# Running old games in Windows 7



## Merkuri (Sep 18, 2010)

Anyone have any tips for trying to get older games (like, Windows 95/98 era) running on a Windows 7 x64 laptop?

I've got an Acer Aspire 5532 that I use mostly when traveling (which is not very often) and I figured I'd be able to install some of my older games (with lower requirements) on it using compatibility mode.  However, the first two older games I tried seem to be giving me no love.  They both start up and either chug away at 100% CPU until killed or just end immediately.  Neither of them show any visible signs of doing anything.

I'm trying to get Icewind Dale running at the moment.  I've tried setting it to run in a few different compatibility modes (95, 98, and XP) with no luck.  I disabled my antivirus, in case that was killing it for some reason, and I added it to the list of Data Execution Prevention exceptions.  Still nada.

Any other suggestions?  Or should I put these games back in my closet where they are doomed to forever yearn for the light of a computer screen?


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## Felon (Sep 18, 2010)

Have you checked into Steam? It offers plenty of old games that run on Win 7. They do it by using Dosbox, which is a pretty robust program that you can configure to run just about any x86 game.


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## Merkuri (Sep 18, 2010)

I know where I can get games that have been remade or adjusted to run on Windows 7, but I was hoping I could bring back to life some of the games I already had instead of spending money on new (to me) ones. 

Edit: I re-read your post and noticed this time that you mentioned DOSBox.  Can that run Windows 95 games?  I thought from the name that it would only run DOS games.


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## Keldryn (Sep 19, 2010)

That's odd that Icewind Dale won't run.  I haven't tried running Icewind Dale yet, but both Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate II run fine on my Windows 7 64-bit notebook, without any compatibility mode settings.  Given that it uses the same engine as BG1, I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work.

If I have a chance, I'll try installing Icewind Dale and see if it works for me or not.


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## Caprica (Sep 25, 2010)

Merkuri said:


> Edit: I re-read your post and noticed this time that you mentioned DOSBox.  Can that run Windows 95 games?  I thought from the name that it would only run DOS games.




Depends on which game you're after! There is a full compatability list here and the official website has a basics guide which is worth checking out:
Basic Setup and Installation of DosBox - DOSBoxWiki

If nothing else, there is always Good Old Games who are very cheap anyway


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## Merkuri (Sep 25, 2010)

Caprica said:


> Depends on which game you're after! There is a full compatability list here




Hmm, looks like this won't help me with Icewind Dale, but it might with Dungeon Keeper.



Caprica said:


> If nothing else, there is always Good Old Games who are very cheap anyway




I use this laptop so rarely that buying games for it just doesn't seem worth it, even if they're $5-$15 games.   But I have seen GOG before.  Maybe I'll pick up something that'll run on both my main machine and my laptop... hmm...


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## Gulla (Sep 26, 2010)

GOG released Baldur's Gate a few days ago, and promises more "Habsbro Licenced" games, coming up, so you might avctually get IWD in a few weeks. 

What you really pay the $5 or $10 to GOG for is that they have done all the work of getting it working on Windows Vista and Windows 7. To me at least that is worth the money many times over (even though I have all but 1 of my GOG-games in original boxes on the shelf  )


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## John Crichton (Sep 27, 2010)

We've had no problem running ID on Win7.  Probably best to try with another computer if something that old isn't running.  How does Win7 work on that machine?  Does it have 4 gigs of RAM and all the other requirements?


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## Caprica (Sep 27, 2010)

Gulla said:


> GOG released Baldur's Gate a few days ago, and promises more "Habsbro Licenced" games, coming up, so you might avctually get IWD in a few weeks.
> 
> What you really pay the $5 or $10 to GOG for is that they have done all the work of getting it working on Windows Vista and Windows 7. To me at least that is worth the money many times over (even though I have all but 1 of my GOG-games in original boxes on the shelf  )




Quite often you will get extras too - soundtrack, artwork, etc.

For me though, the convinience outweighs the time involved in setting up DOSBox (or whichever emulator you're usuing), tweaking various settings and getting part way through the game only to discover that a graphics-related glitch has stopped me playing any further (Toonstruck )


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## Merkuri (Sep 27, 2010)

John Crichton said:


> We've had no problem running ID on Win7.  Probably best to try with another computer if something that old isn't running.  How does Win7 work on that machine?  Does it have 4 gigs of RAM and all the other requirements?




Win 7 seems to work fine.  I don't have the machine in front of me (left it at work this weekend - I also use it as a backup machine in the office because I was tired of them giving me crappy laptops or giving me nice laptops and then taking them away because someone else needed it), but I'm fairly certain it has all of the requirements.  It runs Civilization IV just fine (which was a complete surprise to me... I didn't think a non-gaming laptop would be able to handle something that modern).

I wouldn't be surprised if my Norton antivirus was killing it or if it killed part of the installation.  I clicked the "disable auto-protect" option on the antivirus while I was trying to play it, but I didn't shut it down entirely.

Did you need to do anything special to get it running?  Did you have to install a particular patch or set it to run in compatibility mode for a certain OS?  It would be nice to compare notes with someone who has it working so I know I'm at least heading in the right direction.

I don't have another Windows 7 machine to try it on (unless I try it on my work desktop, but I don't think they'd appreciate that ) and I don't really have the desire to have it installed on my Vista desktop (the machine I'm using right now).  I just wanted some other miscellaneous games on my laptop so that when I travel I have a little more choice in what games I play.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Sep 27, 2010)

Gulla said:


> GOG released Baldur's Gate a few days ago, and promises more "Habsbro Licenced" games, coming up, so you might avctually get IWD in a few weeks.
> 
> What you really pay the $5 or $10 to GOG for is that they have done all the work of getting it working on Windows Vista and Windows 7. To me at least that is worth the money many times over (even though I have all but 1 of my GOG-games in original boxes on the shelf  )



Temple of Elemental Evil with all Co8 patches? 

I figure the game will look very dated now, though.  but if it weren't for the bugs, it would have been THE D&D game.


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## Thanee (Sep 27, 2010)

Merkuri said:


> ...Norton antivirus...




OMG, you are actually using that!? 

Bye
Thanee


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## John Crichton (Sep 27, 2010)

Merkuri said:


> Did you need to do anything special to get it running?  Did you have to install a particular patch or set it to run in compatibility mode for a certain OS?  It would be nice to compare notes with someone who has it working so I know I'm at least heading in the right direction.



Patched it using the normal DL/install method.  Otherwise nothing special.  I'm pretty sure we didn't even have to click for a compatibility mode.


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## Seonaid (Sep 27, 2010)

John Crichton said:


> Patched it using the normal DL/install method.  Otherwise nothing special.  I'm pretty sure we didn't even have to click for a compatibility mode.



I'm the one who actually installed and played it on the Win7 machine, and it was fine. I installed it fine from disk (well, CD). I downloaded and installed the newest patch just out of habit, so I don't know if it needed the patch to run or not. The game runs great. I do use ThrottleStop with it, but that's mostly because my laptop has issues. It didn't require anything to be changed in the settings or whatever. I'm pretty dumb when it comes to getting things to work, so if I figured it out, there was nothing complicated about it. I didn't even have to pick where to install the patch!


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## Merkuri (Sep 27, 2010)

Merkuri said:


> ...Norton antivirus...






Thanee said:


> OMG, you are actually using that!?




Hey, my ISP gives it to me for free.  Who am I to look a gift antivirus suite in the mouth?


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## Gulla (Sep 28, 2010)

Merkuri said:


> Who am I to look a gift antivirus suite in the mouth?




I'm stealing that quote. If you want a proper reference (not just "Merkuri") send me a PM. Having spent many days removing the horrors that are installed when in-laws and relatives click "install" on the pop-up "You have a virus, install free virus scan now" this made me laugh enough to get strange looks


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## Merkuri (Sep 28, 2010)

Merkuri is fine. 

Yeah, my husband got one of those viruses.  He's not as much of a computer expert as I am, but he knew something was fishy when the "you have a virus, click here to get antivirus software" dialog didn't have a cancel button, just OK.  He was also swift enough to realize that his computer was not really blue-screening and rebooting repeatedly, it was just a screensaver installed by the virus.  (I almost didn't catch that because wiggling the mouse didn't wake the machine up, only hitting keyboard keys.)

Ever since then I've made sure he has real antivirus software on his machine (whatever our ISP is giving us, which is Norton this month).


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## John Crichton (Sep 28, 2010)

The new version of Norton is just fine from what I understand.  Not nearly the resource hog that it's been in the past.


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## Merkuri (Sep 28, 2010)

John Crichton said:


> The new version of Norton is just fine from what I understand.  Not nearly the resource hog that it's been in the past.




If I'm not already using that version I hope my ISP upgrades to it soon...  My husband had to turn off some of the features on his laptop because Norton absolutely slowed it to a crawl and made it feasibly unusable.  He was very close to ditching it until I convinced him to just turn some of the features down.  (He's the one that always gets viruses, never me, so I really don't want him running antivirus-less.)

On my beefy desktop machine (which I spec'd out for gaming) it adds an additional 5 minutes to the startup time and if I try to use web applications before it's ready it can cause that application (or the entire machine, sometimes) to freeze until Norton's finished doing it's thing.  When this sort of thing happens I can't help but think of the security at an airport.  It's like Norton has to stop and frisk each of my applications and scan their luggage before they can board their plane.

Once that's done it doesn't affect my machine speed as far as I can tell, but the startup lag is seriously annoying.


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## John Crichton (Sep 29, 2010)

Merkuri said:


> If I'm not already using that version I hope my ISP upgrades to it soon...  My husband had to turn off some of the features on his laptop because Norton absolutely slowed it to a crawl and made it feasibly unusable.  He was very close to ditching it until I convinced him to just turn some of the features down.  (He's the one that always gets viruses, never me, so I really don't want him running antivirus-less.)
> 
> On my beefy desktop machine (which I spec'd out for gaming) it adds an additional 5 minutes to the startup time and if I try to use web applications before it's ready it can cause that application (or the entire machine, sometimes) to freeze until Norton's finished doing it's thing.  When this sort of thing happens I can't help but think of the security at an airport.  It's like Norton has to stop and frisk each of my applications and scan their luggage before they can board their plane.
> 
> Once that's done it doesn't affect my machine speed as far as I can tell, but the startup lag is seriously annoying.



The usual caveat being the PC is up to spec and running on 4 gigs of RAM, etc.  



Is the lappy Win7 or Vista?


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## Merkuri (Sep 29, 2010)

My husband's laptop is XP.  It's getting on in age.  I think it's got 2 GB, and that might be its max.

The funny thing is, his XP desktop has similar specs, but it handles Norton just fine (with some extra startup time like mine).  It also runs a particularly CPU/memory intensive game (Dwarf Fortress) poorer than his laptop, so we were always under the impression that his laptop was a tiny bit better than his desktop.  The laptop can handle Dwarf Fortress just fine, but chokes on Norton.

Meanwhile, my brand new (or nearly) Windows 7 laptop handles Norton fine and chokes on Dwarf Fortress.


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## John Crichton (Sep 29, 2010)

Merkuri said:


> My husband's laptop is XP.  It's getting on in age.  I think it's got 2 GB, and that might be its max.
> 
> The funny thing is, his XP desktop has similar specs, but it handles Norton just fine (with some extra startup time like mine).  It also runs a particularly CPU/memory intensive game (Dwarf Fortress) poorer than his laptop, so we were always under the impression that his laptop was a tiny bit better than his desktop.  The laptop can handle Dwarf Fortress just fine, but chokes on Norton.
> 
> Meanwhile, my brand new (or nearly) Windows 7 laptop handles Norton fine and chokes on Dwarf Fortress.



XP laptop?

Eep!


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## Merkuri (Sep 30, 2010)

John Crichton said:


> XP laptop?
> 
> Eep!




Hey, we're saving up for a house.  

Plus, it works perfectly fine for his needs, which is a word processor and internet.  While it still powers up there isn't a lot of incentive to get him a new one.


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## Merkuri (Oct 3, 2010)

Woot, I seem to have gotten Icewind Dale working!  

The problem was definitely my antivirus program.  I had to dig through its settings before I saw that turning off "Antivirus Auto Protect" doesn't actually turn off all of its protection.  There's another feature buried in it called "antispyware" that's not as easily disabled.  Once I shut that off it finally allowed IWD to run.

To summarize what I had to do:
1) Run the setup.exe program as administrator (not sure if this part was necessary, since I have UAC turned all the way down, but I did it anyway)
2) Install the latest patch for IWD (I think it was 1.06)
3) Go into Norton Security Suite -> Settings -> Antivirus -> Antispyware and Updates, then turn Antispyware off.

I did not need to set any Windows 7 compatibility settings at all, though I did tell it to run Icewind Dale as Administrator (again, not sure if that was necessary, but I did it just in case).

The really bizzare thing is that I slowly re-enabled all of the different types of spyware/adware categories in Norton, and even after I had all of them re-enabled the game still worked!  I even rebooted, and it continued to work.

I wonder if the part Norton was objecting to was that bit in the beginning that asks you to register the product.  In the process of trying to figure out what kind of adware Norton thought it was I started and stopped the program enough times that I was able to make that nag box go away.


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## Seonaid (Oct 4, 2010)

Yay!


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