How do I play "older" games in Vista?

[dud]

I just bought a Dell M1330 with basic graphics and 2 GB memory. I am not a huge gamer (any more) but like an occasional game of Homeworld (1999) or Empire Earth (2001) from time-to-time, especially while on a business trip. The laptop came with Vista pre-installed. I am an XP user and have been considering replacing the existing Vista with XP Pro.

I searched the forum and found nothin helpful ... so here goes:

How (if at all) do you get older (see above) games to work on Vista? I tried running Empire Earth in "XP Compatibility Mode" but it still crashed.

Thanks for you help ...

 

[katank]

Have you tried running Win 98/ME compatibility mode? That often helps w/ older titles.

 

[Anubis]

just install them?

i installed starcraft and Diabol 2 on Vista 64 and they worked fine

 

[dud]

Originally posted by: Anubis
just install them?

i installed starcraft and Diabol 2 on Vista 64 and they worked fine

Sorry if I wasn't clear. I did Empire Earth and it craps out immediately.

 

[BladeVenom]

Have you installed the latest updates for Vista and for the games you're trying to play?

 

[dud]

Originally posted by: katank
Have you tried running Win 98/ME compatibility mode? That often helps w/ older titles.

Katank,

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried this and received the following not-so-good message:

"Unable to load function FT_Thunk (Kernel32.dll)"

Oh well ...

 

[dud]

Originally posted by: BladeVenom
Have you installed the latest updates for Vista and for the games you're trying to play?

Good point ... and the answer is yes.

 

[BladeVenom]

Check the developers or publishers website, or email them. Maybe it isn't compatible with Vista.

 

[BlueAcolyte]

Virtual machine or install a linux distro and use WINE. You may HAVE to use WINE if there is no other way because I'm not sure VMs can do 3d acceleration.

 

[Psynaut]

I was having the same problem just this week since I am going back and playing the Half Life series. The problem, I found, isn't Vista, but X64 vs X86. I can't run any of the old games on Vista X64, so I installed them on my X86 partition and they run perfectly.

 

[AdamK47]

Old games don't work for me in Vista x64 either. I'm so horrible with computers that I tend to give up easily trying to get them to work.

 

[AzN]

Originally posted by: Psynaut
I was having the same problem just this week since I am going back and playing the Half Life series. The problem, I found, isn't Vista, but X64 vs X86. I can't run any of the old games on Vista X64, so I installed them on my X86 partition and they run perfectly.

That's why I use Vista x86.

 

[GundamSonicZeroX]

Originally posted by: BlueAcolyte
Virtual machine or install a linux distro and use WINE. You may HAVE to use WINE if there is no other way because I'm not sure VMs can do 3d acceleration.

There's a VMWare in beta right now with DX9 support.

 

[Riverhound777]

Try running as admin? Right click on the Exe and click "Run as administrator"

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: dud
I just bought a Dell M1330 with basic graphics and 2 GB memory. I am not a huge gamer (any more) but like an occasional game of Homeworld (1999) or Empire Earth (2001) from time-to-time, especially while on a business trip. The laptop came with Vista pre-installed. I am an XP user and have been considering replacing the existing Vista with XP Pro.

I searched the forum and found nothin helpful ... so here goes:

How (if at all) do you get older (see above) games to work on Vista? I tried running Empire Earth in "XP Compatibility Mode" but it still crashed.

Thanks for you help ...

What graphics chip?..it could be that the game is not compatible with the basic graphics chip,I have a Vista x86 laptop and it has Nvidia 8600GT M chip,it runs all the games I have thrown at it so far.

You could try updating your DX9.0C Link,its for Vista as well as XP.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: Psynaut
I was having the same problem just this week since I am going back and playing the Half Life series. The problem, I found, isn't Vista, but X64 vs X86. I can't run any of the old games on Vista X64, so I installed them on my X86 partition and they run perfectly.

Vista x64 has no 16 bit legacy support so those very old 16 bit games won't run unless you use something like DOSBOX,however 32 bit games in Vista x64 you should have no issues,I have played old games like Might & Magic 7, Morrowind,BG,Planescape Torment,KOTOR,Starcraft,HL etc with no issues in Vista x64.

 

[dud]

My unit has the integrated 965 express. I ran EE on my even slower (with integrated graphics) XP laptop with no problem.

Also, I am running Vista Home Premium.

Thanks for everyone's advice ...

 

[sourceninja]

Another problem is copy protection. Some copy protection uses a driver. This will not work with vista unless you can find a suitable driver for it. Otherwise, try a no-cd crack.

 

[dud]

Originally posted by: sourceninja
Another problem is copy protection. Some copy protection uses a driver. This will not work with vista unless you can find a suitable driver for it. Otherwise, try a no-cd crack.

I will try this ... Thank you.

 

[xtabi]

Right click...run in compatibility mode.

 

[Bateluer]

I can run both Empire Earth and Homeworld 1 under Vista 64 without any issues, I don't even recall using any compatibility modes.

Usually, Vista 64 runs whatever you throw at it without a so much as a blink.