Hi all, When I open Red alert 2 or Yuri revenge I get a black screen. I do got music and a mouse. And when I slide over the screen I can hear i'm moving over the icons. Still black screen. I'm running Windows 8.1 64 bit Please help me:).
Next Hero Post ↓. @Jakebladess You might want to follow these instructions a bit more carefully. Only the first 2 games (C&C1 and RA1) are 8-bit colour; Red Alert 2 requires 16-bit colour mode, and it only requires you to explicitly set that if you play it in windowed mode. The point of setting the resolution is that modern monitors.
Mar 02, 2019 I just bought RA2 from EA Origin and with cncnets installer, it auto-fixed the black screen problem I at first had. However in campaign mode, the game doesnt occupy the entire screen, there are two black stripes on the left and right.

Aug 05, 2015 Windows 10 and Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge black screen issue. The game works otherwise well for me, but when I minimize it and then restore it back, the screen stays black and nothing but the cursor is visible. Voices of the game are still working so I think that this is just some kind of graphical issue. May 21, 2017 Red Alert 2 - Black screen on startup. Purchased the C&C Ultimate Collection on Origin (mainly for RA2/YR) and noticed that Red Alert 2 does not start correctly. The screen goes black on starting up but the audio is coming through fine. Tried to fix it with Bibber's alternate start and downloading CnC.net but cannot get the actual game to work.

Red Alert 2 Windows 10 Black Screen Fix

Playing Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge on Windows 10

In this tutorial im going to show how to play Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge on Windows 10. Both can work 'out of the box' after install, but that's not always the case. You might see graphic errors where all he textures are green, you might get black screen, alt+tabbing crashes whole game, cannot play windowed, etc. but again we have to thank the active community that has made fixes to these.

This tutorial will work with Origin installation and it works if you have installed Red Alert 2 or Red Alert 2 Yuri's Revenge from original image files or CD.

Caution! This tutorial has parts that are outdated. This is link for the updated 2020 version of this article: https://wiretuts.com/origin-red-alert-2-yuris-revenge-with-multiplayer-and-obs/

Files:

C&C Ultimate Collection FIXED Launchers (only for Origin installation) - (File has been taken down. It contained no-cd patch which removed Origin DRM from the game.)
Includes cnc-ddraw 1.3.4.6 + RA2.ini + RA2MD.ini. Configured for 1280x768 windowed mode. - https://wiretuts.com/downloads/red_alert_2_fix.zip
Latest cnc-ddraw - https://github.com/CnCNet/cnc-ddraw/releases
Red Alert 2 - 1.001 patch (only for CD/Image installation. Origin is already patched.) - http://files.bachsau.com/Westwood/redalert2/update/RA21006EN.EXE
Red Alert 2 Yuri’s Revenge - 1.006 patch (only for CD/Image installation. Origin is already patched.) - http://files.bachsau.com/Westwood/redalert2/update/YURI-1001-ENGLISH.EXE

Youtube video

Installing Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge on Windows 10 (Origin)

1. Install Command & Conquer Red Alert 2 and Yuris Revenge from Origin. Games are included in C&C Ultimate Collection.

2. Download and install fixed launchers for Ultimate Collections from this link: https://files.cncnz.com/cnc-ultimate-collection-launchers.zip . Installer should automatically detect your C&C games like in this image.

3. Origin version of RA2 and Yuri's Revenge is already latest version, so we don't have to patch those manually.

4. Go to section Installing cnc-ddraw to Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge

Installing Red Alert 2 on Windows 10 (CD/Image)

1. Install Red Alert 2 from your preferred source.

2. After Red Alert 2 installation you have to patch the game to 1.006.
(If you are installing Yuri's Revenge expansion pack, you can skip patching step, because Yuri's Revenge expansion pack will do this automatically.)

3. Download and install RA2 1.006 patch from this link: http://files.bachsau.com/Westwood/redalert2/update/RA21006EN.EXE

4. Go to section Installing cnc-ddraw to Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge

Installing Red Alert 2 Yuri's Revenge on Windows 10 (CD/Image)

Note. You have to have Red Alert 2 installed before you install Yuris Revenge.

1. Install Red Alert 2 Yuri's Revenge from your preferred source.

2. After installation you have to patch the game to 1.001.

3. Download and install RA2 Yuri's Revenge 1.001 patch from this link: http://files.bachsau.com/Westwood/redalert2/update/YURI-1001-ENGLISH.EXE

4. Go to section

Installing CnC-DDraw to Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge

CnC-DDraw is GDI, OpenGL and Direct3D 9 re-implementation of the DirectDraw API for classic games for better compatibility with Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10 and Wine. CnC-DDraw fixes many of the graphical bugs in the Command & Conquer games that use 256-color full-screen DirectDraw as graphics system. It was specifically developed for Command & Conquer Gold and Red Alert, but was developed further to support other games.

CnC-DDraw gets around game bugs by means of a ddraw.dll file put in the game folder, which then receives and handles all graphics output from the game instead of the real DirectDraw system. The CnC-DDraw dll then displays the graphics on a graphics surface which uses either GDI software rendering or OpenGL.

Besides the fixing of palette-related bugs, CnC-DDraw also contains options that allow extra game features like windowed mode, stretching of the game surface to custom resolutions, and frame rate limiting.

Added 03.09.2019
You can now skip some manual work by downloading this zip file: https://wiretuts.com/downloads/red_alert_2_fix.zip. This zip file contains cncdraw 1.3.4.6 + RA2.ini + RA2MD.ini -files. Files have been configured for 1280×768 windowed mode. Just extract all the content to Red Alert 2 installation root directory, and go straight to step 7.

1. Go to this site: https://github.com/CnCNet/cnc-ddraw/releases and download latest cnc-ddraw.zip and extract the zip file after downloading.

2. Copy Shaders -folder, ddraw.dll and ddraw.ini to Red Alert 2 installation folder root.

3. Start Red Alert 2 for the first time and exit the game, and do the same thing for Yuris Revenge. When you start the games first time, it will create you RA2.ini and RA2MD.ini files.

4. Open RA2.ini and RA2MD.ini files from Red Alert 2 installation folder.

5. Add these lines below to both of the ini files. Put your preferred resolution to ScreenWidth and ScreenHeight values.
[Video]
VideoBackBuffer=no
AllowHiResModes=yes
AllowVRAMSidebar=no
ScreenWidth=1920
ScreenHeight=1000
StretchMovies=no

6. (Optional) If you want to run Red Alert 2 or Red Alert 2 Yuri's Revenge on Windowed mode, you can do it by opening ddraw.ini file and changing windowed=true and border=true.

7. Right click game.exe, gamemd.exe, Ra2.exe, RA2MD.exe, YURI.exe -files and uncheck all compatibility settings if they have any.

CAUTION! REMEMBER!
When you are playing Red Alert 2 or Yuris Revenge in windowed mode, it doesn't stretch movies to fullscreen. StretchMovies -option works only in fullscreen mode. It's also normal that menu isn't stretching to full screen. Mainmenu is hardcoded to specific resolution and it cannot be changed! So when you see lot of black area surrounding your menu, its normal. Or when you are playing in windowed mode and menu is really small window, its normal. If you want that your menu, movies, and game is filling your whole screen, then you have to play with native 1024x768 resolution and in fullscreen mode. And you have to make sure that your monitor supports that.
CAUTION! REMEMBER!

Installing working multiplayer on Red Alert 2 and Yuri's revenge on Windows 10

CnCNet provides working multiplayer solution for both games.

1. Download multiplayer patch from this link: https://downloads.cncnet.org/CnCNet5_YR_Installer.exe

2. Start the installer when download is complete and follow instructions.

3. Start Red Alert 2 CnCnet from shortcut and update it to latest version.

Red Alert 2 Black Screen After Alt Tab Windows 10

4. Play online and enjoy

It’s finally Christmas break! You probably wanted to play classic games like Red Alert 2. However, you encounter problems with your current operating system. You probably see a black screen when you open Red Alert 2, or the game hangs after a few minutes of playing, or your base explodes before building your third structure… Been there! I watched several Youtube videos and read from forums for solutions. Some worked while others have no effect.

To save you from hours of searching, I listed down the things you must download. (Click the headings to download the files.)

The zip file contains three files: aqrit.cfg, ddraw.dll, and src.7z

After unzipping the files, paste them on your RA2 folder.

Make sure that the values in “aqrit.cfg” are like these:

Your RA2 folder has this file. The difference is this file’s video is edited. Replace your current file in the RA2 folder with this file.

The values in the video are:

Lastly, download the latest RA2 patch. After pasting all the files, open the patch.

Don’t forget to change the compatibility settings of the game!

Note: After doing these things, I got my RA2 working perfectly. If these don’t work with you or if you have any tips on how to make the game work, kindly comment below.

Have fun playing!

Red Alert 2 Windows 10 Black Screen Fix

Reference:

Robert Tucker’s [TUTORIAL] How to play Red Alert II on Windows – 64bit, all problems fixed.