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. For details, please refer to the Configuration section. 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 built-in. 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 account 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. There is a really good chance that someone has already tried to do the same thing as you. You may find the following resources helpful: Search WineHQ's Application Database to check for any tips relating to the program. If your specific version of the program isn't listed you may find a different one contains enough information to help you out. Frank's Corner contains a list of applications and detailed instructions for setting them up. Further help can be found in the user forums. Google can be useful depending on how you use it. You may find it helpful to search Google Groups, in particular the comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine group. Freenode.net hosts an IRC channel for Wine. You can access it by using any IRC client such as Xchat. The settings you'll need are: server = irc.freenode.net, port = 6667, and channel = #winehq If you know you are missing a DLL, such as Visual Basic Runtime, you may be able to find it at www.dll-files.com Wine's mailing lists may also help, especially wine-users. The wine-devel list may be appropriate depending on the type of problem you are experiencing. If you post to wine-devel you should be prepared to do a little work to help diagnose the problem. Read the section below to find out how to debug the source of your problem. If all else fails, you may wish to investigate commercial versions of Wine to see if your application is supported. Finding the source of your problem is the next step to take. There is a wide spectrum of possible problems ranging from simple configurations issues to completely unimplemented functionality in Wine. The next section will describe how to file a bug report and how to begin debugging a crash. For more information on using Wine's debugging facilities be sure 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 Red Hat 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 helpful in debugging the program. It also slows the execution of program. There are some cases where the bug seems to disappear 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 relevant 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 necessary 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 -n 100 filename.out > report_file bash and other sh-like shells: $ wine -debugmsg +relay [other_options] program_name 2>&1 | tee filename.out; $ tail -n 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.