changing back to W98 from XP

cormie

Hi,
My friend wants to go back to W98 because XP can't play some games or they can but they are allot of hassle to install or something. What's the best sollution?? Can he have 2 OS on the one machine easily? Anyone had any experience with similar problem? thanks

Akula

Run windows xp and run a virtual windows 98 box using vmware or the like.

If its an old dos game that is having the problem try using dosbox.

Inspector Gadget

I've tried this with VMWare (just for the hell of it), and it didn't work. Can't remember exactly why offhand - but I think it was something to do with the absence of MIDI support in the sound driver, so be aware of this problem should your game require MIDI - if it doesn't, you're probably fine

Hope this helps,
Gadget

cormie

thanks for replies but what is vbware and dosbox? are they on XP already or do I download them? Where?

Inspector Gadget

Eh, vmware ( http://www.vmware.com/ ) is a program that allows you to completely emulate a computer - their "hard disks" (for example) are large files on the parent system that store complete file systems. Virtual PC ( http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/virtualpc/ ) is similar, except that (as far as I know) it only emulates various flavours of Windows, though it might emulate Mac OS... (it emulates a fully working operating system-equipped computer, rather than VMware which basically requires you to install your own into your virtual computer - it's even got a BIOS and everything )

DOSBox ( http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/ ) appears to be an attempt at an open-source VMWare-type product, but as I've never used it I don't know how complete or stable it is. The website shows it running copies of Windows 3.x in emulation; don't know if it's up to doing more than that (particularly emulating reasonable graphics and sound hardware). However, it looks like it's free, very much (!) unlike the other two...

Hope this helps,
Gadget

Draíochta

I think Virtual PC will do any OS, will do linux anyway, never had a Mac OS to try out.

Inspector Gadget

Draíochta; Looks like I haven't been paying attention to what Connectix/Microsoft have been doing with VPC for the last while; the list I've just googled up ( http://vpc.visualwin.com/ ) is impressive!

Gadget

Draíochta

Nice list, Cool find!
Shall try a few of these out, wonder how many are free?
Sorry Cormie
Carry on

Capt'n Midnight

First is the HDD using NFTS file system ?
If so then win98 will not be able to use it and you are looking at a second HDD or backing up formatting and reinstalling 98

If you are lucky enough to have C: as FAT 32 then you can install windows 98 in a different folder to the one XP is in (eg: c:\windowz ) - this will stop XP booting - but that can be fixed later on with a bit of perservence

SirLemonhead

DosBox and VMware aren't going to be ideal i'd imagine for more recent dos based games(Blood, Shadow Warrior, Terminal velocity and other 95-97 released games come to mind) . As far as I know, DosBox can't really emulate faster than a 386/486 currently.

The best thing really I guess is to dual boot 98 and XP. You'll need to sort out the whole FAT/NTFS problem though.

Has he considered VDMsound?
http://www.ece.mcgill.ca/~vromas/vdmsound/

It'll let you run your old dos games on XP/2000 with sound(and basic networking IPX support).
Use http://advsys.net/ken/nolfb.zip to allow you to use VESA graphics (or graphics resolutions over 320x240) in the dos games in combination with VDMsound

Hope that helps anyway. Is there any particular games he's wanted to get working as well as possible?