows so I wouldn't have to take up twice the disk space on my hard drive. Can anyone tell me how to do this (if it's possible)?

I've done it in the past with very few problems. Basically all you need
to do is set your Windows partition to automount in fstab (if you don't
have it set already), then define a drive letter that points to the path
of the application.

Many apps can usually then just be run by executing Wine with that
path. But, sometimes, you may have to run the installer again in Linux,
to create missing registry entries. Be sure to point the install path
to the drive letter you mapped to the existing application, so you're
basically just installing "over" the existing Windows install.

Be sure to have a backup before trying anything, lest the
installer/patcher fail on Linux and corrupt your working Windows install!

-J

Pseudo_Bob · Post by **Pseudo_Bob** » Sun Jun 01, 2008 9:58 pm

I'm sure that'd be very useful if I knew how to do that...

I understand everything except the whole setting the Windows partition to automount in fstab and defining the drive letter. That's kinda where you lost me.

jeffz · Post by **jeffz** » Mon Jun 02, 2008 2:03 am

It's recommended that you install your programs in Wine, even says so in the FAQ

http://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ#head-5418856 ... 76f7834eee

1.5. I have lots of apps already installed in Windows. How do I run them in Wine?

Short answer: you have to install them in Wine just like you did in Windows.

Long answer: some applications can be copied from Windows to Wine and still work, but don't try this unless you like tinkering under the hood of your car while it's running.

Wine is not designed to interact with an existing Windows installation.

WARNING: Do not try to configure Wine to point to your actual Windows C:\ drive. We have tried to make this hard to do, so you probably can't do it by accident.

oiaohm · Post by **oiaohm** » Mon Jun 02, 2008 3:59 am

Jeffz is 100 percent correct I am 100 percent sick of having to say its your fault in winehq when they do this.

Something Evil Jay is missing just because it works now any of the next updates could kill the game.

Clearly think of wine as a completely different version of windows. There are very few applications that will work being run from different versions of windows without being installed. Any application still getting updates like WoW it is really like I have a gun and will play Russian rollete until it kills me.

3vi1 · Post by **3vi1** » Mon Jun 02, 2008 7:28 am

jeffz wrote:WARNING: Do not try to configure Wine to point to your actual Windows C:\ drive. We have tried to make this hard to do, so you probably can't do it by accident.

Pointing wine to the C: drive is not at all what I recommended. I suggested he could map a drive to the application directory. Pointing the root c: path in Wine to your Windows C: drive *definitely* is a bad thing, because you can then hose your Windows OS. That's not a possiblity, the way I outlined.

I've used Steam, CoH, EQ (w/Cedega), DreamWeaver, AO, and a few other programs this way and the worst problem I ever encountered was that a Wine or Cedega update would cause them to no longer work under Wine or Cedega (so I'd boot to Windows until I either backed out the update or a patch was available). I've not had any problems with Wine corrupting the application, but nothing's impossible.

If you do have the drive space, I would agree with jeffz and oiaohm - you'll never have to worry about having to re-install the application in Windows due to corruption, if you do things the traditional way.

As for mounting your Windows partitions, you'll have to do some googling based on the partition type (FAT32 or NTFS probably) and your distro. To define a drive letter in Wine, just use winecfg and point it to the path you used to automount the drive PLUS THE PATH TO THE APPLICATION DIRECTORY (I never had to actually worry about that part because I always installed my windows apps to a second partition anyway, to simplify backups - and kept my documents/data on a third partition). Then just run the program with something like "wine f:\eq.exe"

Oh, one other problem you can see when doing this that might dissuade you: If a patcher checks for free space, and you have enough free space in the path to the windows drive, but not enough free space in your home drive, Wine may erroneously complain that you don't have enough room. I'm not sure the bug still exists, but if it does - oh well.

vitamin · Post by **vitamin** » Mon Jun 02, 2008 8:35 am

3vi1 wrote:I've used Steam,

Wrong Steam WILL NOT work from NTFS partition.

3vi1 · Post by **3vi1** » Mon Jun 02, 2008 12:04 pm

vitamin wrote:
3vi1 wrote:I've used Steam,
Wrong Steam WILL NOT work from NTFS partition.

Wrong: I was using it from a FAT32 partition.

Back when I was dual booting Windows, I always kept my non-OS Windows partitions as FAT32, since support for writing to NTFS from Linux was highly dubious at the time.

vitamin · Post by **vitamin** » Mon Jun 02, 2008 1:17 pm

3vi1 wrote:
vitamin wrote:
3vi1 wrote:I've used Steam,
Wrong Steam WILL NOT work from NTFS partition.
Wrong: I was using it from a FAT32 partition.

Back when I was dual booting Windows, I always kept my non-OS Windows partitions as FAT32, since support for writing to NTFS from Linux was highly dubious at the time.

I really doubt that most people have separate driver formated as fat32. At best they have separate drive for Linux and another drive with windows, which is again in 99% cases is NTFS.

3vi1 · Post by **3vi1** » Mon Jun 02, 2008 4:38 pm

vitamin wrote:I really doubt that most people have separate driver formated as fat32. At best they have separate drive for Linux and another drive with windows, which is again in 99% cases is NTFS.

And your point is? He never asked about running Steam - he asked about running WoW and Guild Wars, which I'll guess will probably work fine from NTFS. Is anything I've said untrue?

Pseudo_Bob · Post by **Pseudo_Bob** » Thu Jun 05, 2008 6:19 pm

So, to summarize:
The fact that I don't understand anything that y'all are saying probably tells me I'm not in any position to be doing this, and I shouldn't bother.

Paul Johnson · Post by **Paul Johnson** » Thu Jun 05, 2008 7:11 pm

On Thursday 05 June 2008 04:19:04 pm Pseudo_Bob wrote:

So, to summarize:
The fact that I don't understand anything that y'all are saying probably
tells me I'm not in any position to be doing this, and I shouldn't bother.

No, that's not what's being said. What is being said is that if you treat
Wine like it's own wholly independent installation of Windows and install the
program you want to run in Wine, it should work. Especially if you follow
any special instructions for your program in the AppDB.

--
Paul Johnson
[email protected]

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