Old Computer games on XP

[strassy]

Hello all,

With some luck and some help from other sources on the internet, I was able to get the original Magic the Gathering game to run on one of my two computers with XP.

Now I am trying to get Worlds of Xeen to work, without any success. It is off the Might and Magic Millenium Edition CDs, which were designed for Windows 98. I've tried various compatibility modes, none of which work. The frustrating part is, I don't even get an error message. When I try to run the program, all I get is a black screen with a flashing cursor in the upper left corner.

I've googled for this and I only found one real hit...and the solution the guy offered was to change the compatibility mode...I've already done that.

Can anyone help? Thanks

[SeverThe7th]

I cant see Worlds of Xeen in the Dox Box compatibility listing. Dosbox will work with many of the old pc games though. Any classic pc gamer with XP must have dosbox!!

VDM Sound is also good, and ive read a few people who have ran world of xeen without any problems using VDM Sound.

Edit:
Should be able to get it from here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/vdmsound/

[Poofta!]

this is an area i have much interest in, i have a rather large pc/dos game collection which i love dearly (i value and cherish it more than console collecting, and regular pay a lot more cash for pc releases), getting them to work on the other hand these days has become almost impossible so i began looking for more permanent solutions. here are your options:

1- buy an old ~200-400$ laptop with something like a 500mhz cpu etc, install win 98 and get a mousem make it your old pc game box (win 98 comes with DOS, so install Norton Commander and youre set)

2 - dual boot your pc with win 98. this will take care of about 75% of the games. lots will suffer from speed instability, as apparantly the new hardware will run the software with the speed of light! lol kinda amusing to see, not fun to play. also many games will not want to run on HDs with too much space, or too much RAM (Ultima 6-8, im looking at you)

3 - emulators. we're talking DOS box, exult, SCUMM etc here. this, supposedly has 99% success rate per game, however it requires a bit of work to get it going, as each game has its own settings it wants to see so it takes lots of tweaking. scumm is flawless btw.

4 - Virtualization, ahhh, here we go, getting to the truly hands on, in depth, serious approach. im not gonna discuss here what and how virtualization works, but essentially you will be emulating a set of hardware to create a pc onto which you will install any OS you wish... while running it in whatever OS you already use. you can have as many Virtual PCs as you want so its easy to have several templates depending on the era of game you wanna play. (yes, you can run linux in vista, xp in linux, and win 98 in xp etc)
read up on it, its really interesting and kinda fun. most popular (and free!) programs are VMware and microsoft's VirtualPC 2007. dont be fooled that they are free, both are extremely powerful and useful pieces of software.


good luck! and please share your results. these are more permanent solutions to the old-game-wont-run problem which plagues us every OS cycle. may i suggest a game to play? Ultima VII (complete) one of the finest pieces of Roleplaying on DOS. all the old TSR forgotten realms games are wonderful too. HAVE FUN!

[Rogue]

I just can't believe people uses computers without partitions on the HD.

So, if you have like, 6 partitions, install a win 98 SE in one.

That's so easy...

[JunkTheMagicDragon]

problem is, some old games just don't like new hardware (or it's difficult finding win98 drivers for it).

win98 machines are a dime a dozen. you can easily pick one up for less than $20. i picked mine up for free (well, for the cost of replacing the hd with one i had lying around).

i can see how it could be a pain if you're concerned about space or clutter, but it's the cheapest and easiest alternative.