Q&A: Old games, new Windows

Q I read your article on using virtualisation in issue 268. I would love to play some of my old Windows 95 games. Would it be possible to virtualise a PC running Windows 95 to allow me to do this? I am running Windows Vista on a medium-powered notebook.
Malcolm Douglas

A Assuming you still have the installation CD for Windows 95, there’s no reason why you cannot install it as a Virtual PC to play old games. The biggest problem is likely to be that of performance, though, unless the game is turn-based, it might run slowly.

In theory, games written for Windows 95 should run on Windows Vista, albeit with some tweaking.

First, try the game to see if it will work. Some errors can be fixed by running the game as an Administrator if it tries to access files or folders that are protected by User Account Control.

Right-click on the game’s shortcut – ­ on the Desktop or in the Start menu – ­ then left-click on Run as Administrator.

Click on Continue or enter your password when the User Account Control message appears. If this doesn’t work, it can help to explicitly tell Windows Vista that the game was written for an earlier version.

Right-click on the game file and select Properties. Vista should recognise it as a program for an earlier version of Windows (or even DOS) and show some extra tabs in the Properties window. Left-click on the Compatibility tab and then tick the box labelled ‘Run this program in compatibility mode for:’.

Click on the down arrow to show all the versions of Windows and select the latest version you think will work. So for a Windows 95 game, try Windows 98/Me first. Click on OK.

Some games require this change for the installation program on the CD. For example, the first Thief game installation wizard checks for the version of Windows. Windows XP reported itself as Windows NT, so the game would not install.

Changing the option above on the setup program forced the installer to continue and the game itself needed no further tweaking. If this does not work, try enabling some of the other options in this window. More information can be found at www.snipurl.com/2g7qz.