Phantasmagoria originally came on 7 CD's. It was full of filmed footage, which made it a lot larger than most DOS and early Windows games.

Tex Murphy: Tesla Effect is even larger, and will take even longer to download. Not only does it have filmed footage, but it uses higher resolution than Phantasmagoria, which means bigger files.

You just have to be patient downloading large games like this -- especially Tesla Effect.

Hope you enjoy the games.

We're talking days for me with my slow internet connection for some games!

Well I worked on downloading Tesla Effect for a week, then gave up.
I may try again at some point in the future, but it's not a priority.
I'd have to start from scratch, since the size of the files has doubled and they're obviously not the same files.

Witcher 3 was 22 GB which I think took 6 days running it all night and during the day when I wasn't using the computer. It's depressing sometimes!

Well, lexxy, that's why I installed the free VMware Player on my Windows 8.1 machine, and installed my old Windows XP CD to run inside it as a guest operating system.

The incompatibility problems I experienced and reported above applied to my Windows 98 emulation, not to Windows XP, which so far has installed and run without any serious glitches.

I just installed some old games like 'Odyssey' the way I did on Windows XP as my native system, and it worked exactly the same way, without any more adjustments.

You may try this route, it could be worth it!

Rich

Installing XP on new hardware can be a nightmare. Most likely you won't even be able to find XP drivers and even if you can find anything (most likely fan made/hacked) you won't end up with a stable machine. Keep in mind that XP is nearly a decade and a half old now. Hardware has evolved considerably in the mean time. XP was great for its time, but it is time to move on.

I had to check, but I see that the GOG installer for Phantasmagoria does indeed now split the installer into an executable with a couple of BIN files. Probably this was to address the long delay that some large installer has before there is any visible sign that it is working. In any case you must have all three parts downloaded and in the same folder before executing it.

And a small correction - Microsoft ceased all support for XP on April 8, 2014, not July 2015.

Happy day, Telsa finally installed after two days of downloading. I could not believe how beautiful the graphics are and to have my old Tex back is amazing. I want to thank you all for your input. I do have another question that may seem strange but I am not happy with the sounds on 8.1. My opening and closing sounds on XP were great and I miss them. I found the sound waves from XP but I don't know if it is possible to install them. I miss the old tada sound when the computer is signing off. I have the sound waves on my desk top but do not know what to do with them.

Yes it's possible to change them.

You can find tutorials on changing system sounds using Google and a search for
Windows 8.1 sounds

Here are a few of them
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/change-sounds#1TC=windows-7
http://winsounds.com/how-to-change-windows-sounds/

and a YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c104qDumTy0

I found it easier to change Windows sounds in XP and earlier, but it's still possible.
Be aware there is a login sound as well as a startup sound. You may want your old startup sound as your login sound.

I change my sounds all the time! There are some really cool ones to play with. Some of them go with the different background schemes. For instance, if you right click on a blank space on your desktop and select personalize, you are taken to the screen where you can make lots of changes including your sound. If you click on Get More Themes Online, you can select from hundreds of picture sets. A friend had one of dolpins and the sounds were different variations of water splashing. It was kind of cool.

i found blood ties, the mystery of crystal portal, and hidden magic doesn't work at all om window 8, but it does on window xp.

Draclvr reported that she succesfully ran Blood Ties on Window 8.1 ***here***

Big Fish lists Mystery of the Crystal Portal, Blood Ties, and Hidden Magic as being compatible with Windows 8.

http://www.bigfishgames.com/games/5263/the-mystery-of-the-crystal-portal/?pc
http://www.bigfishgames.com/games/2290/blood-ties/?pc
http://www.bigfishgames.com/games/5220/hidden-magic/?pc

Keep in mind that if you bought CD versions of the games, they will not be updated and may not work on versions of Windows that were not current at the time the CD was published.

Blood Ties is also playing on my Windows 10. As Jenny says, if you have CD versions, these games might not work. Mine is from BFG.

yes they are from a cd version, egames and viva media, on hand.

The original game is from 2008, so that's probably why.

Hi all,
I was going through some of my old games and came across a screen saver Berkley After Dark 4.0 and I installed on on my old WXP with no problem. I tried to install it on my new Windows 8.1 computer with no luck. The saver is so cute that I want to have it on my main system,is it too old, copy right 1996 to work on a newer system? I tried all of the compatability settings with no luck.

I'm afraid it probably won't work, lexxy - it's just too old.

Googling found someone who had gotten After Dark screensavers running on Windows 7, but I don't see anything having to do with success on Windows 8.

Thanks for the research I knew it was a long shot but hope springs eternal. You can't have it all I will just watch those cute little flying toasters on my Windows XP.

Those toasters were so cool! Although I now much prefer the wonderful themes they have now that we no longer even need screensavers. Some of the holiday ones are so gorgeous.

http://www.bryanbraun.com/2014/03/15/how-i-rebuilt-flying-toasters-using-only-css-animations

If you go here
http://bryanbraun.github.io/after-dark-css/

you can click the underlined links to display the different screensavers, including the toasters. Unfortunately you can't choose the degree of toastedness of your toast the way you could in the original.

Great links, Jenny.

Jenny100,

Thanks so much for the link. Those were the good old days I am really enjoying it,

That is just so cool, Jenny! Leave it to our moderator to find the best links!

Thanks for that lin... that was fun