Upgrading to Windows 7. What about my old games.

Mad Mike

My gaming rig is still running Windows XP about it is due a serious upgrade. I will be putting Windows 7-64 in it along with new mobo, processor etc (almost certainly I5-750 based). I am worried however about my older games. I have literally hundreds of PC games dating back to the 1990's and while I don't play them all every day I do enjoy an occasional trip down memory lane. I wonder if this is an issue for anyone else and what steps they are taking to keep playing older games?

I would rather avoid having to keep an old XP rig in a corner somewhere.

I looked into Windows 7 virtual XP mode and it is a non-runner for gaming

Dual boot Windows 7 / XP is probably my preferred option at present but is a bit clunky.

draken

Hi,

Hope your upgrades work well.

As for older games, VMware Player running XP supports Directx 9. The virtual GPU isn't able to do modern GPU processes, but, it works just fine for many older games. I tested it out with Tomb Raider 4, and it worked well. Older games have issues with widescreen resolutions, but VMware player can play in Fullscreen without borders on the left and right.

I'm sure it will work with most older games to. I am pretty sure that anything it doesn't work with will run just fine on Windows 7.

Mad Mike

That is interesting to know. I will certainly try that out draken thanks for the tip.

draken

Oh I typo'd above. Fullscreen in VMplayer on 16:9/16:10 monitors has borders if the virtual machine has a 4:3 ratio. Shouldn't be a problem.

If you have a version of Windows 7 that has XP mode, you can get VMplayer to import that XP mode pretty quickly, so no separate installation of XP is needed.

I'm glad if this helps

BostonB

Most games will probably run fine. Either you can set the application/game to run in compatibility mode, or you can use something like http://www.dosbox.com/

That said the main issue you will have is with video drivers, as that where most if any problems will lie. Look at the forums, fansites for you fav games, and see if theres any issues.

Mad Mike

Thanks for the replies guys. You have given me a lot more confidence that I will be able to get stuff working. It was similar when XP came out first. A bunch of old games wouldn't work on it but over time patches and emulators came out which allowed pretty much anything to be run on XP.

Your answers have prompted a different question but I will ask it in another post.

BostonB

One of the games I used to play was thirdwires Wings Over Vietnam. A lot of their games didn't work on Windows 7, but you could tweak a few lines in an ini and get it working. they released a newer version that didn't need the tweak but I still play the old version as its faster on my old laptop. Thats the only think I had issues with. Not a big game player anymore though.