SimCity 4 Deluxe – How to make it work with Windows Vista

On the subject of compatibility problems in Windows Vista I have now got SimCity 4 Deluxe edition working.

Simcity 4 deluxe is the latest version of SimCity, but was released several years ago, before Vista was on the scene. The deluxe part of Simcity is that is includes the Rush Hour expansion pack, which was previously sold seperately.

A quick look on the web and people either seam to say – it works no problem, or it doesn’t work at all. The reason for this is that it depends upon updates installed in Vista.
When I first inserted the CD into the drive it considered it a blank disk and tried to format the disk! After I’d updated Windows with the required “optional update” then it installed fine.
The update required is: “Update for Windows Vista (KB938194)”. To install this run Windows Update and select KB938194 from the update from the list of optional updates.

More information on the patch from the Microsoft Knowledgebase.

This update fixes SimCity 4, but is not so successful on other non-Windows Vista software. I have still not been able to get Stroghold 2 deluxe, as well as some other software and hardware, and I’m sure there are many other games that don’t work with Vista.

In particular gamers need to be careful before moving to Windows Vista, especially when some laptops are not able to run Windows XP. HP Laptop doesn’t support Wndows XP