How can I run old games on windows 7 ?

xxdeebeexx

Hi I have a lovely collection of childrens PC games that I would like to sell on Ebay. I have tried running them on windows 7 but I get a message with most saying that they are not compatable.

Is there a simple way of making these programs work?

tia

dx

jayme1

after they have been installed, Right Click on the Shortcut which is made on the Desktop or in the Start menu,
select Properties,
select the 'Compatibility' tab,
then tick the 'Run this program in compatibility mode for:' and in the drop down select an OS that it definitely works for the game (usually XP (SP3))
click Apply and OK to save the changes.

then when you want to start the game open it using that Shortcut

xxdeebeexx

jayme1 wrote: »

after they have been installed, Right Click on the Shortcut which is made on the Desktop or in the Start menu,
select Properties,
select the 'Compatibility' tab,
then tick the 'Run this program in compatibility mode for:' and in the drop down select an OS that it definitely works for (usually XP (SP3)
click Apply and OK to save the changes.

then when you want to start the game open it using that Shortcut

Thank you so much for the detailed reply... I should have said that I can't even seem to install them!!

dx

Absinthe_2

If that doesn't work, you could always try dosbox. Great for some of those ultra oldies. I recommend installing a front-end for it, to make things simpler. Some are shown in the downloads section.

http://www.dosbox.com/download.php?main=1

xxdeebeexx

Absinthe wrote: »

If that doesn't work, you could always try dosbox. Great for some of those ultra oldies. I recommend installing a front-end for it, to make things simpler. Some are shown in the downloads section.

http://www.dosbox.com/download.php?main=1

Thanks. I have just tried them on windows XP and they work realy well.

To be honest I just wanted to get rid of them on Ebay. There are still plenty of people using XP so there is a chance that they will sell.

thanks

dx

esuhl

When Vista came out, I tested a lot of in-house software to see how it performed. A lot of the software that failed to install did so because of UAC, the rights-elevation process, and the registry shims that prevent users from making changes to protected parts of the registry.

In a fair few cases, I found that by disabling UAC and explicitly logging in to the OS as an Administrator, I could successfully install the software. Once installed, UAC could be re-enabled and the programs ran normally.

Might be worth a go...?

Or use the Program Compatibility settings (as described by jayme1) to change the compatibility settings for the installer executables (i.e. before you install the software).