Installing old games with Installshield

Armenius

Armenius

Extremely [H]
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Jan 28, 2014
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I was playing around with some old games trying to install them on my PC and ran into an issue with those using Installshield. Apparently Installshield 5 and older use a launcher program to extract the setup contents and then start the install process in earnest. The issue is that this launcher is 16-bit, which doesn't work on 64-bit operating systems. I've tried replacing the setup.exe with the one from here, but the process just sits in the background doing nothing like the version 6.x executable that comes with Windows 10. In particular I'm trying to install NASCAR Racing 3 and its expansion. The game itself runs fine in Windows 10 from what I'm seeing, but I can't seem to get past this hurdle.

Does anybody here have experience with this and possibly have a solution? Is there possibly a way to manually extract the setup files?
 
+ Have the same question, coz when starting games in compatibility mode, they are working for a while and crashing then
 
Tried running in WINE on Linux? Or in dosbox/freedos + win98?

Iirc windows removed 16-bit support after XP (or maybe before that).
 
toast0 said:
Have you tried winevdm? It's more or less wine for 16-bit windows applications on 64-bit windows.
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I'll give that a try. I found out you can just copy the game files off of the NASCAR Racing 3 disc and the game will run, but the Craftsman Truck Series expansion seems to be looking for the CD key if you do that as it says the game wasn't installed correctly when you try to run it.
 
Personally, I would just go with Windows XP or 7 32-bit on a VM for VMware Player, VMware Workstation or Oracle VirtualBox & give the VM 3D acceleration for any games that required such.
 
BdazmedPrim said:
+ Have the same question, coz when starting games in compatibility mode, they are working for a while and crashing then
Click to expand...


Some games are just buggy, so your only hope is to search Google for "gamename issues" or "gamename crashes" or "gamename bsod" if you want unofficial workarounds.

I've had decent luck using compatibility mode , just remember this when turning on game compatibility mode: don't just add it for the installer exececutble - add it for the game exe as-well.

If your game is not inherently buggy, then if it still crashes after above, a native XP 32 install is your only out

Yeah, 32-bit games with 16-bit native installers were a thing for a bit (VM is the only easy option for installation on 64-bit, although should be fine running the game native + compatibility layer after install is done)
 
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defaultluser said:
Some games are just buggy, so your only hope is to search Google for "gamename issues" or "gamename crashes" or "gamename bsod" uf you want unofficial workarounds.

I've had decent luck using compatibility mode , just remember this when turning on game compatibility mode: don't just add it for the installer exececutble - add it for the game exe as-well
Click to expand...
PCGamingWiki is a great place to start for such. Wiki pages are often edited to show fixes or workarounds for issues. Not everything is documented but I use it a reference for fixing my ultra widescreen issues, graphics bugs, & compatibility issues when possible. After that, it's hunting through Reddit & other sites.
 
toast0 I gave winevdm a try and it was able to successfully extract the actual setup program, but now that program is not launching. I grabbed the extracted files out of the temp folder and tried to run them directly from a copy of the CD I made on my drive and the same thing happens. Opening up the task manager shows the InstallShield Manager is just sitting idle in the background and I have to kill it. I'm starting to think that maybe I need to just dual boot into 32-bit Windows 7 or 8.1 and see if it works there.
 
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