XP and games

Hi,
I have Windows 98SE on my Computer.
I am thinking of installing XP Pro on my system.
I have a friend who tried to play some games like Diablo 2 on his XP system and could not get it to work. Is this a lost cause. I have many games like Soulbringer and Planetscape Torment that I really like but are nowhere near finished. Is there a fix to this problem that lets these games get played on XP Pro?

 

They will probably run unless they are old games or written where the game absolutely had to have control of the hardware. None of the NT systems (NT4/2K/XP) will allow that.

Best chance of running them is to create a shortcut on the desktop. Then go into properties for the shortcut and select a compatibility mode for an OS that would run the game. Works most of the time.

 

Hi Newt,
I'm a little confused as to how I can do what you said.

If I put a shortcut to the game on my desktop then do I right click it and choose properties. Then somewhere in that function will there be a tab that lets me choose an OS system to run the game even if it is not the system I have installed on my computer?

Or can I install both 98SE and XP Proffessional on my computer and dual boot them on boot up, or is that like an impossible scenario.

The games I really like are older games that donot have an XP compatable sticker on it. They are games released in 1998. Planetscape Torment and Soulbringer.

My computer is all goofed up at the moment and I will probably have to purge the hard drive and start from scratch. I have a 98SE full install CD and a brand new XP Professional full install disk. I am reading about all the problems some people have had with XP when trying to do some things they did with 98, ME, 2000 Pro. I have also been informed XP Pro is a very superior system.
I just don't want to lose my ability to play these games I really like
by going to an OS that doesn't have something like backward compatability. You know like having my cake and eating it to.

 

You really might be better off, assuming you have enough drive space, to initially just add XP while retaining 98 so you have a dual boot system. That way you can always boot up to 98 for the games.

And adding XP to an existing 98 install is dead easy. But if you update the OS so that you only have XP, adding 98 back in later is a bit more difficult.

The compatibility things works for quite a bit of software. It simply sets up an environment for the application that appears to the application like it's running under that OS.

Not 100% certainly and games are the most likely to give problems. But if you load XP and find your games will work either normally or in compatibility mode, you can get rid of 98.

 

PeteC, Newt,
Thank you for the info.
When I get my computer cleaned up, sounds like my best advantage would be to make certain I keep it partitioned, then load the Windows XP Professional and 98SE in seperate partitons.
I will have to beg assistance in doing this in a new thread when the time comes, so I do it as correctly as possible, because to tell the truth I'd like to know this process but at present time my understanding is severely limited.
Thank You both for taking yhe time to explain the solutions to my problem.

 

I've installed Diablo II on my XP Home system and played it without any trouble so it sounds more like a system configuration problem on your friend's computer rather than an XP problem.

So far, I haven't tried a game that wouldn't play on XP except for some old DOS-based games...and I mean OLD. I suppose I could have messed around with them and figured out how to get them to run but I'm far too lazy to do all that just to look at some tacky graphics.

 

Hi MIZ,
Thanks for the communication. I guess I will simply load my XP Professional and follow Newts instruction if i have any difficulty running it.
Thanks again

 

I'll second Miz' statement; out of the maybe 100 games I've tried on XP, only 1 or 2 didn't work by fiddling with the compatibility options. Most run in the correct OS mode even without being configured to do so.

 

blakston6286 - to give you a better idea of why games that run on 9X will fail to run on NT systems, a little quick tech stuff.

Lots of the programmers who wrote games in the 'old' days had to put in tricks to make the hardware do things the OS didn't understand. So lots of direct program calls to hardware directing it to do interesting stunts. Worked fine in MS-DOS and continued to work in 9X since it doesn't even notice the hardware tricks.

Enter NT (NT3.5, NT4, 2K, XP) and systems designed for business and to have some real security. They use an applet called HAL (hardware abstratcion layer) to keep the system stable. The HAL makes all the hardware calls. If an app tries, HAL intercepts it and translates it before making the hardware do stuff.

There are some of the old tricks that HAL either does not recognize or sees as unsafe. In both cases, the hardware call never gets made. If a game depends on a specific trick and the HAL won't allow it, the game won't run. At all.

But if a call is seen as safe and just not applicable to NT, then compatibility mode usually sets up a proper environment and all is well.

 

Some of the older games look at your operating system to see if it says that it's Win98 or whatever and, if it doesn't see that then the game won't run. The Windows XP "compatibility mode" let's you "tell" the game that your system is Win98 or 95 or ME, whichever you want, so that the game thinks it's OK to proceed. We run 2 old games like that on our WinXP setup.

As for a dual-boot system, get your Win98 running like you want, then put in a WinXP install CD. Along the way, the install CD will "inspect" your system to see what's there. It will allow you to keep Win98 and it will create a new partition on which it will then install WinXP.

Then, each time you start your computer a screen will appear showing both versions of Windows and you have 20 or 30 seconds to select which one you want. If you make no choice it will boot to the "default" choice which is the last system installed, in other words WinXP. Does this make sense to you?

Regards

 

Also, I think that you have administrator privileges to even show a compatability tab on the shortcut (at least on Win2K). This stopped me at my heavilly restricted employment workstation before I figured that out.

Good luck!
TopDog

 

Windows XP has a compatibility mode which will allow most games to work properly. Simply right-click the game executible file and choose 'compatibility mode' and then Win98/WinME, which seems to be the most reliable out of all the OS choices.

Additionally, Micro$oft recently released the M$ Application Compatibility Toolkit ( a 6 Mb download) from

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...FamilyID=09DAC794-B803-4B92-83C9-6A9E8B801434 or from http://www.microsoft.com/compatibility

which is like it's standard compatibility mode, but on steroids, and allows approx 200 various tweaks to force a game to run.

For example, the best racing game of all time (NFS5 Porsche Unleashed) will not run at all on XP in it's native format. If you put it into compatibility mode (WIn98/WinME) the game then launches, but the frame rate is so slow it's unplayable. I then got the M$ Application Compatibility Toolkit, turned on two settings and voila ! I get 100 + frames per second, it's stable and works better than it ever did on 98.

To use the compatibility toolkit, use the steps described below (which is for NFS5 Porsche, but the same should work for most other games)

1) Download the Microsoft Application Compatibility Tool. Go to http://www.microsoft.com/compatibility or directy to the link:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...FamilyID=09DAC794-B803-4B92-83C9-6A9E8B801434

2) Install ACT.

3) Load up the Compatibility Administration Tool from the Programs menu.

4) Click the "Fix" icon to create a new compatibility fix.

5) Type in a description (anything you want), and then point the program to the "Porsche.exe" file. Click "Next ".

6) Under "Operating System Modes ", select "Windows 2000 ". "Win98/Me" might also work, but I haven't needed to try it. Click "Next ".

7) Out of the 130-or-so compatibility options, enable "EmulateHeap" and "HeapPadAllocation ". Click "Next ".

8) This should bring you to the end of the wizard. Click "Finish ".

9) Now you'll have an application compatibility patch. However, ACT will discard your new patch unless you install it into the system registry. To do this, go to the "File" menu and click "Install ".

10) Every time you run Porsche.exe, it should now manage memory correctly. You will now also be able to download the 3.5 patch from within the game itself, and have full multiplayer capabilities. Enjoy!

CREDIT: I found out this neat hack from http://www.ntcompatible.com,/ a great site for learning how to get old software to run on NT versions of Windows. Check out this awesome site!

BertO

 

BertO - excellent information. Thanks.