I have heard rampant issues with getting Dungeon Lords to run on Vista - it needs compatibility mode to work at all and even still has some issues for many people.

But that's a positive thing, right :D ?

Apparently Vista could be sold as a "Dungeon Lords prophylactic" ;)

Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened DVD Vista x64 problem and solution
 

This isn't an "older game" per se, but I had and solved a Vista-specific problem with it, so here goes:

Description:

The game failed to start after install: saw a spinning wheel for about a second, then nothing. The problem was not solved by installing the latest PhysX drivers from Ageia, nor by updating to version 1.3.

Cause:

The Tagès copy protection system drivers supplied on the DVD are not Vista x64 compatible and consequently failed to install with the game.

Solution:

Download the version 5.5 drivers from Tagès here [ http://www.tagesprotection.com/5.5/TagesSetup_x64.exe ]. These will install correctly. After that the game came up normally.

Fallout… almost there…..
 

Hi, and thanks for the replies!

I revisited Fallout this morning and started out with a clean install of Fallout 1 to its own folder - i.e. outside the 'Program Folders' set that it defaults to. Realised that I'd been running it in XP compatibility mode….. doh, sorry about that, XP was the last system I had them running under.. so altered that to Win98/Win Me and hey presto - Fallout 1 on a 19 inch widescren monitor… magic! Or it would be if I could just sort out those 'rainbow pixels'…

Unfortunately no luck at all with Fallout 2, which has started to give an error message when installing from the CD - my back-up CD's gone missing so I've just purchased the 3 disk-set from e-bay for a mere £7.50UK (can't be bad!) so thanks for the tip re the US patches!

I missed the two news items… I'll go in search of them now..

I play FO2 in XP with no trouble!!

Fallout - slight return…
 

Is that in XP or Vista using XP compatibility mode?

FO2 was fine in XP for me as well, just looks as though the CD's gone to heaven as I'm getting read errors when trying to load it onto another machine now.

Any ideas on removing the 'rainbow pixels' I'm getting in FO1?
I have it running in 256 colours at the moment but not in 640 x 480 screen resolution…. quitting and restarting has no effect and I'm losing the entire screen every now and again; the only way to bring it back is to run the mouse over it which causes it to redraw…

And have just found an article from Interplay/Black Island that seems to cover just this! The URL is:
http://www.ntcompatible.com/fallout_…ut_t25683.html - fingers crossed!

FO2 runs for me np, but the video gets corrupted if you alt-tab out of the game - believe that happened on XP aswell.

Gothic 3 I wouldn't even bother with, which is a shame as I was looking forward to it on my new rig.

NWN2 is ofc ok but that is like new.

PS:T is going on soon - I have those gamer patches for vista also.

Oh i tried DM of M&M also - it runs but it doesn't like the alt-tab trick either.

I might attempt dual booting Vista and XP when I feel the need to 'upgrade'.
Hopefully that would be best of both worlds game wise.

How big are the differences between the 32bit and the 64bit Vista versions when
talking about backwards compatibility - older games?

In theory the 32bit edition should be able to run most 32bit programs at least when MS releases some more fixes & compatibility packs etc…

The 64bit edition is way more trouble than that- correct?

Incorrect. The 64-bit edition runs 32- and 16-bit programs just fine, both in theory and in practice. To get technical about it, the processor switches to 32-bit mode "on the fly" whenever it gets 32-bit opcodes -- in other words, it looks to the program exactly like a 32-bit processor, in every detail.

The only potential source of 64-bit specific incompatibility is copy protection drivers; I encountered this problem once so far, on a fairly recent game (see an earlier post in this thread).

Hmmm that would certainly be a good thing. No reason not to go with the 64bit edition, then?

I was just reading this the other day:
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase…sta_ff_x64.asp

It says:

"Sadly, the various benefits of the x64 Vista versions are counterbalanced by a number of limitations, the most important of which are compatibility issues. 16-bit applications are not supported, which is less problematic than it was a few years ago, but still an issue for some applications that use legacy application installers. 32-bit device drivers are not supported, so you can't use any of the existing hardware drivers out there, but must instead use the subset of x64-based drivers that are currently available. This situation will improve over time, but x64 Vista users are going to be orphaning hardware.

New 64-bit applications will need to adhere to the new Windows Vista application standards in order to run correctly on these versions. That means that even some software written specifically for XP x64 might not work correctly."

Anyhow there must be some difference compatibility wise between these two editions, right?

The biggest hassle with 64 bit operating systems (I'm running XP 64 )is the lack of hardware support, mainly drivers. Bought a D-Link wireless network card yesterday, for which there was NO 64 bit support or drivers. Fortunately, my son was able to track down the chip used on the card and found the chip manufacturer actually had 64 bit drivers for the chip and they worked. D-Link was useless; they had nothing and didn't seem to care. Getting other hardware to work has been my biggest problem, but 64 bit is incredibly stable.

Compatibility is pretty much the only thing I care about. I just need an OS on which I can play all my favourite games and would be nice to play some new ones too.
I don't need fancy features or GUI's that eat up half a gig of ram and requires a 256Mb graphics card or a platform that supports 123840809 gigs of ram.

I.. Just.. Want.. My.. Games.. To.. WORK! And I will not use emulators of any kind.

Windows 2000 has been perfect so far, but thanks to the DX10 I guess that's about to change. Right now I'm thinking about Vista Home Basic 32-bit.. seems to be the best choice? Compatibility-wise and that does not even include that horrible abomination called Aero.

In any case I'm still gonna wait a month.. or three… or
five.. before getting anything, though. A few more fixes and a nice big service pack before I start thinking about setting up a new system.

Age of Empires 2 and Expansion, couldn't play without a nocd patch, since it refuses to see cd's. With nocd patch, working fine.

I have the same dilemma. While I've never done this before, I'm probably going to invest in a larger Hard Drive, and run both Windows XP and Vista in a dual boot system (Hopefully that's possible with Vista). Heck, I might even use Windows 98 SE as well; I like older games too. A friend of mine says it's really easy to set up a multi-boot system, and with the advent of Vista and DX10, along with its supposed compatibility problems with older games, this seems like a pretty good time to learn how to configure a system in this way, IMO.

Perhaps someone could post a step by step way to do this!!

STALKER's graphics completely corrupted.

Stalker should work on vista just fine. I know many Vista users who play stalker without problems. I would guess your problems are from somewhere else.
Also, Stalker is really not an old game :D

Well Stalker is FUBAR on mine, as is Thief Deadly Shadows.

Morrowind works fine apart from a weird stall every now and then - not running this on compatibility mode either so may get rid of that. Quite stunning running Morrowind maxed out. I remember the chunk festival it was when I first played it. Still love the look and feel of Vvardenfell.