Question Issues with a Windows 95/98 game on Windows 2000 Pro ?

[silversmithy]

I wanted to try out an old game called Exhumed on an old PC running Windows 2000 Pro. I realized that compatability issues are possible so I did not get my hopes up.

Following the manual's installation instructions did not work. I click on "install" but it does not recognize that the CD is in the drive, but it clearly is. I went ahead and opened up the CD contents and double clicked on the EX file I believe it was, and the black DOS box opens up and first shows error "Unable to initialize sound card" or something similar. It comes and goes so quickly I cannot remember. I will try to get the info straight when I get home.

Anyway, the game finally seems to start up fine, but no audio at the introduction, (shows pages in a book being turned). The audio returns when it gets to (I am guessing) the main title screen, but the image is completely messed up, and the lines that I am guessing are your options, etc. have no words, but are in fact just solid lines. There is fire in the background and what looks like half of a mouth, but the rest is either gone or messed up.

Any help would be appreciated.

PC specs are:

CPU: AMD Athlon Thunderbird

RAM 768MB

GPU: GeForce 7800GS AGP

Two CD ROM drives.

 

[jeremyj_83]

I wouldn't be surprised if Win 2K is the issue. I found that it had issues playing older games. Windows XP was better at older games due to the compatibility feature. However, you might be better off installing either 98SE or ME (I shudder at that OS) for those games.

 

[kerberos_20]

windows 2000 was pure NT based, whole NT serie before win XP had compatibility issues with 9x apps, even tho win 2k atleast started to make compatibility better, it wasnt perfect
win XP had better compatibility as it combined NT kernel with 9x

as far as compatibility, the thing is win 9x was 16/32 bit (such a hybrid with both 16/32bit drivers running on top of msdos), while NT was fully 32bit

 

[silversmithy]

Okay, thank you both for your help. I was actually thinking about maybe trying to install/play on XP. Trouble is that I don't know if I have an XP PC handy. I do have Windows 7 on my other PC. Would that be worth a go in compatibility mode? Thanks again.

 

[jeremyj_83]

Okay, thank you both for your help. I was actually thinking about maybe trying to install/play on XP. Trouble is that I don't know if I have an XP PC handy. I do have Windows 7 on my other PC. Would that be worth a go in compatibility mode? Thanks again.

I never had luck with Win 7 running programs from Win 98 or 95.

 

[silversmithy]

Okay, I am pretty sure I did not either if I remember correctly. I will see if I can locate an old PC that may have XP on it. Also, do you think if I adjusted the video settings down from 32 to 16, or if any changes to video would help? The odd thing is the intro which apparently tells a story as pages in a book are turned displays fine, but when it gets to the main game screen the fire in the background is fine, but the text is just solid spaces of color, and the creatures face is messed up with most parts missing. I don't think it's the 7800GS as I was running a different Windows 98 game with no immediate issues that I can remember on this same setup. The Exhumed CD looks to be almost new, with no significant scratches I can tell. Thanks again.

 

[artk2219]

Okay, I am pretty sure I did not either if I remember correctly. I will see if I can locate an old PC that may have XP on it. Also, do you think if I adjusted the video settings down from 32 to 16, or if any changes to video would help? The odd thing is the intro which apparently tells a story as pages in a book are turned displays fine, but when it gets to the main game screen the fire in the background is fine, but the text is just solid spaces of color, and the creatures face is messed up with most parts missing. I don't think it's the 7800GS as I was running a different Windows 98 game with no immediate issues that I can remember on this same setup. The Exhumed CD looks to be almost new, with no significant scratches I can tell. Thanks again.

Maybe try a different driver version? Is there a newer or older driver revision you could try? As for xp support, I mean anything from a Pentium 3 or athlon up to a haswell i7 or amd fx should be supported under xp. You have tons of GPU options as well, anything from GeForce 2 or Radeon 7000 all the way to a GTX 980 ti or r9 280x. If you want something kind of neat, amd's fm1 and fm2 apu's up to the 5000 series are kind of excellent for xp. CPU performance faster than any core 2 quad and GPU performance around a Geforce 9600 GT or Radeon HD 4670 all in one efficient package. The fun part as always is going to be making sure that you have all of the driver's for everything though.

 

[aoresteen]

windows 2000 was pure NT based, ....

....as far as compatibility, the thing is win 9x was 16/32 bit (such a hybrid with both 16/32bit drivers running on top of msdos), while NT was fully 32bit

Windows 2000 (and NT 3.4 & 4.0 ) had plenty of 16 bit code in it, mostly for DOS support. There were 16bit and 32bit flavors of utilities. W2K was missing the W98 libraries which XP did a better job of supporting. Unless a game/app said it was W2K compatible, most likely it would not run under W2K.

I keep a W98 SE desktop and a laptop running to use/play old games. I also keep a W2K desktop as well as there are things W2K can do that XP can not do. For years I dual booted W2K & XP. 4 port KVM switches make it easy to have them readily available. Also, you can multi-boot W98/W2K/XP using older utilities like System Commander. Find an older mobo (ASUS/Socket 478 mobos work well) that supports those OSS and have them all in one box. I have one that has DOS, W2K, 98SE, and XP on it.

 

[kerberos_20]

Windows 2000 (and NT 3.4 & 4.0 ) had plenty of 16 bit code in it, mostly for DOS support. There were 16bit and 32bit flavors of utilities.

there was a difference
win 9x was mainly 16bit, even tho kernel was 32bit, it was still 16bit operating system rellying on msdos 640kb ram xD 32bit was just aftertough (so 16/32bit hybrid)... just to have 32bit app support nothing less..it did offten had crashes due to 16bit limits (including low msdos resources when opening too many apps)

NT on the other hand was 32bit everywhere, 16bit was added as a compatibility layer, meaning 16bit app couldnt crash your 32bit OS, while on 9x any 16bit app could crash it, on NT you could actually multitask, while on 9x you couldnt, coz system would crash due to low msdos resources

 

[onespeedbiker]

I know this is a couple of months old, but Windows 7 Pro had a Virtual Machine (VMware) that would run a licensed version of Windows XP. Worked very well with old 32 bit games.

 

[Jito463]

One thing I've found over the years when working with older games, is to install them in a unique directory (e.g. C:\Games), and NOT in Program Files/Program Files (x86). I find that avoids most - though not all - compatibility issues.