Old games in WindowsXP

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Just got new pc with windows xp. I was hoping to be able to carry on playing some of my favourite classics such as Carmageddon2 and Populous:The Beginning.
However, Carmaggedon starts up but then freezes as soon as the race starts , and Populous: The Beginning won't even start at all (in software or hardware modes) .

Anyone know if there is any way around these problems (some kind of patch to make it work in xp)or am i just gonna have to put the games into retirement on my shelf??

Cheers all.

 

IIRC WinXP has something called "compatibility mode". How do you turn it on, beats me. Try with right clicking on the exe file.

 

Thanks, i'll give that a try.

Any other ideas in the meantime are welcome.

 

As Extremist said, the compability mode is turned on in the exe file properties (you should see a "Compability" page there). After my experience, it doesn't work very well though. Still can't get Railroad Tycoon or Rollecoaster Tycoon run on Windows XP. Transport Tycoon Deluxe however worked just fine after I found an unofficial Windows XP patch .

 

Populous: The Beginning is a pretty cool game. I remember beating it. Some levels were crazy!

 

Tried the compatability option but to no avail.

Frog:
Yeah, some of the levels are pretty extreme, which was the problem. My old pc couldn't handle the larger levels. So i have about 3 levels to do before i beat it. But goddam windows XP is a beeeyotch.

 

doesnt help you very much probably, but i must say that i get more of my old dos-games to run under win xp than on win me. only my sb live won´t play a piece of music, think i have to downgrade to the awe 64 again.

 

i had a similar problem with playing sounds on my old pc when trying to play some dos games with a soundblaster 4.1 digital. Not that really matters now.

 

Some gamez you have no hope of them working under Winxp. Take FF7 for instance; it's got a null pointer in there somewhere, so under XP it just crashes at the minigamez. With Msdos, it would just cause a memory leak and keep right on trucking. Compatibility mode won't fix it.

Someone came along and patched it. Works 4.0 now.

Scour the internet for a patch on those gamez. If you can't seem to find one, then you may have to dual boot. Or use WineX.

 

What in the world is WineX? WinX maybe? Windex?

This is the catch-22 of computers. Too old to play new games, and too new to play old games.

 

I'd recommend the dual-boot suggestion. I have had little difficulty getting most of my old games to run on Win98SE, so maybe that could help.

Do you have an MS-DOS mode on your computer? If so, try running in that and see if it helps.

 

I've had absolutely no problems with XP at all. Generally though DOS based games like Constructor will not run as XP does not allow you to go into DOS (the Dos Prompt option is useless here). I've even got a ****ty disc with 3000 Spectrum games on it to work fine. As far as I've seen the compatibilty mode is nigh on useless though unless its a really old game and would ONLY work with Windows 95 anyway and then you'd have to run it with Windows 95/98 compatibility.

 

Errm, so how do i actually install a second OS such as Win98 (or maybe 95 as i lost my copy of 98, leaving me with only the cd for 95).

I really have never had a clue on the whole multiple OS so any help in this area would be much appreciated.

 

Install Win98 first, then install WinXP or any other Win.
WinXP will ask you on installation if you want to OVERWRITE older OS or to keep them both for dual-boot.

In case of adding Win98 to WinXP, I seriously doubt it's an easy job and will probably need some manual file editing plus formatting the hard disc to format Win98 can work with (no, Win98 can't work with NTFS).