There are times when you've been trying everything, you even killed a cat at full moon and ate it with rotten garlic and foul fish while doing the Devil's Dance, yet nothing helped to make some damn program work on some Wine version. Don't despair, we're here to help you... (in other words: how much do you want to pay ?) Run a Perl script called winecheck, to be found in Wine's tools/ directory. The latest version can always be found at http://home.arcor.de/andi.mohr/download/winecheck. Make sure to run chmod +x winecheck first before trying to execute it... (or alternatively run it via perl ./winecheck) The winecheck output will be a percentage score indicating Wine configuration correctness. Note that winecheck is only alpha, so it's not very complete or 100% accurate. In several cases using different windows version settings can help. This sometimes helps, too: Try to use both wine prg.exe and wine x:\\full\\path\\to\\prg.exe Run with --debugmsg +loaddll to figure out which DLLs are being used, and whether they're being loaded as native or builtin. Then make sure you have proper native DLL files in your configured C:\windows\system directory and fiddle with DLL load order settings at command line or in config file. Just an idea: could it be that your Wine build/execution environment is broken ? Make sure that there are no problems whatsoever with the packages that Wine depends on (gcc, glibc, X libraries, OpenGL (!), ...) E.g. some people have strange failures to find stuff when using "wrong" header files for the "right" libraries !!! (which results in days of debugging to desperately try to find out why that lowlevel function fails in a way that is completely beyond imagination... ARGH !) Instruct Wine via config file to use either desktop mode, managed mode or plain ugly "normal" mode. That can make one hell of a difference, too. Maybe your app is using some kind of copy protection ? Many copy protections currently don't work on Wine. Some might work in the future, though. (the CD-ROM layer isn't really full-featured yet). Go to GameCopyWorld and try to find a decent crack for your game that gets rid of that ugly copy protection. I hope you do have a legal copy of the program, though... :-) Running with or without a Windows partition can have a dramatic impact. Configure Wine to do the opposite of what you used to have. Also, install DCOM98 or DCOM95. This can be very beneficial. Sometimes wine installation process changes and new versions of Wine acccount on these changes. This is especially true if your setup was created long time ago. Rename your existing ~/.wine directory for backup purposes. Use the setup process that's recommended for your Wine distribution to create new configuration. Use information in old ~/.wine directory as a reference. For source wine distribution to configure Wine run tools/wineinstall script as a user you want to do the configuration for. This is a pretty safe operation. Later you can remove the new ~/.wine directory and rename your old one back. Check out the Wine Troubleshooting Guide on WineHQ. Go to Google Groups and check whether some guys are smarter than you ;-) (well, whether they found a solution to the problem, that is) Go to WineHQ's Application Database and check whether someone posted the vital config hint for your app. If that doesn't help, then consider going to irc.openprojects.net channel #WineHQ, posting to news:comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine or mailing to the wine-users (or maybe sometimes even wine-devel) mailing lists. Have you used the Search feature of the Wine Troubleshooting Guide ?? (i.e. are you sure there's no answer ?) If you have, then try The Perfect Enduser Wine Debugging Guide, and of course don't forget to read the Wine Developers Guide. Please report all bugs along any relevant information to Wine Bugzilla. Please, search the Bugzilla database to check whether your problem is already reported. If it is already reported please add any relevant information to the original bug report. Some simple advice on making your bug report more useful (and thus more likely to get answered and fixed): Post as much relevant information as possible. This means we need more information than a simple "MS Word crashes whenever I run it. Do you know why?" Include at least the following information: Which version of Wine you're using (run wine -v) The name of the Operating system you're using, what distribution (if any), and what version. (i.e., Linux RedHat 7.2) Which compiler and version, (run gcc -v). If you didn't compile wine then the name of the package and where you got it from. Windows version, if used with Wine. Mention if you don't use Windows. The name of the program you're trying to run, its version number, and a URL for where the program can be obtained (if available). The exact command line you used to start wine. (i.e., wine "C:\Program Files\Test\program.exe"). The exact steps required to reproduce the bug. Any other information you think may be relevant or helpful, such as X server version in case of X problems, libc version etc. Re-run the program with the --debugmsg +relay option (i.e., wine --debugmsg +relay sol.exe). This will output additional information at the console that may be helpfull in in debugging the program. It also slows the execution of program. There are some cases where the bug seems to dissappear when +relay is used. Please mention that in the bug report. If Wine crashes while running your program, it is important that we have this information to have a chance at figuring out what is causing the crash. This can put out quite a lot (several MB) of information, though, so it's best to output it to a file. When the Wine-dbg> prompt appears, type quit. You might want to try +relay,+snoop instead of +relay, but please note that +snoop is pretty unstable and often will crash earlier than a simple +relay! If this is the case, then please use only +relay!! A bug report with a crash in +snoop code is useless in most cases! You can also turn on other parameters, depending on the nature of the problem you are researching. See wine man page for full list of the parameters. To get the trace output, use one of the following methods: This method is meant to allow even a total novice to submit a relevent trace log in the event of a crash. Your computer must have perl on it for this method to work. To find out if you have perl, run which perl. If it returns something like /usr/bin/perl, you're in business. Otherwise, skip on down to "The Hard Way". If you aren't sure, just keep on going. When you try to run the script, it will become very apparent if you don't have perl. Change directory to <dirs to wine>/tools Type in ./bug_report.pl and follow the directions. Post the bug to Wine Bugzilla. Please, search Bugzilla database to check whether your problem is already found before posting a bug report. Include your own detailed description of the problem with relevant information. Attach the "Nice Formatted Report" to the submitted bug. Do not cut and paste the report in the bug description - it is pretty big. Keep the full debug output in case it will be needed by Wine developers. It is likely that only the last 100 or so lines of the trace are nessesary to find out where the program crashes. In order to get those last 100 lines we need to do the following Redirect all the output of -debugmsg to a file. Separate the last 100 lines to another file using tail . This can be done using one of the following methods. all shells: $ echo quit | wine -debugmsg +relay [other_options] program_name >& filename.out; $ tail -n 100 filename.out > report_file (This will print wine's debug messages only to the file and then auto-quit. It's probably a good idea to use this command, since wine prints out so many debug msgs that they flood the terminal, eating CPU cycles.) tcsh and other csh-like shells: $ wine -debugmsg +relay [other_options] program_name |& tee filename.out; $ tail -100 filename.out > report_file bash and other sh-like shells: $ wine -debugmsg +relay [other_options] program_name 2>&1 | tee filename.out; $ tail -100 filename.out > report_file report_file will now contain the last hundred lines of the debugging output, including the register dump and backtrace, which are the most important pieces of information. Please do not delete this part, even if you don't understand what it means. Post the bug to Wine Bugzilla. You need to attach the output file report_file from part 2). Along with the the relevant information used to create it. Do not cut and paste the report in the bug description - it is pretty big and it will make a mess of the bug report. If you do this, your chances of receiving some sort of helpful response should be very good. Please, search the Bugzilla database to check whether your problem is already reported. If it is already reported attach the output file report_file to the original bug report and add any other relevant information.