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@phunanon
Last active August 14, 2025 21:42
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Instructions on how to get American Conquest (2002) working on Windows 11 via a virtual machine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Conquest

  1. Legally obtain an ISO for American Conquest.
  2. Install VirtualBox 7.0.24, because 7.1.0 has a regression with 3D acceleration.
  3. Restart your computer (seriously, Patrick, restart your computer - it wastes time otherwise).
  4. Run VirtualBox as admin - I sometimes get a hardening error if I don't do this.
  5. Download Microsoft's Internet Archive copy of the Windows 2000 ISO
  6. Install the game, accepting DirectX 8 over 7 when asked.
  7. Enjoy.

These instructions come from trying many things - QEMU via WSL2, VirtualBox via WSL2, Windows 11 Sandbox, direct install (not on Steam), VMWare, Windows 7, XP, 98 - with most of them not supporting the graphics.

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