Get GF working PERFECTLY on XP for £10(ish)

[Rick87]

It's simple .

Head over to the Microsoft website, and download Virtual PC 2007 for free.
Get yourself a Windows 98/98SE disc from eBay (£5-15)
Install 98 onto the Virtual PC (takes about 15min on a modern PC!)
Install GF onto the Virtual machine, and hey presto, absolutely flawless.

With the added benefits of...

Can run it in a window and switch away without sound hanging
*SHOULD* avoid problems with modern graphics cards because the Virtual PC emulates a standard 8mb graphics card
*SHOULD* avoid problems with sound because again, a standard sound card is emulated.

Works perfectly for me, feeling fairly smug right now

EDIT: I should also add that my machine is dual core, and no issues at all this way, not even with cutscenes.

[Sallim]

yep, running great on my old single core 2 ghz cpu.

[Thrik]

Doing this was actually recently posted here:

http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?t=184760

But yes, a very good solution. However, it's not perfect as it prohibits you from using hardware acceleration, which means rougher textures on the characters and no anti-aliasing (these can be quite important on modern resolutions like my 1920x1200).

I'm hoping Virtual PC will eventually emulate a slightly newer graphics card like the GeForce 2, which could run Grim Fandango beautifully and do anti-aliasing in the specific way Grim Fandango likes (newer methods usually break).

One thing I'd add is that Grim Fandango also runs pretty much fine on Windows XP via Virtual PC 2007. A little-known treasure is this pre-activated hard drive image of Windows XP SP2 that Microsoft freely provide:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

It's designed for us poor guys who have to design websites that work in Internet Explorer 6, of which no version exists for Windows Vista -- hence why Microsoft provide this. As long as you're a legitimate Windows owner you can download both Virtual PC and the pre-activated Windows XP image for free.

I've successfully installed and used Grim Fandango doing this, so I can verify it works.

[Rick87]

Free method then! Everyone's a winner! Thanks for that info Thrik