Well, I have fought with this thing for half a day now annnnnd I'm close a meltdown. I saw similar questions on this forum during my search, so hopefully I'm in the right spot.

The lag is constant, roughly ten seconds running, roughly ten seconds frozen, then repeat. It happens as soon as the game starts, Generals or Zero Hour. Even the opening cinematic freezes and audio cuts out.

I have noticed in skirmish a couple things. The lagging is unchanged, but the audio continues as does the ingame clock. The clock in particular will freeze, but then add seconds when the program unfreezes.

My System

Intel I7 (no overclock, and yes, she's dusted)
Dual Nvidia GTS 450 SLI'd (fully updated)
6GB of Corsair RAM
Win 7 64bit on Corsair SSD (fully updated)

Actions Taken (in no particular order)

Upgraded Nvidia Driver (wasn't far behind)
Installed Directx 8(accident)
Installed Directx 8.1
Set generals.exe to WinXP SP2 Compatibility (smoothed performance)
---->Tried Vista, Vista 1, and Vista 2
Run .exe as Admin
---->Also tried 256 colors, 640x480 res, Disable Visual Themes, Disable scaling on high DPI settings
Installed No Lag mod
Minimized All Graphical Settings
Adjusted screen resolution in-game
Mounted Virtual ZH Install Disk
Mounted Virtaul C&C:FD Disk
Mounted mini disk
Ran Contra 008 mod (hoping for a forced solution)
Ran dxdiag (no issues detected)
Replaced original exe with a no-lag fixed generals.exe
Replaced exe with a no-cd generals.exe (current exe)
Shutdown-restarted after installation.
Stopped all applications - except VIPRE

I checked if it was my system by chance. Don't have any other games installed currently, but Civ5-GaK ran without a hitch. foobar and Firefox run fine.

I used to have C&C First Decade, but I believe it clashed with the garbage can. I downloaded a rip and installed that way. Ran Generals and ZH with Contra without a problem, so I know it should work. I was unable to determine witch version of directx ZH is using. Still not sure how.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, and thank you for reading.

Edit: I managed to get it to crash. Says it encountered a serious error and suggested the system's performance. The game's afoot!
- Loaded an Options.ini - no good
At this point, I'll start with a clean slate if no one doesn't have an ideas in the next few days.

Edited by user Monday, October 3, 2016 8:11:07 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

How do I use it?

Ran it and played a skirmish match. Nothing.

I've got a dump file from the process. Looking for a way to read it, but I'm no programmer.

Edited by user Tuesday, October 4, 2016 2:19:03 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

crashes when it tries to load it.

- Loaded it in Notepad++. It just comes up as a 1.8 million lines of nonsense. Just to make sure, this is a dmp created of the process by using the tskmnger. I didn't get a crash report when ZH went down.

*sighs* Nope.

GenTool did pick up that I'm running a cracked binary, but I knew that already. I had hoped someone out there had done so correctly, but I've tried three different 'generals.exe' and I'm still firmly entrenched at square one.

Your help is greatly appreciated. GenTool looks like a nice mod. I'll try it when I get ZH working. At this rate, if a reinstall doesn't work, I'll try to find an 'official' copy somewhere.

Thanks - Jin

Sorry it didnt work for ya :(



Origin might work but ive heard that thing is garbage, and the ZH on Origin doesnt have Worldbuilder.

Good deal. Thanks again for helping someone who just popped in out of the blue.

I will probably return sometime in the future. I've had a couple ideas about ZH mods, but I have not the time nor skills for it.