6

I have Windows 7 (x64) at home and I want to play some old games (specifically Lands of Lore 3, but also some others). This game does not work properly on Windows 7, and there are no patches that I'm aware of to fix its issues.

Can I use XP Mode to play this game (and other non Windows 7 nice games), or is there a better way?
I only have one PC and dual booting scares me... (so no to dual booting!)

Another question: Will I have full hardware support (full use of my graphics card, etc) when I use DOSbox or a VM?

I have decided to go with VirtualBox or VMware, I'll check which one gives the best performance.

James Mertz
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Stingervz
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3 Answers3

6

You could try VMware Workstation, which is a virtualisation program like VirtualPC XP Mode, but it gives the VM direct hardware access to the graphics card through Direct3D.

It's not free, but there is a free trial, which will give you the opportunity to see if it works with your games.

VMware Workstation

paradroid
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5

You'll probably find that DosBox is a better bet. It emulates an x86 machine running MS-DOS.

I've found a solution on RPG-watch:

  1. Go to C:\, delete the Westwood folder.
  2. Open DosBox.
  3. Mount the ISO image of Disc 1 (I actually mounted drive D as a CDRom)
  4. BEFORE YOU RUN Install.exe - adjust the size of Drive C that DosBox will recognize. This is what keeps messing people up, even WITH DosBox. The command I used was "mount c C:\ -size 50000" or something like that.
  5. Now type "D:" to select the D drive, and run Install.exe. Or Setup.exe. I forget which one, it's in one of the subdirectories too, so you may have to remount D:\ while specifying one of those inner directories.
  6. It'll bring up a bround framed EULA, hit enter - NORMALLY THIS IS WHERE IT WOULD CRASH. However - since we told DosBox to allocate and utilize more memory through the -size command, it should bring up the actual Setup. It'll first bring up the "Sound test", click Detect sound, etc. next -
  7. By default the cache available says 50000, whereas 82000 (I think) is what is needed. Readjust it to 83000.
  8. Hit next, let Setup do it's thing. It won't get hung up at 93%, it won't crash, etc. It'll install fully.
  9. After finishing installation, exit DosBox, tweak the options, etc. At the bottom of options under [autoexec], type below: mount d D:\ -t cdrom mount c C:\westwood\lolg c: lolg
  10. Regardless of the game coming up in either fullscreen or windowed mode, it should come up - full detail - everything. Enjoy!!

You still have to use DosBox to play, however - at least we won't need a virtual machine!

Ivo Flipse
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Alan B
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1

As Alan B said, you can use DosBox. But also you can use VMWare or VirtualBox (or another similar program) to emulate another SO inside yours, for instance to play some Windows 98 and XP games that are incompatible with Windows 7.

kokbira
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