DOS, Windows 95 Era Games in Windows 7

**ROFL Copter** · May 05, 2011, 06:20 PM

I recently "bought" a copy of the Star Wars XWing Collector series, the one for Windows 95, that comes with X-Wing and Tie Fighter, Two of the best games ever. However I'm having trouble getting them to run in Windows 7. The setup isn't even recognized by Windows at all, though using this installer I got around that. After all that work though there are still problems. Nearly the entire game is a mess, all the colours are brutally off, the music won't play, and after a few seconds of flight-time the screen is slowly covered in black blocks when in 3D mode, though not in 16-bit mode. This is crippling, and I'm not sure what the issue is. Others don't seem to have this problem. Could it be AMD drivers? Or is the game just too old?

I wasn't sure if this belonged here or in the game section, but it seems more of a tech issue than a gaming one.

**irishron** · May 05, 2011, 06:36 PM

Check the Compatibility tab. I think mine goes back to 95/98 and I have 7.

**ROFL Copter** · May 05, 2011, 08:24 PM

Compatibility isn't the real issue, I think. The game runs, just with strange corruption errors in 3D mode and with no music.

**irishron** · May 05, 2011, 08:48 PM

I don't even what I was playing, then. Star Wars games was not one of them, though. Have you been able to get into the game's options if they have any?

**ROFL Copter** · May 05, 2011, 11:07 PM

Like I said, the game technically works. It's just when 3D acceleration (yes, it's old) is on the screen slowly fills with black dots and I have to put it in 16-bit mode. That, and I'm pretty sure it's supposed to have music, but I hear none.

**eisenkopf** · May 06, 2011, 02:05 AM

I've had similar problems with a lot of old games - while Windows manages the game to run in a compatibility mode, the graphics and the sound are garbled because the drivers are not backward compatible. This even happened to me with a 2007 laptop having an Nvidia card trying to run Medieval: Total War I! So you don't have to go back 15 years... and unfortunately, there is no hard-and-fast rule what could work. You have to proceed by trial and error, and there may be no solution! There are two other things you can do besides fiddling with compatibility settings:

1. Get DosBox https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/DOSBox
2. Get VirtualBox https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikiped...iki/VirtualBox

Some W95 games could run on 1, since W95 is just Dos with a fancy (and slow) interface. To use 2, you need to install some OS - not sure whether W95 is available for free?

EDIT: Oh, of course there is

3. Get Linux and use Wine https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikiped...%28software%29

But none of these options guarantee to solve the fundamental graphics and sound driver issues...

**Bolkonsky** · May 06, 2011, 06:47 AM

DosBox is great. A bit complicated to set up if you're not used to that kind of thing, but there's plenty of tutorials.

**Freddie** · May 06, 2011, 07:23 AM

The only way your going to get that to run properly is with the use of some kind of virtual software such as Dosbox which has already been mentioned. I use dosbox to run games like Wing Commander 3 and 4 and it runs fine with full graphics, sound and USB joystick control. The only drawback with dosbox is learning how it works but if your smart it shouldn't take any longer then 10-15 mins before your playing X-Wing again.

**ROFL Copter** · May 06, 2011, 09:43 PM

I've had problems with DOSBox. The Windows 95 re-release of the games that I have does not run in DOS, and these are much improved over the originals. However with some frustration I "legally" downloaded a copy of the original CD and installed that in DOSBox. However I've had difficulties getting it to properly recognize my "joystic," that being a PS3 controller emulated to be a 360 controller. It won't pick it up. I would much prefer to get the W95 version working somehow.

**Freddie** · May 07, 2011, 07:51 AM

Originally Posted by ROFL Copter

I've had problems with DOSBox. The Windows 95 re-release of the games that I have does not run in DOS, and these are much improved over the originals. However with some frustration I "legally" downloaded a copy of the original CD and installed that in DOSBox. However I've had difficulties getting it to properly recognize my "joystic," that being a PS3 controller emulated to be a 360 controller. It won't pick it up. I would much prefer to get the W95 version working somehow.

A joypad isn't a joystick so no wonder you having issues there, I guess if you can't get it working via Dosbox (I seem to remember the collectors edition wasn't a dos based version, I have this version somewhere I see if I can dig it out and get it working myself) then you have will have to use an emulator or virtualware (VMware for example, I've used this once and it works pretty well but has some drawbacks).

**Thoragoros** · May 06, 2011, 11:26 PM

Have you checked out this, and this?

Also, you might want to try this, a rather nice rundown on the subject.

**Sphere** · May 09, 2011, 05:09 PM

And you can always resort to licking your PSU, that solves all of lifes problems.

**ROFL Copter** · May 10, 2011, 12:43 AM

I've officially given up on trying to get it to run at full settings. It's just not compatible. As it is, in 16-bit mode, with no music, it is perfectly playable. Good enough.

**Kanaric** · May 10, 2011, 02:10 AM

I have had no problem getting those games to work.

In fact many of the games from that era had dual OS compatability between Win 95 and DoS. Wing Commander 3 and Master of Orion 2 come to mind. If you have that option always choose dos, the dosbox is far better than any Win 95 compatability that I have ever tried. In fact in some cases the Win 95 version of those games were more experimental and therefore more buggy than the dos counterpart. Those two games I mentioned are an example of that as well.

X-Com is another example. If you play the re release for that in Win7 it will never work no matter what you do and if you get it to work it will crash non stop. The dosbox version I got on steam works perfect.

**ROFL Copter** · May 14, 2011, 04:34 PM

I did it! I finally really did it! Apparently the Windows 7 taskbar was causing issues with colouration, and after killing explorer.exe the game runs perfectly. Very strange.

**Kamos** · May 14, 2011, 07:33 PM

Yes I had to do that for Age of Empires 2, I think I read when figuring out how to fix the errors that it had something to do with the Aero feature which screws a lot of games up.

**PoleCat** · May 15, 2011, 12:11 AM

Originally Posted by Kamos

Yes I had to do that for Age of Empires 2, I think I read when figuring out how to fix the errors that it had something to do with the Aero feature which screws a lot of games up.

If Aero is screwing up the games then try running under Windows Classic instead. I'd be interested to know if this has any effect. Good luck!

**ROFL Copter** · May 24, 2011, 11:53 PM

No, changing it to Windows Classic does nothing. Explorer.exe must be killed for the game to work properly.

**Freddie** · May 25, 2011, 01:44 PM

Originally Posted by ROFL Copter

No, changing it to Windows Classic does nothing. Explorer.exe must be killed for the game to work properly.

Just turn of Aero I think is enough to fix the problem. The last time I played AE2 I think I managed to alter the startup so it would kill Aero automatically when it booted to the game but I can't remember how I done it. It might have been a batch file I created or I may have put something in the start line.