Older games and Windows Vista

langfor6

I'm finally being forced to move on.

I'm giving away my old Win XP PC, which is getting long in the tooth anyway. It's going to my wife's parents, and it should serve them well.

My wife and I will be sharing her PC, which came preinstalled with Vista Home Premium, until such time as I buy/build a new PC.

How much trouble should I anticipate in running older games? Specifically I'm talking about most Bioware RPGS from Baldur's Gate on and Half-Life 2 and its brethren, although I have some others that I still fire up on occasion.

Do I have to kiss my old favorites goodbye, or is there life after XP?

Rook

Most things work, certainly BG1+2 and Half Life 2 won't give you too many problems.

Raere

Jeez, since when is HL2 considered an older game? Yes, all of the Source games will play fine, and I believe the original HL and its ilk will too. Not sure about Baldur's gate era games, though.

Henroid

Half-Life 2 is an "older game" already? Goddamn.

I think your only worries are going to be for Windows 95 era games. DOSbox will be your friend I guess.

subedii

Yeah if Half-Life 2 didn't run on Vista, Valve would be in the centre of fanboy nerd rage about now. Heck, Half-Life 1 and addons run just fine as well.

Baldur's Gate and other IE games shouldn't have any real problems either.

Your main issues might arise with Windows 95 or DOS games. For the most part compatibility mode usually works for 95, and for DOS there's DOSBox.

I would say you haven't really got anything to worry about.

langfor6

I guess it depends on what your definition of older games is.

Four years seems like a long time to me, in terms of technology anyway.

Other notable releases the year Half-Life 2 came out: GTA: San Andreas, Ninja Gaiden, Final Fantasy XI (PS2), Halo 2.

I guess it's not that old, further revealing my ignorance of what will run on Vista. Thanks though.

Antihippy

Just get plenty of RAM.

Seriously.

Like, my mom has Vista running on 440mb. :x

Sorenson

As far as compatability goes it seems to be a crapshoot or something similar: people will complain and moan about how X doesn't work in Vista, and then along will come somebody who has no problems whatsoever with using X. I can only speak for myself, but as far as I can remember Vista's only cockblocked me once and in all honesty it sounds more like the programmers used some ass-backwards coding to do what they did than anything due to Vista.

As a dude who's constantly installing old crap and seeing what he can get away with, though, you should be generally fine if it's a Windows-proper game and you're adequately set up (2 gigs of ram seems to work perfect for me).

acidlacedpenguin

Hey guess what? Windows Vista isn't actually satanic poison that will burn your house down and murder your family. . .

pretty much anything Windows 98 and further down you could probably get away with installing windows XP/98/3.1/DOS in VMWare if they actually give you trouble in vista.

Muriden

Antihippy wrote: »

Just get plenty of RAM.

Seriously.

I cannot understate this. Vista, while a decent OS, is a RAM hog. Would suggest a minimum of 2 gigs, go higher if possible.

Tim James

Even on XP, the only problems I had were with old Win95 games. DOS is covered, and more modern stuff usually works, but that transition period was kind of rough.

Zell

I did some compatibility testing with Vista once, here's the new problems I found with the 100+ games I tested:

Some CD Audio based games do not switch tracks properly at times, _inmm.dll will probably fix this
Re-Volt wouldn't work (but people have figured out how to get it running by now)
Zork Grand Inquisitor 1.1 didn't work, 1.0 did.

So yeah, I only ran into issues I know how to resolve by now. I really wouldn't worry too much. I had more compatibility issues when switching to a GeForce 8 series card from a 7 series one.

If you have 64 bit though, you won't be able to play Windows 3.1x games, this is a pretty big problem imo, so I went with 32 bit, but really, that most likely won't be a problem for you at all.

citizen059

My experience so far, as mentioned by others already, has been mostly good except for Win95 games. Some of them are just stubborn.

I'm trying to get F-22 ADF to work in Vista right now for a coworker, and it's a pain. The app runs, but the menu screens get messed up.

JustinSane07

Star Wars Empire at War doesn't work on 64 bit, but it works just fine on 32 bit.

I've also had problems running Starcraft. The colors are all retarded looking.

Cantido

I can't get Battlezone 1 working.

Battlezone 2 works great though.

Norfair

I'm stuck with 64-bit Home Premium, because my housemates fail at reading comprehension. Having said that, while my Win95 games won't work, most recent games do. I just got KoToR 2 working last night. Once all the patches were installed, it was fine. There's just a little screen tearing going on when I move the camera too fast, since I don't turn Vsync on.

Strange, since I'd heard it wouldn't run, or wouldn't have sound.

EDIT: Not really an older game, I know, but like I said, so far only Win95 games refuse to work.

Dignified Pauper

As stated previously. RAM will be the biggest factor. If you don't have at least 2gb RAM, then most games will lag. I'd recommend, for foolproofness at least 3gb RAM.

harvest

I highly recommend just downloading Microsoft Virtual Machine (free) and installing XP (and 98 if you need it) on a VM. That way you can just fire up the VM and play in what the game believes is a native environment.

Rakai

Norfair wrote: »

I'm stuck with 64-bit Home Premium, because my housemates fail at reading comprehension. Having said that, while my Win95 games won't work, most recent games do. I just got KoToR 2 working last night. Once all the patches were installed, it was fine. There's just a little screen tearing going on when I move the camera too fast, since I don't turn Vsync on.

Strange, since I'd heard it wouldn't run, or wouldn't have sound.

EDIT: Not really an older game, I know, but like I said, so far only Win95 games refuse to work.

Is it just the installer? I know I got jedi knight working on 64-bit vista by simply copying the files and then inserting the registry file.