How do I get my old pc game to work on an XP system?

Question

I recently found a game I loved to play back in the day but I can't get it to work on my PC. The game is called "D" and info on it can be found here: http://www.mobygames.com/game/d/

I have an XP system and I have tried to change the settings on my pc. The lowest my screen resolution will go is 800 x 600 and the game says I need it to be at 604 x 840. Does anyone know how I can make it work? Thanks.

The game will install and load but the graphics are really fuzzy...so much that I can not read the words when the into appears.

Answer 1

go to http://www.downloads.com and do a search for a DOS emulator

Answer 2

Right click on the shortcut that starts the game, and click properties, then the compatibility tab. You can tell XP to run the game in Win95 or Win98 or whatever, and you can set the screen resolution to 640 by 480 which is what I assume you meant. Good Luck.

Answer 3

ok This is kinda tricky. There is a mode that Microsoft wrote in to XP called run in win 95 mode. This can be activated by finding the main EXE file, either on CD or in the game directory under program files, then right click on it chose properties, then select the compatability tab, then chose run this program in compatability mode for windows 95. This usually work, but I had issues with this for the first version of Quake. This is a quick fix. For more information reguarding this issues do a search on Microsoft.com and they will give you more tips and tricks for backwards compatability of serveral platforms.

Answer 4

Download a copy of VMWare server (free!) and load whatever OS it is designed to run on in VMWare... then load the game in that OS instance.

Older games designed to run on 95, 98, 3.11, DOS, etc sometimes require direct hardware access, and XP (for good reason) will not allow this. In VMWare, the direct hardware access is all emulated, and the game should work fine unless it has some strange graphics requirements.

Answer 5

Download Microsoft Virtual PC from the MS website.
It is free. Then you can install Windows 95 or 98 in a virtual environment, and then install old games that work under DOS, Windows 95, etc.

Answer 6

Some older games simply do not work with newer OS. Try checking out the homepage for the company to see if it works on XP and also check XP's homepage to see if that is on the list for compatible programs.

Answer 7

I agree with the above answer in regards to changing the properties on the .exe file but you also have to make sure that you have formatted your hard drive to run on the FAT32 system instead of the WINNT file system. Good Luck!!!