Grand Theft Auto III, GTA Vice City and Windows Vista

So far, I have been enjoying my upgrade to Windows Vista Ultimate. Indeed, you have the nice shiny new Aero Flip 3D, a whole host of new security features and program indexing that actually works and really can speed up your PC if you leave it running unattended for an afternoon. I had all these features in Windows Vista Business. The one thing that I didn't have however is the Windows Media Center, which was sorely missed because Hauppauge's WinTV software is, shall we say, a bit performance shy. If I was going to stick with Vista I needed Media Center for the watching of TV. For Christmas I did just that. I upgraded my Windows Vista to Ultimate so that I could take advantage of Windows Media Center, and when I get a device compatible with it, BitLocker. I used the Anytime Upgrade feature from Windows Vista Business, which after taking all of my money guided me through the effortless installation of Vista Ultimate. Once everything was set up, I set about setting up Windows Media Center, which has been improved Windows XP Media Center 2005, which was also very good. One thing I have noticed is that when on freeview, you can switch channels very quickly like you can on a normal freeview set-top box. Also in Media Center, you can pause live TV (I think you could do that in XP but I never tried it). You can even rewind it as far as half an hour. I like this feature as I can pause Top Gear when I want another cuppa. What I like most, specifically about Vista Ultimate is that it comes with it's own DVD decoder. This is good news as my once faithful PowerDVD 6.0 will not work with Windows Vista, and I can't afford to go out buying PowerDVD 7.

Up until about thirty minutes ago, this came with, in my opinion anyway, a substantial price tag. The thing is that I enjoy playing Grand Theft Auto a lot. The logical thing to do would be to install Grand Theft Auto under Windows Vista, go to Start > Games and launch GTA. That IS the idea but like most things in life it isn't as simple as it would first appear. As part of windows Vista's new security system they have included something called User Account Control. This prompts you to confirm you want to do anything slightly administrative on the computer. This is quite good for blocking out those little nasties we all seem to pick up. Unfortunately, in reality it's more of a pain for an avid computer user than traction control is to The Stig (another Top Gear reference). Because of this Grand Theft Auto III and Vice City will not run as they are not recognised by Windows UAC as safe programs, and because they are in Program Files, Windows will not let either of them run. Thanks to my friend Tim, we have been able to make both GTAIII and GTA Vice City run on my Vista box.

1. Firstly, you need to go to the directory where the game is installed. Usually this will be something like "C:\Program Files\Rockstar Games". There you will see either a folder for GTAIII or Grand Theft Auto Vice City, or both, depending on which games you have installed. Right-click on the folder and go to Share...
   
2. Click on Advanced Sharing, and when asked, click Continue
   
3. Tick the box labelled Share This Folder, then click on Permissions
   
4. Give everyone Full Access to this folder by checking the box labelled Allow under Full Control
   
5. Click OK on all the boxes, and close the Windows Explorer window
   
6. Next go to Start > All Programs > Rockstar Games >Whichever GTA you installed
   
7. Right click on Grand Theft Auto and select Properties
   
8. Go to the Compatability tab and check the box labelled "Run This Program in Compatability mode for:" and select Windows 98 / Windows Me from the drop down list box.
   
9. Click OK, and run the game
   

Hopefully, all should be well but if not, check for updates for the games by going to www.rockstargames.com and selecting the version of GTA you wish to update. If you are running GTAIII you will need to patch it to version 1.1. You can patch it by clicking here and downloading the patch from Rockstar's Web-site.

Please note that if you are on a network you must ensure that you are not running the game with No CD patches enabled as this will enable other people to play the game. Be careful when sharing files and folders as you can cause your system to be exposed to viruses. Make sure your firewall is turned on and updated, and that you have up-to-date antivirus software.