Well, I had avoided the upgrade until yesterday, but it went ahead without asking my permission. It installed the classic shell and my desktop looks nearly the same (except for a useless window at the bottom left that will make the toolbar shorter) and the games folder is still there. When I bring it up, the games are even listed as before. But they don’t point anywhere. When I right click on one and choose open, I get the message: windows can’t find the target.
My other apps, the ones I have tried at least, seem to work. Is there any way to recover my games?
You need to get the Microsoft Solitaire collection if you want Freecell, Spider Solitaire, and the regular Solitaire (Klondike). They make it a pain in the butt depending on the version of Windows 10. There are other games available but I don’t like getting that kind of thing from MS in W10, they’re just trying to steal your data and endlessly spam you. Once again, they make new operating systems so you’ll finally appreciate the previous ones.
That site describes two methods. The first links to a file that doesn’t exist, while the second requires to get a hex editor and manually modify an exe file, which I really don’t feel up to.
If you can find a machine running Windows XP, you can just copy the Solitaire and Freecell .exe files from the Windows directory, and copy them into the Windows directory of your Win10 machine. They will run just fine. Personally, I browsed to them with the file explorer, right-clicked, and pinned them to the start menu, but you can launch them any way you like.
Curse you! I was enjoying the extra time I had available from not having them around, but now I can copy them from the hard drive of my dead Vista machine to get them back. (Never thought about doing that. :smack: )
Just copying files won’t work. With XP you need to copy over a few DLLs, too. With Vista or 7, the files have to be hacked. The above installs the hacked Windows 7 games.
I was afraid of that. I have been searching for the right files on my old XP computer, but haven’t been able to find them. I can play Freecell on it, but not track down all the files I seem to need to transfer it to my Windows 10 computer.
It was easier to download the games than to copy them. The instructions, the second link, also contains the download link. Everything works just fine.
Thanks to all.
This worked! Moreover, the games icon on the desktop works as before and even my old statistics were preserved. Thanks. Now I can waste my time as before.