Old games working under Win XP/2000 ?

[Attalus]

I had Steven Biesty's Castle Explorer, and it wouldn't install on Windows Me, but did fine on Piestrider's Windows 98.

[Marikai]

i have XP at home... we have been able to run Half Life, Wizards and Warriors, Diablo 2, Diablo etc to run on our computer...

th eonly thing with Wizards and Warriors is that you need a patch to repair a town scrolling problem... you need VIRTUDUB1.4.7 i think.... something like that.... but theres a huge forum on IW here about W&W!

good luck finding games,

Marikai

[Vaskez]

Originally posted by WillowIX: Quote: Originally posted by Vaskez: Get PartitionMagic - this can shift partitions up and resize them without destroying data. Shift your windows partition up by 200 megabytes or so. Create a FAT-32 partition at the start of your drive. Install DOS! [img]smile.gif[/img] There ya go, now you can play all your old games.

Yepp I´ve tried that, installed Windows 98 instead though. Of course every time I started up the computer I forgot to select my Windows 2000 partition. Then partition magic destroyed my hdd LOL! The hardest part I´ve encountered is to enable sound.[/QUOTE]I don't get it. How did PartitionMaigc destroy your HD? It only does what you tell it to and gives plenty of warning before deleting a partition. Or was this a bug in the program? I doubt it - they are thoroughly tested. Also, what has this got to do with forgetting to select W2K? Did you install a boot manager? (sorry about all the q's it's just that I like to get to the bottom of problems )

Yeah I agree that enabling sound seems to be difficult. In my experience it can be because W2K uses ACPI which automatically sets all the IRQs and such for many of your devices and doens't allow you to change them. In my case it set sound card to IRQ 9 and all my old games could only handle 5 or 7 or all of them except 9! Grr! You might wanna try disabling ACPI and setting your own IRQ.
ACPI = Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (in device manager under Computer) IRQ = Interrupt Request line. (in case you weren't sure )

[ 02-21-2003, 06:12 AM: Message edited by: Vaskez ]

[WillowIX]

[quote]Originally posted by Vaskez:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by WillowIX:
[qb]

Originally posted by Vaskez: [qb]I don't get it. How did PartitionMaigc destroy your HD? It only does what you tell it to and gives plenty of warning before deleting a partition. Or was this a bug in the program? I doubt it - they are thoroughly tested. Also, what has this got to do with forgetting to select W2K? Did you install a boot manager? (sorry about all the q's it's just that I like to get to the bottom of problems )

Not all programs work with 100% efficiency on every computer. Perhaps destroy was a strong word. It completely destroyed my partition table. But it is a very good progam it didn´t work for me that´s all. I tried to merge two partitions and the computed freezed every time at start up. I solved it in the disk manager anyway so no real harm done. But I don´t believe it is a bug. It has been known to happen that´s all (and of course it happened to me ).

Ehh, I was using a boot manager. I didn´t want to preselect an OS, I thought "Hey, it´s not that hard to select every time". Of course when I turned on my computer I promptly went and got some coffe etc. And when I returned to my office, ooops, there I was staring at Win98. LOL!

[Vaskez]

Originally posted by WillowIX: Not all programs work with 100% efficiency on every computer. Perhaps destroy was a strong word. It completely destroyed my partition table. But it is a very good progam it didn´t work for me that´s all. I tried to merge two partitions and the computed freezed every time at start up. I solved it in the disk manager anyway so no real harm done. But I don´t believe it is a bug. It has been known to happen that´s all (and of course it happened to me ). Ehh, I was using a boot manager. I didn´t want to preselect an OS, I thought "Hey, it´s not that hard to select every time". Of course when I turned on my computer I promptly went and got some coffe etc. And when I returned to my office, ooops, there I was staring at Win98. LOL!

LOL yeah I did that all the time - switched on the comp, went off and damn it's booted into the wrong OS! hehe. Now I set defaults but it can still go wrong when you want the other one

Anyway, you might know this already - but here's a little tip: if your partition table is messed up you can always do this:
insert the windows 2000/XP CD and boot from it. Go to the repair using console option. Then type help to see a list of commans. You should find one like "fixboot" which you can type to fix the boot sector on the current partition (if a partition becomes unbootable) or if your whole partition table is messed up run "fixmbr" and this rewrites the main boot record and fixes your partition table.

[WillowIX]

Originally posted by Vaskez: LOL yeah I did that all the time - switched on the comp, went off and damn it's booted into the wrong OS! hehe. Now I set defaults but it can still go wrong when you want the other one Anyway, you might know this already - but here's a little tip: if your partition table is messed up you can always do this: insert the windows 2000/XP CD and boot from it. Go to the repair using console option. Then type help to see a list of commans. You should find one like "fixboot" which you can type to fix the boot sector on the current partition (if a partition becomes unbootable) or if your whole partition table is messed up run "fixmbr" and this rewrites the main boot record and fixes your partition table.

Hmm I´ll relay that tip to the hubby. He used a low-level(?) format tool from the disk manufactorer instead. It works like a charm now. I only use it as slave anyway. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Vaskez]

Originally posted by WillowIX: Quote: Originally posted by Vaskez: LOL yeah I did that all the time - switched on the comp, went off and damn it's booted into the wrong OS! hehe. Now I set defaults but it can still go wrong when you want the other one Anyway, you might know this already - but here's a little tip: if your partition table is messed up you can always do this: insert the windows 2000/XP CD and boot from it. Go to the repair using console option. Then type help to see a list of commans. You should find one like "fixboot" which you can type to fix the boot sector on the current partition (if a partition becomes unbootable) or if your whole partition table is messed up run "fixmbr" and this rewrites the main boot record and fixes your partition table.

Hmm I´ll relay that tip to the hubby. He used a low-level(?) format tool from the disk manufactorer instead. It works like a charm now. I only use it as slave anyway. [img]smile.gif[/img] [/QUOTE]Heh, I've used those 2 commands a number of times after failed installations of Linux (didn't have all the CDs I needed so had to abort half-way through!) messed up the partition table. Worked every time for me [img]smile.gif[/img]

[andrewas]

A long time ago I realised that the best way to solve the problems encountered with onld games on new systems was to actualy emulate an old machine the same way you would emulate a SNES. So I looked for an emulator, and coundnt find one.

Things are better now though. 286 and early 386 games shouldn't be a problem with this:

http://dosbox.zophar.net

Anyhing that needs protected mode though wont run. To cut out the technicalities, protected mode is a method the CPU uses to try to keep programs from accidently totalling the entire system. It was introduced with the 386 and is insanely somplicated. Its also not yet emulated in dosbox. So you cant use it. If you try, youll get an error about DPMI.

Ill look for a better one tonight. There are a few linux ones out there that might be portable to windows.