I've got a laptop I recently changed over to linux. I'm running VMware's Player and I have a Windows 2003 server install running on 1GB of memory and 20GB of hard disk space, with plenty of room left over. I've got the most recent version of DirectX available for W2K3 server (I think it's 9.0c), and everything seems to be functioning fine, except ...
I don't know that AACW was ever supported on this OS, so I don't know if that's the issue out of the gate. The video driver for VMware is a kind of general "SVGA" driver. It works at any number of resolutions that the game normally works on, and there's no video corruption under either bit depth available (16/32). I can play movies on Netflix with no issues, and I know sound and video on the laptop are both working.
I was able to install AACW with no errors and patch it (1.16rc4). When I run it, it doesn't even make it as far as creating log files. It loads up to about 8MB max, and then exits. If I try to run it in any of the compatibility modes, the result is the same.
I know it's not the hardware on this laptop, since I was playing AACW on here previously under Windows XP. I am willing to believe it's driver-related, but unfortunately there are no other drivers available for this virtual setup that I'm aware of. Any suggestions?
jm