A bit of 'geek' help needed
we found a couple of PC-CD ROM games bought for my eldest, but which now suit the youngest. She wanted to play them, but they are so old they're Windows 95 compatible.

The PC won't load them (running XP) and I have no intention of runnings Windows 95 for the sake of two kids' games. Plus I wouldn't know how to do that, anyway.

So, the question is, is there anything we can do to make an XP system run a W95 game, or should we forget it, bin them and stop being so tight and buy the poor kid new games?
(TheWeeWitch hasn't been here much recently .., Sun 26 Oct 2008, 10:09, 10 replies, latest was 16 years ago)

Try this
Once you have installed the game

Right click on the game icon and select properties.

You should then see a box open with a tab for compatability, go to that tab and within, check the box for "run this program in compatability mode etc", and select the version of Windows in the drop down menu that you wish to emulate.

This does not always work, and you may need to muck around with the colour and resolution settings but its worth a go.

I have a few old games running with this.

Good luck
( RadG Drinking Mojitos in the sun, Sun 26 Oct 2008, 10:58, Reply)

unfortunately, they won't even install
I got as far as the Install box and then it just sat there - I had to give up after about 30 minutes of watching it do absolutely nothing.
(TheWeeWitch hasn't been here much recently .., Sun 26 Oct 2008, 11:12, Reply)

time to bin them then I guess
unless you were able to find a dirt-cheap old spec machine to run them on.

But it would probably be less to buy new games
(bamboozled Can hear you getting fatter, Sun 26 Oct 2008, 12:17, Reply)

There is a way
Its a bit long-winded, but it seems to work.

Be warned that they would run a lot faster than you remember them.
(Ethelred is watching cheese grow, Sun 26 Oct 2008, 17:06, Reply)

Ethelred
I'm willing to give it a try as the games are no longer available ....... typical D***ey, sell it for a while then withdraw it.
(TheWeeWitch hasn't been here much recently .., Sun 26 Oct 2008, 17:21, Reply)

Hmm
If its not installing it could be that its an old DOS game that would run under W95 but not XP. WHats the name of the game?

you can make old DOS games run on XP by using a thing called DOSbox. It runs a DOS enviroment in an XP window and you can run the game there.

Get DOSbox free here www.dosbox.com/

You will need to read instructions as it is not quite straightforward, but its not to hard.

Also you can find lots of old games on abandonware sites for free.

www.abandonia.com/ is one of the big ones. These sites let you download games that are classed as "abondonware" i.e. the original publisher is long gone and no one owns the rights anymore.
( RadG Drinking Mojitos in the sun, Sun 26 Oct 2008, 18:05, Reply)

RadG
They're both D**sney (I hate that word!) Animated Storybooks. Will give the dos thing a try - probably tomorrow - thanks again!
(TheWeeWitch hasn't been here much recently .., Sun 26 Oct 2008, 20:15, Reply)

get an amiga
what I said!
(lost, Sun 26 Oct 2008, 22:55, Reply)

VirtualBox and a dodgy copy of 95?

( idonthaveafunnynickname Drink-Aware? Sure. I'm aware I want another drink., Mon 27 Oct 2008, 1:15, Reply)

@TWW
I have the same problem, I want to play X-COM apocalypse (the most bestest game EVER), but can't get it to work, even using that DOS box thingy.

I might buy an old laptop and run win95 on it, just to play that game.
( Bert Monkeysex is waiting for the mods to delete him, Mon 27 Oct 2008, 8:08, Reply)