Getting older PC games to play on my WinXP machine

[Scooter]

I have a few older PC games written to work with Win98. Many of these games just won't work on my current system and aren't available in WinXP versions. I've tried setting up the Win98 emulator included in WinXP but it didn't help and I'm not sure I did it correctly.

Can anyone provide any suggestions for setting up a WinXP machine to run older games short of setting up a separate machine running Win98 to run them?

[Mozgus]

Dual Boot or just google for a solution on a game-per-game basis. Usually there are 100's of other people out there that have the same issue and found the fix for XP.

[Ivo]

I have a few older PC games written to work with Win98. Many of these games just won't work on my current system and aren't available in WinXP versions. I've tried setting up the Win98 emulator included in WinXP but it didn't help and I'm not sure I did it correctly.

Can anyone provide any suggestions for setting up a WinXP machine to run older games short of setting up a separate machine running Win98 to run them?

Dos games run quite well on DOS emulators like DosBox - Windows 95/98 games I don't usually have problems with. I'm not sure if there is a good Win 9x emulator - Mozgus suggestion I must reiterate, try to google for answers.

[lordofduct]

I love the games X-COM: UFO Defense, Quarantine and Descent. These games run like crap in WinXP... to fast or just screwed up graphics. I just use DosBox for them (like IVO suggested) and it works fine (except for sound, that always gives me issues).

Problem with dual-booting is that a lot of new hardware doesn't support Windows 98 and earlier.

What games do you want to play? Knowing if they actually utilize 98 or if they just run in DOS through 98 would help decide what route you want to take.

Also, there's a dosbox emulator for XBOX... that is really fun!

[Scooter]

Well, I have a bunch of old Tomb Raider games but I haven't even tried those, they are probably Win95.

The games I'm having trouble with are Blade Runner and Dragon's Lair. My machine is kind of old too but does run WinXP okay. A lot of my older applications seem to run just fine on this machine, but no so for my games, especially Dragon's Lair.

I'll look into DOSBox.

[fastbilly1]

By mixing Dosbox, Moslow, and VMDsound, I havent found a game that wont run without alittle work.

[Amon]

You could always get virtual pc and run win 98 in that. Though I am not sure how smooth things would run. All depends on your system.

[JF]

Hello,

For DOS games I use DosBox
For Win9x games I would recommend VMWARE Player http://www.vmware.com/download/player/ because it's free. I've never used Virtual PC.

With VMWARE you can have a virtual PCinside WinXP and install the OS you want, you will need the Win98 CD, of course.

Best regards

JF

[baphomet_irl]

I read on Wing Commmander forums (trust me anybody who has tried to ge the entire WC series working on one PC is a veteran of DOSbox and old game playing in XP), that Vista is for some reason actually more backwards compatible than XP, and that a few games which previously needed DOSbox dont anymore, and sometimes dont even need to be run in compatibilty mode.
I still dont know if its enough of a reason to switch (I haven't), but its something to think about

[fastbilly1]

Ive heard that aswell Baphomet. But I have also seen Vista BSOD when it tried to run winROTT and Carmegeddon. Well the Harddrive needed to be reset after my friend tried to open the Carmegeddon folder. I guess Vista Ultimate on a quad core with 4 gigs of ram and an 8800gtx doesnt like pc games from 97... And yes it did chug on Supreme Commander. So much so I have put off building a new rig until that can be fairly run on a grand. So Total Annihilation with the 5000 unit patch here I come.