Windows 7 – Old Games Won’t Play.. Help! (Updated)

5 6 Methods For Getting Old Programs To Run On New Computers

This article is an updated and improved version of  Windows 7 – Old Games Won’t Play.. Help!, a “reader question” article that has proven quite popular. It seems quite a few people want their 12-year old, 16-bit, Gen 1 games to play on latest generation, 64-bit machines, (I don’t blame them) but it doesn’t always work. Here are some tips for solving the problem. They are in the appropriate order, IMHO. (These work in Vista as well.)

1) Turn off “hardware acceleration”. A common cause of errors and “playability issues” is the old games’ use (or lack of) of hardware “acceleration”, which is referring to the “video card”, or more accurately, the graphics driver. Most graphics drivers allow you to turn off the hardware acceleration (which may resolve your issue).
Click Start in the lower left corner of Windows.
Click Control Panel, click Appearance and Personalization, click Personalization, click Display Settings, and then click Advanced Settings.
Click the Troubleshoot tab, and then click Change Settings.Move the Hardware Acceleration slider until it is one notch to the right of None. This is the basic acceleration setting.
Click OK twice, and then close the window.
Restart the computer.

[you can also get there via the graphic adapter’s Properties in Device Manager]

[Note: Change Settings will be disabled if the graphics card drivers do not support disabling hardware acceleration. You may need to check the video card manufacturer’s website, and download the latest driver.]

2) You may need set the troublesome games to launch in “Compatibility Mode”, and tell them to run under Windows XP SP2. This article, https://techpaul.wordpress.com/2009/06/28/compatibility-tricks-for-old-programs-new-machines/ shows you how. The “Compat Mode” section is about half way down the page.

3) You might need to try repeating Step 2, but this time install directly to your C:\ drive (by default, Windows will install programs to C:\Program Files or C:\Program Files(x86) folder) using the “Custom install” option during set up. This will eliminate some of the Permissions issues that keep older programs from running correctly.

4) You may also – if the game is old enough – need to turn off all but one CPU core. This is called “setting the affinity”. Also see, Compatibility Tricks for Old Programs, New Machines. If this resolves your issue, the article includes a download for a tool to make this setting ‘stick’.

5) For really old, DOS-based games, install DOSBox. DOSBox is a great tool, especially for old games. I would suggest reading the tutorial, here: http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/DOSBoxShortcuts#Windows

6) Though I view this as a bit of a ‘last resort’, you can install a “virtual machine” and run the game in there.
* If you have the Professional, Enterprise or Ultimate edition of Windows 7, you can download XP Mode – which is really Virtual PC – for free. If you have other editions of Windows, grab Virtual PC 2007 from the same place.
* Perhaps a better alternative is using VMWare Server (free), from www.vmware.com/products/server. I have read that the VMWare handles the hardware acceleration better.

In both cases, you’ll have to supply the copy of (old) Windows yourself, and install it (into the “virtual machine”) from scratch.

… I hate to say, but it is possible that you may try all these things and get unsatisfactory results. I keep an old Pentium II machine (Windows 98) around just for playing those old games (which I wouldn’t dream of connecting to the Internet!). The games play best on the hardware/OS of their day. You might need to do the same. Or.. say goodbye to your old friends.

Progress!

Copyright 2007-2011 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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How can I open a ".odt" ?

Q: Paul, How can I open a “.odt” ?

A: As I discussed in this article, Cannot open attachment…help!, when you run across a file that Windows does not recognize, and doesn’t know how to open, it is due to the fact that some program was used to create the file that you don’t have.

In this case that program was OpenWriter– the word processor in the free OpenOffice Suite.

Basically, when this happens, you have three options:
* Ask your sender to resend the file, only this time ‘Save As’ it to a more common file type. (such as .doc, or .rtf, or even .txt)
* Install the program on your machine yourself.
* Look for “viewer”, or “converter” tool.

I like the first choice myself (and I’m not always so polite in my phrasing), but most of you will probably prefer the third. (This comes up at least once a week for PowerPoint slideshows!)

A free document viewer for all common word processing formats can be found here.

A free file type converter (all types of ‘media’) can be found here.

.. and for the 600,000th time.. the PowerPoint Viewer is here.

[note: when you come across a ‘dot xyz‘ that you’ve never heard of before and have no idea what might of created it.. go to FILExt.com. There you will be able to look it up.]

Copyright 2007-8 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

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Can’t use their thumb drive at work–Reader Question

A reader e-mailed me a question I believe will be of interest to other readers of this series. He wants to use a thumb drive to transfer files between his computer at his work and his home computer, but the work computer will not recognize the thumb drive. He wanted advice on how to fix this.

Q: My thumb drive works great at home, but when I took it into work to try and copy some files so I could work at home, I plug it in and the little window never opens so I cannot use it. What am I doing wrong?
A: There are several possible reasons for this, and here’s a few things to try:
* One may be that Windows is “recognizing” the device, but isn’t displaying the little “Found new hardware” balloon for some reason (such as a Service isn’t running). Open My Computer, Start >My Computer, (just “Computer” in Vista) and look for the drive there. If it’s there, great, just double-click it, but if it’s not…

* Try plugging the drive into a different USB port. It is possible that the one you tried has “gone bad”. (It helps if you use an open port on the machine, and not use a hub.) If that isn’t it…

* Ask your company’s IT department if USB volumes have been disabled. Many companies are turning off USB access to iPods/Media Players and thumb drives (storage devices) in an effort to prevent “data leakage”.. which is a fancy way of saying, preventing the employees from walking out the door with the Company Secrets. If this is indeed the case, you can ask that an exception be made in your case. If your request is granted, they will re-“enable” USB storage devices on your machine.
But if that isn’t it…

* It is possible that the drive letter your thumb drive is pre-disposed to being assigned (say, “E:” or “F:”), is being used by another device or “share” on the company network, and so it isn’t being seen as a volume (aka “drive”).. you’ll have a volume, but without a drive letter, Windows won’t “see” it and you can’t use it.
a) Right-click on My Computer and select “Manage” from the context menu.
b) click the “+” sign next to “Storage” to expand the tree, and then click on “Disk Management”.
You will now see all the volumes on your computer..

This screenshot  shows that I have two volumes/drives, and that they both have been assigned drive letters [(C:) and (D:)] — this means they’re “recognized” and fully functional. What we’re looking for in our thumb drive issue is a volume that does not have a letter.

c) If you see one (that will be the troublesome thumb drive), right-click on it and select “Change Drive Letter and Paths…” from the context menu. A small window will open.
d) click on the “Add” button, and another small window will open. Use the drop-down arrow next to “Assign the following drive letter” and choose one of the letters (those shown will be “available” letters on the company network). It really doesn’t matter which letter you choose. Then click “OK”, and “OK” again.

You should now be back in business, and you can use the thumb drive as you’re used to. Open My Computer again and you’ll see the thumb drive and double-clicking it will open it up.

* If these steps fail to allow Windows to see the USB thumb drive, submit a trouble ticket to your company’s IT department.

Today’s free link: Once upon a time, the visionaries of IT thought that the answer to creating a “paperless society”, and getting all the disparate machine types talking to each other, was the PDF (portable document format). The PDF was to be create-able by anyone and readable by anyone, but Adobe didn’t see much profit in that… If you find that you need to create a PDF, but don’t have Acrobat or Word 2007, you can do so by downloading PrimoPDF, which can convert over 300 formats into .pdf’s.

Copyright 2007-8 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

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Cannot open attachment…help!

A frustrating error occurs when Windows does not recognize the type of file you are trying to open, that reads “Windows cannot open this file:”

It may help you to understand that what causes this is when the file was created with a program that is not installed on your machine. It does not mean the file is not Open-able.

Today’s topic was inspired by a college professor, who received two writing assignments from students as email attachments. [A brief aside: it is simply amazing what is available to us in the form of the e-classroom. If you have a crazy schedule, and there simple isn’t time to further your education, consider taking online courses. A good place to start looking is your local Junior College.] One student sent him a .mdi file and the other sent him a .docx file. When he tried to open them, he received the message shown above, and asked for my help in opening them.

Tip of the day: Use the Internet to identify attachment file types, and find out what it would take to open them. I mentioned in an earlier article, files are identified by a “dot-three-letters” file “extension” (for a more detailed description, click here). This tells your O/S what program created the file so that it can launch the same program to work with it. I will mention again; the place to go when you receive (or come across) a file extension you simply don’t recognize is a website called FILExt.

The professor had assigned a writing assignment, and since he has Microsoft Office and the lesser-known Word Perfect installed on his machine, he was surprised at his inability to open a text document (and doubly surprised when it happened twice). The second file — the .docx — I easily recognized as the new Word format. The new Microsoft Office 2007 suite has modernized, and uses a XML-based format now, and older versions (Office 97 – 2003) of Word will not recognize, or be able to Open, files of this type.
The solution, in this case was to (somehow) upgrade his Office suite to 2007, or ask the student to re-submit the document using Word 2007’s ability to Save As in the older format. I advised him to download and install the free 60-day trial of Office 2007, and to consider purchasing a license for it. (The download is the full suite; it just has a time-limited license.) By doing this, he would also be able to open the second file. [update: for more on Office 2007, and to download the free conversion toolkit, called a “Compatibility Pack” (for owners of older versions of Office), click here.]

I did not immediately recognize the .mdi file extension, and so (since I had it already open) entered “open .mdi” into Google’s search box. It turns out that the student had — instead of simply Save-ing the document — “printed” it to Word 2003’s ‘virtual printer’, Microsoft Document Image Writer. This tool is usually used in conjunction with a scanner, and allows for OCR. You don’t typically run across too many .mdi files…
The professor took my advice, and was able to open both documents using the newly installed Word 2007.

If you refer back to the error message shown above, you will see that by default Windows offer you a choice; allow it to search online for a way to open the file (this rarely works), or select a program — from the programs you have installed — to use to try to force it open (this also rarely works). It will not hurt you, and there is a chance of success, to go ahead and accept the first option.
And then go to FILExt.

Today’s free link: If you use IM and use multiple services… and you frequently use different computers… you should know about Meebo. Meebo allows you to use a web browser to log into and use AIM, Messenger, Yahoo, and GoogleTalk. Quick, simple, and easy… and nothing to install.

Copyright 2007 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved.

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