Hi All,

My first post on the forum and I thought I'd add to this growing and very informative list. I've had to use some of the suggestions shown throughout the thread and forum on how to get games running in Windows 7 so I though I would add my experiences on trying to get older games running too.

Just to give you all a bit of info on my system, I'm using Win7 Pro x64 running on an Intel i7 920, with an nVidia GTS250 graphics card and the latest nVidia drivers (258.something I think).

Right here goes:-

I've just played and completed Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express (or "Morder ..." as it's shown in my start menu) without any problems whatsoever.

I've also installed and run but not played the other two AG games, "And Then There Were None" and "Evil Under The Sun" neither of which appeared to give any indication that there may be problems in the future. Oh, and they were in full screen too.

I've installed and run Belief & Betrayal, but it has to be run in compatibility mode using the WinXP SP3 setting and disabling visual themes or at least that's what I've found.

Black Mirror II seems to run ok without any adjustments so far, but then I haven't played it all the way through yet on this machine.

Art of Murder: FBI Confidential, AoM Cards of Destiny and AoM Hunt for the Puppeteer all run (so far) without any incident as does both Chronicles of Mystery games. All these are from City Interactive.

Dark Fall - Lost Souls runs ok but I had to disable visual themes to get it to work properly.

For Dracula 3: Path of the Dragon I have to run it in WinXP SP3 mode with visual themes and desktop composition disabled in order for it to run correctly. I also have to use the fullscreen/windowed trick as well. The same applies to Nostradamus - The Last Prophecy, Return to Mysterious Island 2, Cleopatra - A Queen's Destiny and Destination Treasure Island. The exceptions to these are Journey to the Moon (Voyage) and Return to Mysterious Island (the first game) both of which will play in fullscreen without the need to play in any other compatibility mode etc or with any other tweaks. I have to note that all these games come from the Kheops Studio.

That'll do to be going on with, but once I've installed and run my other games I'll let you all know how I got on.

Toodle-pip.

Welcome to Gameboomers, cas1701! You've landed in one of the best gaming websites on the web. And thank you for your input on this thread. As time allows, I'm trying to get everything on the first page, but for now, I'm going to add a reference to your post here on page 24.

Hope to see more of you in the other forum subjects!

I'm about a third of the way through Mysterious Journey 2 & so far it's playing perfectly on win 7 64 bit.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets runs on Windows 7 Professional 64-bit edition no problem.

I've completed the game now, no real issues to speak of.

Hello Chaps & Chapesses,

Just finished Agatha Christie's Evil Under The Sun with nary a problem.



And Drac, thank you for the kind welcome. Although, when I'm not logged into the forum I see 24 pages for this thread, however when I am it only shows 18, any ideas?

Off to play something else now and see whether it causes any difficulties, although I've not yet decided what to play.

Toodle-pip.

Hi All,

Five more games I've installed, run, not yet fully played, but seem to be working well on Windows 7. They are, Runaway, Runaway 2 - The Dream of the Turtle, Runaway 3 - A Twist of Fate, Syberia and Syberia 2. None of them appear, so far, to need any tweaks, twists or adjustments of any kind. Just keeping my fingers crossed, in case the dreaded gemlins attack.

My apologies if these games have been listed already.

Toodle-pip.
Cas

Edit -
P.S. I don't know whether any of you have come across this, but I installed Darkness Within -In Pursuit of Loath Nolder for my wife (I'm not into the spooky ones), but once I had installed it I found that it needed to run in Win XP SP3 compatibility mode with visual themes disabled too. Whenever she starts it the screen goes blank. However, if the Start button is pressed on the keyboard to go back to the desktop, and the icon for the game is clicked onto on the taskbar immediately afterwards, the game returns in all it's glory. Anyone have any thoughts on that little snarly?

Toodles again.

Boy, this is getting confusing what with Win7 32-bit, 64-bit and Pro versions. It appears that a lot of the older games will play on Pro, but not the other versions of Win7.

Draclvr, I give you all the credit in the world trying to keep some order to all of this!

Not exactly, Mary! My 64-bit Win 7 is Home Premium. Pro shouldn't make any difference in game-play issues. I'm mentioning it if someone else is using the Pro version just for information only, as I started the thread using my specs. The real difference will come with 32-bit and 64-bit. For instance, I could play Shivers I on my 32-bit Win 7, but not my 64-bit.

And, cas, try clicking on the last number of pages you have showing and see if there are more after that. If there aren't, I'm not sure why only 18 are showing up for you.

Aha! That makes sense since I tried to install some of the older games and didn't have much success.
Maybe I was thinking of Virtual PC. Is that the program that isn't available except for Win 7 Pro or Ultimte and helps run some of the older games?

XP Mode is only available on Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate. Virtual PC works on XP and Vista as well as Windows 7. Virtual PC 2004 works works on Windows 2000 and XP (and I think Vista as well, though it may not be "officially" supported).

I thought Virtual PC only worked on Win Pro and Ultimate. Could you please provide me with a link for free Virtual PC where it would work with Win 7 Home 64-bit? Or is that not a free program?

Jenny and All,

I found that if I tried to install a game into the XP mode virtual machine, the activation software (Metaboli I think) detected it and wouldn't allow the activation to take place. I must admit I only tried it with the one game and didn't bother after that. Do you think it would make any difference by installing MS Virtual PC 2007 and trying once more?

Toodle-pip.
Cas.

Hi All,

Here's the remainder of the games I've installed, run, but as yet not played on my machine. And as a little reminder I've got an i7 920 core processor running Windows 7 Pro x64 (i.e. 64 bit) with an nVidia GTS250 based graphics card.

All these games either run without any changes being needed to be made or with the odd little tweak here and there to get them going. Where there are any adjustments I'll indicate what they are alongside the game.

Sherlock Holmes The Mystery of the Mummy (Game 1) runs perfectly as does Sherlock Holmes The Secret of the Silver Earring (Game 2).

Sherlock Holmes The Awakened Remastered Edition (Game 3-ish) runs without any need for compatibility mode and in full screen but the graphics are somewhat jerky and not fluid as I've seen them before (Note to self, try to sort this out). This is also the case with Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper (Game 5). I have the original version of Sherlock Holmes 3 on Steam and will install it to see if there is any difference between the two, in terms of playability etc. and let you know the result.

CSI: Deadly Intent runs without the need for any changes. Although there is no Start Menu group for this game unlike all the other games, but appears in the "Games" group that's put in by Windows for its games.

Darkness Within: In Pursuit of Loath Nolder needs to be run in Win XP SP3 mode with visual themes disabled and I have found that it's a bit quirky too. See my earlier post above.

And all these run without the need for any changes:-
Darkness Within 2
Atlantis 2
Atlantis 3
Atlantis Evolution (4)
The Secrets of Atlantis (5)
Egypt 2
Egypt 3
Keepsake
Culpa Innata - Uncut (i.e. The UK version)

And lastly, two spookies! Rhiannon and The Lost Crown - A Ghost Hunting Adventure both run without anything being needed to be done to them.

As I said above, I also use Steam for some games and managed to get Safecracker: The Ultimate Puzzle Adventure to run in a window by editing the config.ini file as suggested earlier in this thread. In my case the location is "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Safecracker 2"; just in case anyone doesn't know where their Steam files are located.

If anyone can help me with any of these games I'd be most grateful as no matter what I do they bluster, blather and generally make a damned nuisance of themselves by not running no matter what I try. They are:-

Black Mirror
Dracula Origin
Post Mortem
Still Life
Wallace and Gromit's Grand Adventures
Dark Fall - The Journal (because my wife loves the spookies)
Dark Fall 2 - Lights Out (ditto)
Sherlock Holmes versus Arsene Lupin (Nemesis)
The Secrets of Da Vinci

Well that's all my games and if my experience has helped then I'm a happy man, because this forum has helped me. And as they say, one good turn etc.

Toodle-pip chaps & chapesses,
Cas.

P.S. with a couple of exceptions (e.g. RTMI 1) all my games are the download versions from various well known sites such as the one on the left above.

mj2c,
I've been to that page before; as soon as I enter Win 7 home premium 64-bit in the information, it won't let me go any further. It says I'm not eligible to download Windows XP Mode. I don't see any way to get to Virtual PC.

Mary, you cannot run XP mode in Win 7 Home Premium. It is only available for Pro and above. Even if you have Pro or above, XP mode will not be better for games as it does not support 3D. It is meant to run business applications, not games.

Mary,
XP mode and Virtual PC are not the same thing. You can download Virtual PC 2007 from
http://www.oldversion.com/download_Virtual_PC_2007.html

Filehippo also has it
http://www.filehippo.com/download_virtual_pc/


I doubt any game that is new enough to use online activation would work in XP mode. XP mode does not support 3D graphics acceleration and most current games require it (except for some free games that have very low requirements).


I don't know about activating, but you have the same problem with the lack of 3D graphics acceleration in Virtual PC as in XP Mode.

That's correct - however, I did see that Ben Armstrong (The Virtual PC Guy) posted a blurb about running Windows Virtual PC on the Home versions of Windows 7.

Installing Windows Virtual PC on Windows 7 Home Editions

Jenny,

Thanks for the reply, I honestly hadn't thought about the graphics situation. Oh well, we live and learn.

Toodle-pip
Cas.

Hi All,

Just another quick update. I have just installed, run but not yet played Secret Files: Tunguska and Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis without the need for any changes in compatibility etc. or as far as I can see, any problems either.

Cheers one and all,
Cas.

Okay, I think I've got it now. I'm running Win7 Home Premium 64-bit and Virtual PC was recommended to me when I had problems with a game (of course, now I've forgotten which game I was talking about) but the Microsoft site let me to believe that it was not compatible with my machine.

Thanks Inland, for clarifying that matter for me.

Hi All,

You may remember from earlier in this thread that I said was having problems with a couple of games, particularly Dracula: Origin in that when I started a new game I would just get a blank screen. Well I think I've found a solution.

Dracula: Origin along with quite a few other games use the PhysX drivers; nVidia released a new set of drivers on 11th August for Windows 7 64-bit, Windows Vista 64-bit, Windows XP 64-bit, Windows 7, Windows XP, Windows Vista. Get them at http://www.nvidia.com/object/physx-9.10.0513-driver.html they certainly worked for me.

Toodle-pip
Cas.

As noted above in my last post I installed the latest PhysX drivers and have now fully completed Dracula: Origin without any problems. Get them while they're hot.

Toodle-pip,
Cas.

Just a quick note that although my initial attempts to install the retail disk version of The Whispered Word on a 64-bit Windows 7 system locked up repeatedly, once I updated my ATI HD5570 drivers to the 8/25/10 version the game loads and plays fine.

That's great, Jenna. I'll add your comments to the first page.