How to get windows 3.1 games to work on Windows vista

[Kdarling07]

Hello,
I have Kings Quest and Myst and I can't get them to work on my Windows Vista. I already tried compatibility mode and selected all that would be acquired, but still it has the same message saying that my windows is not compatible. Please help me. I really want to play my old games!!!!

 

[DraconianGamer]

Use a virtual machine to run 3.1 inside of Vista. Shouldn't have much problems doing that...

 

[delazaren]

As DraconianGamer said, try a virtual machine (VM) in which you will install 3.1 (do you have the disks??) and then your game. You could try Virtual Box which is free to use for personal usage to create the VM.

 

[DraconianGamer]

I think you could just download 3.1 lmao

 

[Vampyrbyte]

Most games from the 16bit Windows era would have been DOS games i'd have thought. in which case you should be fine running them under DosBox.
Windows 3.1 will run under Dosbox too, but if you specifically need Windows 3.1 your probably best off with running under VirtualBox like others have said.

However! Neither are substitues for dragging that old 486 PC out of your loft!

 

[gamerk316]

The early KQ games were DOS based, so Dosbox will work on them. KQ5 and 6 you need to run in win95 mode, and even XP had issues with them (although I got them to work; haven't tried them in Vista/7 yet). and KQVII has a major bug in chapter 5 due to the speed of todays CPU's...

As for Myst, I believe it was windows based, which means Dosbox won't run it. You can try though.

 

[isamuelson]

If you're running 32-bit vista, then the 16-bit stuff should still work depending on how it was programmed. There are still some 16-bit apps that won't work correctly even under 32-bit Vista. However, most do work.

 

[gamerk316]

16-bit support was dropped in Vista (all versions), period. .bat files will still run though, but 16-bit .exe files will not.

 

[isamuelson]

Hmm, that's strange because I know I installed some games that used 16-bit dlls and such under Vista 32-bit (such as Blade Runner and Back Yard Soccer).

Well, maybe it's not officially supported, but I know I've installed those two games under Vista 32-bit that refuse to install under 64-bit because of the 16-bit legacy code in the installers and the games themselves.

 

[gamerk316]

^^ The .dll's can be called provided the source .exe is still written in 32-bits. Its more memory management then anything else...