Tri-Boot or Virtual Machine?

[TommyT]

I would like to run Win 98SE, XP and 7 on my laptop to play many of the old games I used to love and have collecting dust.

Here is my dilemma. I currently have Vista Home installed but just got my Win7 Home upgrade. To run XP compatibility in Win7 I need to purchase Win7 Pro anytime upgrade at $85 and I don't know it the games would run in compatibility mode. My second option is: I still have a Win98 and XP CD's with license but my WinXP Pro version is the original 32bit version I believe. I'd probably have to upgrade to the XP 64bit at $90 for Home or $140 for Pro.

So What to do? Tri Boot and how? Upgrade Win7 to Pro and Hope everything works in compatibility mode which I doubt.

Thanks,
Tom

 

[hardBBQ]

Virtualization would be the more convenient solution, but there is no current software that offers native GPU performance on the Windows platform. That would be a killer feature.

Since XP Mode only emulates the video subsystem with a basic driver, games that are 3D-accelerated will either not run properly or at all.

VMware Workstation 6+ has advanced 3D emulation in XP, but whether a particular game will work well enough is hit-or-miss. You can test it out by downloading a 30-day trial.

Virtual Box also has experimental 3D emulation, and is free.

If you want to multi-boot, you can install Win98 and Windows XP 32-bit using a third-party boot manager. There's no need for XP64, and you wouldn't want it anyway for maximum game compatibility.

 

[MrGuvernment]

VM much easier, vmware 7 has DX9 support and native for vid cards i recall hearing , but you likely don't need it for older games.