In Windows XP; unexplained AC crashes, and sound problems
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Sound Problems with WinXP SP2
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Windows XP with SP2 has special new quirks, and Petz 5 apparently starts up with a sounds error message now. Kahlah has posted an alert about this on the APKC/BCKC forum , you may find more info there, but here's the quick fix for you: If Petz 5 won't play sounds for you, find the two files smapi.dll and setupapi.dll which are both where you installed Petz 5 (probably C:\Program Files\UBI Soft\Studio Mythos\Petz 5) and delete them. If you cannot see .dll files on your machine, open My Computer, Choose View Options from the menu, and make sure that View all files is ticked on the View tab. Then you'll see those files and can remove them. Actually, Petz 5 will run just fine without most of the files which are in that main directory.

Breedfiles Crashing problems
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Okay, I'm writing this because it seems that people -- usually with Windows XP, but also sometimes with updated Windows ME systems -- are getting Petz 4 or 5 doing a crash-to-desktop when trying to bring some of my breedz out at the Adoption centre. Sometimes it happens with already-adopted petz when they try to breed. In most cases, there is nothing wrong with the breedfile. I always check when someone reports a problem and, if the breed does not crash my game, you have come up against the "XP-nasties". This is a problem that I am unable to duplicate because I do not have (and never intend to have) that operating system on my machine (or Windows ME either), and all my breedz work fine on my system.

From what I can gather, it tends to be mostly Mutt or Dalmatian-based breedz which crash in this manner, and I have found that people who complain about this can often run the breedz fine if I remove a certain part from the file. I have no time now to go through every single one of my breedz to re-do them just in case they produce this problem which doesn't happen for me, nor do I want to mess them about like that, so I'm telling you here what you can try in order to get the pets to come out or breed for you.

First of all, make sure you've downloaded the sound-stripped version of the breedfile as opposed to the patchfile version. I believe that people have been having other problems with Windows ME or XP and the patchfiles. I do not now have patchfiles at this site, but if you got one from somewhere else, dump it and grab the proper one.

Now, either using ResHacker or a hex editor of your choice, remove the [Fur Markings] which are below [Ballz Info]. If this doesn't fix the problem, also remove the [Fur Color Areas].

With ResHacker you can either delete the whole [Fur Markings] section from the beginning of [Fur Markings] down to directly before [Lnz Version] (do not touch [Lnz Version]) or simply insert a semi-colon at the beginning of each line (this is a "comment-out") but not the [Lnz Version] line. If you're removing [Fur Color Areas] also, similarly delete or comment-out from the beginning of [Fur Color Areas] to directly before [Lnz Version]. Compile, save, and run the game with the breedfile in place.

With a hex editor you can replace all the part from the beginning of [Fur Markings] (or [Fur Color Areas]) down to and including the last number before [Lnz Version] with spaces. Save, and run the game with the breedfile in place.

The pet should come out of the Adoption Centre now even with horrible old Windows XP, and if it doesn't then I can't help you -- as I said before, my breedz work fine in my game just as they are.

Enjoy!

Carolyn Horn