Char Ell
03-07-2007, 10:10 PM
So I was in a used bookstore a couple weeks back and said bookstore also has a section of used PC games. I was flipping through the various titles, reminiscing over some of them I had played so many years ago when I came across a jewel case for Dark Forces. I never played DF and so I thought I would try it out and see if I could run it on my Windows XP system. After all it was only USD $5 dollars.
To get right to the point, I installed DF, originally designed for DOS/Windows 95 of course, on my WinXP system and of course it didn't really work. The game would run but the sound wouldn't work since the game was only set up to work with SoundBlaster 16 sound cards and such. Needless to say that wasn't much fun. :(
I've got an older PC that I could have used to play the game on but I wasn't that motivated. :p So I decided to try out Microsoft's free download Virtual PC 2007 (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=04d26402-3199-48a3-afa2-2dc0b40a73b6&displaylang=en). Once I got Virtual PC 2007 installed, set up a virtual machine, and then installed Windows 98 to the virtual machine I could then install and run Dark Forces. It worked pretty well though it took a while to set up.
So what does everybody else do when they run old school games originally designed for DOS or Win9x? Dual boot? Keep an old system handy just for that purpose? Perhaps someone out there has a better solution than the virtual machine route.
To get right to the point, I installed DF, originally designed for DOS/Windows 95 of course, on my WinXP system and of course it didn't really work. The game would run but the sound wouldn't work since the game was only set up to work with SoundBlaster 16 sound cards and such. Needless to say that wasn't much fun. :(
I've got an older PC that I could have used to play the game on but I wasn't that motivated. :p So I decided to try out Microsoft's free download Virtual PC 2007 (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=04d26402-3199-48a3-afa2-2dc0b40a73b6&displaylang=en). Once I got Virtual PC 2007 installed, set up a virtual machine, and then installed Windows 98 to the virtual machine I could then install and run Dark Forces. It worked pretty well though it took a while to set up.
So what does everybody else do when they run old school games originally designed for DOS or Win9x? Dual boot? Keep an old system handy just for that purpose? Perhaps someone out there has a better solution than the virtual machine route.