Free Old Games for Your New PC

Author: Matt Jason H
Published on: 24-10-2003
Views: 155564


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Installation and Configuration

Installing and Configuring your Game Properly

So you've downloaded your favourite game or dusted off that old box and stuck the diskette in your PC. The next step is installation, to make it easy for yourself later its best if you install the game on your primary drive and in an easy to reach location (eg C:\game\).

Next thing to do is (obviously) try and play the game, locate the installation folder and try and run the game. You can run .exe and .bat files, if there's more than one of these files pick the one with the name most like the game. If the game runs with no problem, the graphics and sound all work fine, no errors and it doesn't crash, you've been very lucky and you can stop reading this guide! However due to the numerous compatibly issues between the latest versions of Windows and old DOS based programs your most likely staring blankly at an error message, garbled screen or crashed computer.

What you should try next depends on your operating system and error message, but as a rule it is best to try the milder methods your operating system already has before resorting to other options, such as emulation packages which are covered later.

If you're running Windows 2000, and especially if you have got a memory related error, right click on the game's *.exe file, click memory, and change the EMS and XMS memory the program is given from none to a couple of megabytes...

EMS Memory Settings

Next reduce your screen resolution and colour by right clicking anywhere on the desktop, selecting Properties and then clicking on the Settings tab...

Changing Resolution

Which ever OS you're running, you might want to click on 'Advanced'.

In this Window and turn 'Hardware Acceleration' down to 'None'. Don't forget to turn this back up to full when your finished though as it will cause problems with other applications...

Hardware Acceleration

If your running Windows XP you can use the Compatibility settings included to help you run older programs.

Right click on the program's .exe, click the Compatibility tab and check all of the boxes.

Compatibility Settings

With any luck, especially if the game was a Windows 95/98 game, your game should run fine now, however if your game was originally for DOS its likely that you're still having trouble and its time to proceed to the next step.