Before attempting the procedure outlined below, please check our Rainbow Six FAQ which is updated with the latest information on running Rainbow Six with Windows 2000, including a new easier method.

The reason why R6 doesn't work on Windows 2000 without some major tweakage is because R6 doesn't write to the registry (although it reads it fine).  The only way to get R6 to work is by importing the R6 registry settings from another machine (or from a Win9x installation on the same machine).  The following procedure should help you if you don't have a Win9x machine with R6 installed available.  It will guide you through the following steps:

1. Export your Rogue Spear registry to get your DirectX device IDs.
2. Modify and import the Rogue Spear settings so that they reflect on Rainbow Six.
3. Import the modified settings back into the R6 registry section.

This "guide" assumes that you have Rogue Spear installed on your Win2k machine.  A Direct3D game is required in order to export your DX Device IDs.  If you do not have RS installed, it's still possible to use this instructions to export the settings from another game.

Before you start:

Messing with the registry is the single easiest way to hose your machine short of pouring water directly onto the motherboard.  Chances are that if you try to do this and you don't know what you're doing you'll end up with an unusable machine.  You'd be better off NOT trying this unless you're 100% sure that you know what you're doing and/or you're ready to spend the next day or so re-installing everything.  

In other words, I suggest you don't do this, but if you do, and you hose your machine, it's not my fault.

With that said...

First off, open the Registry Editor by going to Start --> Run  and typing in REGEDIT.

Now double click on the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE "folder" icon to expand it, then double click on "Software", then scroll down until you find "Red Storm Entertainment" and double click on it. Now depending on what software you have installed, you'll have 2 or 3 "folders" under "Red Storm Entertainment", for example, I have R6, RS and UO installed, so I have three folders, one for each of the applications.

Now, highlight the "Rogue Spear" folder by clicking on it once, go to the "Registry" menu and select "Export Registry File"

When the dialog box comes up, save the file to your desktop (or at least a location where you can find easily later).  Make sure to leave all the other options untouched, namely "Save as type:" should be set to "Registration Files" and "Export Range" should be "Selected branch".  Save the file as "RS Settings".

 

Now close the Registry Editor and go back to your desktop (or wherever you chose to save the file), right click and choose "Edit" from the context menu.

This should bring up the Notepad with the contents of the registry settings for RS.  The first two lines should read as follows:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Red Storm Entertainment\Rogue Spear]

The first step is to change the second line so that it reads:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Red Storm Entertainment\Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six]

After doing this, find the lines that contain your DisplayDeviceGuid and SoundDeviceGuid, these are the ID of your video card and sound card, and are necessary so R6 can "talk to" your hardware through DirectX.   The lines should look something like this:

"DisplayDeviceGuid"=hex:f4,0d,87,00,00,00,00,00,01,00,00,00,60,fe,12,00

"SoundDeviceGuid"=hex:1a,d7,6d,bd,eb,3d,d1,11,b1,71,00,c0,4f,c2,00,01

The trick now is deleting all the other lines in the file except for the first two and the two lines containing your IDs.  In the end, your file should look like this:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Red Storm Entertainment\Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six]

"DisplayDeviceGuid"=hex:f4,0d,87,00,00,00,00,00,01,00,00,00,60,fe,12,00

"SoundDeviceGuid"=hex:1a,d7,6d,bd,eb,3d,d1,11,b1,71,00,c0,4f,c2,00,01

Ok.  Now save the file and exit.  You now have half of the stuff necessary to make R6 work under Win2k.  The other half is the rest of the R6 registry information.  You can download a dummy set of R6 registry settings here.

After downloading the file, follow these steps:

1. Unzip the file and double click on the rainbow_six.reg file to import the R6 settings into your registry.
2. Double click on the RS Settings file that you modified to import your Device IDs into the R6 section of the registry.
3. Launch R6 and see if it works.

A couple of things to keep in mind: 

The .reg file with the R6 settings assumes that R6 is installed on the default directory (C:\Program Files\Red Storm Entertainment\Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six).  If the game is installed on  a different directory, the game will not work.  You can get around this by modifying the .reg file and changing all the occurences of:   C:\\Program Files\\Red Storm Entertainment\\Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six\ to the directory where the game is installed.  Please note the "double slash" is a requirement as well.  For example:  if the game is installed on D:\Games\R6 then you'll have to change all the values to read D:\\Games\\R6 instead. A quick "Find & Replace" should be able to do it.

And one more thing:

The registry settings for R6 in the zip file are pretty basic.  You should go into the registry or into the reg file and edit them to make sure that they match your preferences.  For example, the player's name in a multiplayer game is held under the "MultiplayerPlayerName" value.  In the .reg file, this line reads: 

"MultiplayerPlayerName"="Your Name Here"

You obviously want to edit that to show your name.   There are also a couple of other settings that you might want to look at.

That's all there is to it. 

Jan 2000