Is there any way i can play a windows XP games on my windows vista?

Question

is there any sort of "converter" or something that will allow me to play a game meant for windows XP on my windows vista?

my computer won't let me download direct x either and that's the main problem i think

Answer 1

Just install the games on Vista. And run as normally. I've done this with some games and programs. If they don't run like they are supposed to, then right click the program or game and click properties. Then click the compatability Tab and set the game/prgram to run in the XP combatibility mode.

PS - The only people who say Vista stinks are those who won't try it. It works fine if you know what your doing. When XP first came out, everyone thought it was a joke too. Everyone will warm up to Vista in less than a year.

Answer 2

I doubt it.

Windows XP and Windows Vista are totally two different animals. If you think of the previous versions of Windows as being dogs then Windows Vista is a cat.

Drivers are short simple programs that tell an Operating System, like Windows, how to use a piece of hardware. They are common widely available. Each Operating system can use a version of a driver, but they work best with the driver that is customized to that Operating System. Usually, Windows versions that are close to each other can share drivers with few problems. A Windows 95 and 98 driver are pretty much the same. Windows 2000 and NT drivers are also pretty close. Windows XP is different and not able to share drivers with most lower operating systems. Windows Vista can't share drivers with ANY other operating system.

This is a huge problem because some hardware doesn't have a driver written for it yet. So you may use your favorite mouse on a Windows XP or lower operating system, but unless it is a Microsoft Mouse there may be no driver that lets you use that mouse on Windows Vista.

If the drivers aren't compatible then imagine how different the programs written for each operating system are. Eventually someone may write an emulator (or converter) that allows you to use Windows XP software on Windows Vista, but I doubt it.

Microsoft wants you to buy the latest and the greatest. Windows 2000 is a perfectly good operating system and there could be some computers out there that are still using it. However, that is much harder now because Microsoft has stopped supporting it so any new software could have a problem with the old system. This requires you to upgrade your Operating System.

To write a proper emulator program you need to know the code that the program was written in and you need to have access to the core program. Microsoft doesn't allow this. The only people who have access to the code for Windows Vista are the Microsoft team that worked on it.

The European Economic Community has filed one of its several law suits against Microsoft for its practice as a monopoly. They have done this in the past in hopes that Microsoft will release some of its code for Windows Vista.

If you do an operation like making the dialog box appear when you press a button then that operation is going to have to be written pretty much the same way for every program; and these programs would run in pretty much the same time. But, what if Microsoft invented a program quirk that would run that operation in half the time? Then imagine that operation being used hundreds of times. The other computers would be running very slow when compared to the Microsoft programs. This creates a huge advantage for Microsoft and is why they don’t like to release any Operating System code. Until they do that no one can write an emulator, and Microsoft itself won’t do that because they want you to buy their new software.

Office 2000 is a perfect example of this procedure. Office 2000 is a perfectly good office product and it works on Windows 98, NT, 2000 and Windows XP. This is seen as a threat to Microsoft, because that means that people could keep old versions of the program and produce quality work just like those that own the latest and greatest. So in a Windows XP updated Microsoft had two international font files deleted. Without those font files you can’t load Office 2000 and if it is already loaded then an error will keep cropping up. Thus you have to upgrade.

This is how Microsoft operates, upgrade or die. So if you don’t have Windows XP anymore then your game is useless, and it will remain useless.

Answer 3

It should work. If the program is an .exe, then it will work on any Windows version higher than the ones on the box.

Answer 4

vista sucks. downgrade.