Old Video Games

[nocal]

First off, many thanks to those who wrote with suggestions/comments about
partition magic. My next question is this: I have a game on CD called
Virtual Pool which is about 12 years old. I can install this on Vista but
when I try to run it, there is a dialog box that informs me that the program
has stopped working and that Microsoft is searching for a solution to the
problem. After a few minutes, I am informed that data has been sent to MS
and I will be notified when a solution is found. I have reinstalled this
about 5 times now and have used a feature that allows it to run as if it is
on an earlier version of Windows. When I had XP, this program ran fine with
no problems, however it will not play on Vista. Is this game too old for
Vista? Any suggestions as to a workaround or 3rd party program that might
get it to work on Vista? Also, will MS actually attempt to discover what the
problem is and get back to me with a solution. I have had other programs
which created these dialog boxes, but have not heard back from MS as to a
fix. I am kind of hoping that if this is a gimmick and no real help is
forthcoming, there might be a way to disable these things from poping up
when programs won't run. I'd rather not deal with these dialogs if there
isn't an effort to respond. Anyone else have these issues?

Thanks...ddk

 

[Jupiter Jones [MVP]]

Start
Control Panel
System and Maintenance
Problem Reports and Solutions

Have you tried compatibility Mode?

Have you contacted the program manufacturer and asked about Windows
Vista compatibility?

Do not expect anyone to invest much resources in your 12 year old
program.
Perhaps you can find others with the same program.
If so, see if they have a solution.

 

[Andrew McLaren]

First off, many thanks to those who wrote with suggestions/comments about
partition magic. My next question is this: I have a game on CD called
Virtual Pool which is about 12 years old. I can install this on Vista but
when I try to run it, there is a dialog box that informs me that the
program

Are you running VP3? And if so, did you download and install teh patch from
Celeris, here?
http://www.celeris.com/games/vp3/patch/
That patch fixes some compatibility problems with Vista, amongst other
things.

If you are playing an older vesion of Virtual Pool, then you are pretty much
on your own. As described on the Celeris support page
(http://www.celeris.com/support/index.html) it is unlikley to run well on
Vista. Upgarde to VP3 for Windows.

get it to work on Vista? Also, will MS actually attempt to discover what
the problem is and get back to me with a solution. I have had other
programs which created these dialog boxes, but have not heard back from MS
as to a fix. I am kind of hoping that if this is a gimmick and no real
help is

No, Windows Error Reporting is very real, not a gimmick. Microsoft receive
and analyse tens or hundreds of of thousands of program crashes, every day.
The crashes are assigned to "buckets" (the Bucket ID in the Problem
description), and the most common buckets are always fixed by Microsoft, by
way of Windows Update or Service Pack.

It's the statistical nature of such exercises that bucket 1 might affect
say, 20% of users; bucket 2 affects maybe 10% of users (cummulative 30%);
bucket 3 affects 5% of users (cummulative 35%), bucket 4, 4% (cumm 39%);
bucket 5 3% (cumm 42%), etc. Bucket 9,437 will affect 0.0000000026% of
users, for a cumm of 82.0000012326%. It's a great project, but governed by
the Laws of Large Numbers. Microsoft might fix the top 30 or so issues,
which cummulatively covers say 80% of users, but theres a long tail of
uncommon incidents which are unlikely to get touched. But even there,
Microsoft may send feedback to the vendor of the crashing 3rd party app, so
they can prepare a fix of their own - so the effort of sending the Problem
Report is never wasted.

But given the globally miniscule number of users of Visual Pool on Vista,
I'd say this is a very very unlikely you'll get a specifc hotfix from
Microsoft (unless it's a general NTVDM issue which affects lots of DOS
applications).

Hope this helps,

 

[Christopher R. Lee]

Dumb answer.

If you bought a book 12 years ago, you'd pay less than for a software
package, but still expect to be able to read it.

Regards

 

[Jupiter Jones [MVP]]

I must be missing something.
I have no idea what you mean.

 

[DP]

Dumb answer.

If you bought a book 12 years ago, you'd pay less than for a software
package, but still expect to be able to read it.

Regards

By that logic, my old Betamax tapes should run on my Blu-Ray DVD player.

Don't get me wrong, I love books. I just don't think the comparison is
valid.

 

[Andrew McLaren]

<snip>

Arghh, I forgot to mention an important additonal solution. You can try
DosBox -
http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/news.php?show_news=1

DosBox is an enhanced DOS emulator which runs on Windows (including Vista)
as well as many other platforms. Whereas the built-in NTVDM is Vista is a
good general purpose DOS emulator, DosBox makes a deliberate attempt to
accomodate old DOS-based games. So a DOS game which won't run well (or at
all) in the Vista NTVDM, might run okay in DosBox on Vista.

Running in DosBox is not quite as seamless as running native on Vista, but
.... hey, if you're really desparate for a good game of Pool ...

All considered though, I suspect your best result will be to update to VP3
with the Celeris Update and run as a Windows app on Vista. But you have a
few choices to try, anyway.

Good luck!