How can I make old games work on new computers?

[ambam]

Is there any way of getting very old PC games like Quake 2, the original Half-Life, Unreal, and others to work on new computers running vista/W7?

 

[Tamz_msc]

I do not know about Vista but they should work in Win7 under XP mode.

 

[ksampanna]

Yes, XP mode shoudl do it for you.
I have Win 7 64 bit & was able to play oldies like NFS II, Porsche Unleashed, Half Life, Max Payne, with no issues.

 

[ohiou_grad_06]

Also, look at the compatibility modes. I thought I read somewhere though that XP mode didn't work with 3d acceleration. I could be wrong though. But I would try checking the compatibility options. Also, I have found that some of the older games, you want to go to the setup program on the cd manually, and right click the .exe file and click "run as administrator". That seems to eliminate a few headaches as well.

 

[Tamz_msc]

In both Vista and Win7, right click on the exe and select the compatibility tab.Check "Run this program in compatibility mode for" and select the OS under which you think
the game will run properly.

 

[gamerk316]

1: The XP mode on 7 doesn't support HW acceleration
2: Compatability modes do nothing 99% of the time; they just call older versions of .dll files to try and improve compatability, but oftentimes the problem lies elsewhere (Changes in Video Card Drivers, low level windows timings, expecting a DOS layer, etc).

The surest way would be to keep a 98SE/ME virtual OS handy (provided you can get GPU drivers for your card...)

 

[Tamz_msc]

1: The XP mode on 7 doesn't support HW acceleration
2: Compatability modes do nothing 99% of the time; they just call older versions of .dll files to try and improve compatability, but oftentimes the problem lies elsewhere (Changes in Video Card Drivers, low level windows timings, expecting a DOS layer, etc).

The surest way would be to keep a 98SE/ME virtual OS handy (provided you can get GPU drivers for your card...)

Well, I was unable to run Far Cry in vista.The setup just refused to run.I ran it through XP compatibility mode; it took ages to install but it did finally run.So sometimes it does work.

 

[ohiou_grad_06]

Correct. Like I said, I know I had problems with some older games under Vista, and running the setup as administrator will sometimes help. However, some games just will not run correctly.