vista 64 and old games

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robmarti25

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I am building a new computer and I was going to upgrade to vista 64 but I have a lot of old games that I still wnat to play like HL2, LOTR 1 and 2 far cry, TRON 2.0 etc. atleast 3-4 yrs old and maybe more. How would the compatibility be with Vista 64? thanks for the help. my new system will be q6600, 2*8800gt, 4gb OCZ 10600ddr2, XFI and 2 dvd players.
 
I was just playing far cry on my rig with vista x64 with no problems. HL2 won't be a problem either. hell, I use my vista x64 computer to play starcraft
 
HL2 works just fine with my Vista x64. Doom3, Diablo 2, Painkiller just to mention a few others.
 
thanks i feel better now. One other question though. I have a lot of software on my old HD that I want to transfer over. Would it be better to just copy my files to a DVD and add them after or try to keep the old HD and install over it? I have a raptor. How would i format that drive so it is clean before using it in the new system.
 
Its almost always recommended to format and install when installing a new OS. You can use the format utility provided on the vista install disk.
remember to backup anything you want to keep before formatting.
 
robmarti25 said:
thanks i feel better now. One other question though. I have a lot of software on my old HD that I want to transfer over. Would it be better to just copy my files to a DVD and add them after or try to keep the old HD and install over it? I have a raptor. How would i format that drive so it is clean before using it in the new system.
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When I switched to Vista x64, I reinstalled the games and then copyed over (overwrited) with my backup (XP) so I had the latest patches / updates. Also be sure to copy over info from your profile (documents and settings) folder, as some of the newer games tend to save information there as well.

Some of the older games need to be set with the "XP SP2 Compatability mode" setting under properties.
 
I believe that if you install over the old installation it will just move all your stuff to a temp folder (windows.old maybe?) and then install as normal, it won't do a true upgrade installation - at least it does if you go to the 64-bit version - not sure about 32-bit Vista.
 
so for formatting off of vista disk, just make sure that on bios after I install new hardware it reads dvd player first then it will boot up installation and then it will ask me to format. correct? or do i even have to go into bios first?
 
robmarti25 said:
so for formatting off of vista disk, just make sure that on bios after I install new hardware it reads dvd player first then it will boot up installation and then it will ask me to format. correct? or do i even have to go into bios first?
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you don't have to do that through the BIOS. at the screen when your computer turns on, press F8 or whatever it is to get to the boot menu, and choose to boot from the DVD drive (with the vista disk in the drive). From there, you will be able to install vista x64 and create a new partition and format your old hard drive. REMEMBER TO BACKUP YOUR STUFF!
 
If you want to ensure compatibility with all your old games and progs then dual boot XP/Vista, it's the only solution guaranteed to work. My PS 4.01 won't even install on Vista64 so having both OS's installed is a must have for me. I also have numerous games that I know won't work on Vista64, I even have some games I know won't work on Vista32.
 
milkweg said:
If you want to ensure compatibility with all your old games and progs then dual boot XP/Vista, it's the only solution guaranteed to work. My PS 4.01 won't even install on Vista64 so having both OS's installed is a must have for me. I also have numerous games that I know won't work on Vista64, I even have some games I know won't work on Vista32.
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To date there is no game that I can't make work in vista64

using XP64 for years payed off.

16bit installers are the major headache, for example I installed rogue squadron on a virtual machine and made a custom installer to make it work on vista64. Heck I even managed to install moto racer on XP64 a couple of years ago, haven't tried it in vista though.
 
Stoly said:
To date there is no game that I can't make work in vista64
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Now that's what I'm talkin' about, Willis...

Besides, one can always use a virtual machine if one absolutely had to considering there's 3 big ones out now: VirtualPC 2007 (free), VirtualBox (free), and of course VMWare (Server is free, use that to create VMs then use VMWare Player - free, doncha know - to use them without the bloat of Server).

There are always answers... it's all in how far someone is willing to go to get what they want.
 
Joe Average said:
Now that's what I'm talkin' about, Willis...

Besides, one can always use a virtual machine if one absolutely had to considering there's 3 big ones out now: VirtualPC 2007 (free), VirtualBox (free), and of course VMWare (Server is free, use that to create VMs then use VMWare Player - free, doncha know - to use them without the bloat of Server).

There are always answers... it's all in how far someone is willing to go to get what they want.
Click to expand...

Wait, I thought you could either have VMware Server OR Player installed but not both.
Am I right? :confused:

Heck I even managed to install moto racer on XP64 a couple of years ago, haven't tried it in vista though.
Click to expand...

Loved that game when I was young :). I'm surprised to hear that it actually runs on XP64 considering it came out before Windows 98, although I'm not surprised at the method you've used to install it (I had to use the same method when patching Simcopter).
 
You could always use Server to set up a VM and then install Player inside the guest OS inside the host VM, right? ;)

I did say you could use Server to create the VMs and then use Player to "play" them - I didn't necessarily say you had to have all that stuff installed at the same time. I guess there would be some issues with the overlapping requirements for the virtual drivers, especially the network related stuff. Never thought about it, actually.

Might have a point there...
 
Well, that's what I've done before: Installed Server, created virtual machine, uninstalled Server, installed Player. Kinda a pain if you want to set up more than one virtual machine, but then there's that website that you can use to create your own virtual machine for VMWare Player (forgot the name of the site but Wikipedia has a reference to it on the VMWare Player article).
 
Why would I want to use a virtual machine when I can just dual boot and have no overhead from running VM? If install VM I have to install XP to it too anyway. With dual boot I don't have to screw around with compatibility and making 16bit installers work. KISS.
 
milkweg said:
Why would I want to use a virtual machine when I can just dual boot and have no overhead from running VM? If install VM I have to install XP to it too anyway. With dual boot I don't have to screw around with compatibility and making 16bit installers work. KISS.
Click to expand...

There are several reasons to run a VM over dual-booting or running a separate physical machine:
  • Sandboxing: Open suspicious apps or files or self-developed apps without hosing your system. Some people will go as far as browsing IE in a virtual machine (usually websites that still use ActiveX).
  • Legacy OSes & Software: Many new PCs on the market cannot run operating systems as old as Windows 98 or earlier, mainly due to lack of drivers. Fortunately, a lot of new computers have more than enough "oomph" to comfortably run many of these legacy OSes + the applications they use. For example, let's say you use a copy of Vista64 and you want to run Simcity 2000 for some reason (nostalgia?). You can't install it natively because it uses an installer with 16-bit components. You could dual boot with XP or Vista32, which could run it, although you want to be able to quickly move back to Vista64 as soon as you're finished with it. You could have a dedicated box to run it, but you or a family member don't want more "clutter" to deal with. What do you do? --> VM.
  • Less Physical Clutter: Yes, you could have a separate box for testing or legacy apps but then you have one more machine that is taking up space. Sure, you won't mind this if you're living or working in an environment that has plenty of space and allows test boxes, but if you live in a place that isn't as spacious or (like me :D) have a family member that doesn't like having too many PCs in the house --> VM.
  • Trying out new OSes: Sometimes I don't feel like repartitioning my hard disk to test out other operating systems only to find out later that I've somehow accidentally corrupted my main partition (even if i have a recent backup of my data). If I want to find out what the newest version of Linux, FreeBSD, ReactOS, etc. is like --> VM.

I could go on but Wikipedia goes into a bit more detail about VMs.

Despite the fact that virtual machines DO have quite a bit of overhead, there's still quite a bit of legitimate uses for one. You can do your dual-booting of OSes and I definitely do not condemn it. However, dual booting has trade offs of its own such as running one operating system at a time or messing with the partitioning scheme of your hard drive or installation of a secondary drive.

EDIT: I am fully aware that 3D-acceleration implementations in almost all VMs are virtually non-existant. Nevertheless it is being developed (VMware Fusion, Workstation, etc.) and despite that it is quite glitchy, I would consider it a major step forward in virtual machine software.
 
OK, I went and downloaded VM2007 32bit and 64vbit but it's not something I really need as I have three PCs with Vista, XP and WinME on them. IE7 on Vista already runs in protected mode anway but I might try VM2007 with Ubuntu but I think Ubuntu already comes with its own virtual mode anyway if you want to run it alongside windows instead of having to re-boot to it.
 
GushpinBob said:
There are several reasons to run a VM over dual-booting
Click to expand...

I'd also add convenience. You can fire up a VM any time you like and switch between it and your other programs (provided you have sufficient RAM), whereas if you want to change to the other OS on a dual-boot system, you'll have to stop whatever you're doing, close all your programs, wait a while while one shuts down and the other boots, etc. - probably about 5 minutes' worth of waiting. When you come back to your normal OS, again you have to wait for the other to shut down, reboot, and start your programs again. I find rebooting to be a real nuisance (I hibernate rather than reboot; I only reboot for patches/drivers) and the nuisance of having to sit around while everything loads would put me off using the other OS at all.
 
this is all really helpful. I will probably try the virtual machine. I plan to build this weekend so I will give you a heads up. on the out come and games I tried.

-rob
 
Well my vista 64 dvd has not come in yet, so still waiting. Will update when i get it. Any specific games you guys would like to try. I have alot even the old S.W. games
 
The only semi-recent game you will have problems running in Vista is Far Cry. Otherwise you'll be fine.
 
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