How To Run Old Games on Windows 7/8/10/11

[SirMadsen]

Method 1: You can try and use DxWnd to run older windows games in a windowed mode environment. It's pretty straight forward and forces games to run in a window mode and works surprisingly well a lot of times.

Method 2: A self-contained XP SP3 Virtual Machine that can run most games between and including 1996 and 2005. It’s easy to set up – simply install VMware Workstation, open the Virtual Machine, and begin installing all of your old retro games that crashed and burned on Windows 10. Instructions are included.

This XP has been pimped out with all of the essentials you freeloaders need – drivers, Direct3D and Glide support, PowerISO, WinRar, a few test games, video codecs… hell, you can even connect to the internet if you have the right router setup (why would you do that tho?).

It did run several 2D and 3D (both software and hardware accelerated) games quite flawlessly. One issue can be a lack of screen resizing when opening games – they simply won’t fill up the entire screen as they normally would on a real monitor. You can ameliorate this by playing at a higher resolution or just lowering your host computer’s resolution.

• Download xp_vm_opcg.rar

Usage Instructions

1. Install the provided VMware Player and restart your PC. File is no longer available, you will need to find it on your own until we have fixed it.
2. After restart, open VMware (use desktop shortcut).
3. Go to Player/File/Open.
4. Open the folder where you extracted the Virtual Machine, then open XP_Pro_Per.
5. Click “I copied it” if you get a prompt about any VM modification.
6. If you get an offer to download VMWare Tools, just ignore – you already got it.

Do NOT download the newest version of VMWare Workstation. It will still run the Virtual Machine, but you can’t disable mouse integration. What this means is that, when playing 3D shooters, the camera view becomes completely unusable (it will jump around everywhere). On the older versions this problem is not present.

Also when playing games, the mouse cursor will lock into the virtual machine, so when you push the mouse at the edge, it won’t escape the VM window. You can switch out of the virtual machine (without closing the game) by pressing Ctrl+Alt.

 

What is your favorite way of running old games? Let us now below.