I’ve placed this in GQ because I want a calm discussion. I know personally how heated Windows gets some people.
In the past I’ve always resisted changing my operating system but many of my older, prefered, games are having trouble under XP.
Deux Ex, FFVII, Sands of Time, AvP & Freelancer are all non-playable now.
I’ve had them working in the past but as my hardware has changed I am unable to work around the problems.
I’ve heard good things about older games running in Vista and wondered if anyone had relevant experience they could share or expert knowledge?
Although I’d be using the same problematic hardware I wonder if Vista can tame it a bit. I don’t mind if Vista runs a bit slower overall. Compatibility is king right now.
I’m not a “gamer” in the RPG sense of the word, but I do have a desktop full of games like Chuzzle and Diner Dash, and I have a number of my old favorites from my XP computer that will not run with Vista, most notably (and disappointingly) the Zoombinis. I can buy a Vista version of them if I want, but the ones I have are not compatible with Vista the way they were with 95, ME, and XP.
I don’t think Vista is better than the appropriate version of XP for anything.
I’m not even trying to be glib about this, and I’m not one to pile on and bash Msoft just for the fun of it. But every clue I’ve got, from many different people who have different perspectives on Vista (gamers, office users, tech geeks, engineers, home users, friends in the IT industry, the press, people I bought my latest PC from) points to the same conclusion: Vista just isn’t any good. Some have gone as far as to say that even with Msoft’s fantastic domination of the market, and even with their PR and marketing muscle, Vista may be the mistake that even they can’t get away with indefinitely.
It will vary by game, but overall most older games seem to work better under XP than Vista. My Vista machine will not run under any condition my Axis and Allies game which runs fine in XP with the last update available. I have had similar problems with games from the 1998 to 2002 time period. There are a few games that don’t run or run poorly in XP.
I never thought to try them in Vista, but overall hardcore gamers have been complaining nearly as much about Vista as IT Professionals who refuse to deploy it at work as so much older corporate software does not run on it and even some VPNs work poorly.
Jim (Part of a small IT department that has evaluated and rejected Vista)
To get some games to run under Vista, it is necessary to run them as an administrator (a check box option in the Games folder settings for the game in question). Simply logging in with an account that has administrator rights is not adequate, because Vista only elevates to administrator access on a per-operation basis. For instance, World of Warcraft required administrator rights when Vista first came out if you wanted updates to work. WoW modified the Start menu every time it updated itself, an operation not normally permitted outside of an authorized installer.
It’s not just games that are broken under Vista; a huge number of applications that contain “bad practices” coding don’t work any more. Games are often the worst offenders for lazy programming, which is why so many of them fail with the OS. The compatibility modes (for XP, etc.) don’t completely open up all of the holes from earlier versions of Windows, so they aren’t always adequate to get a game to work.
You’re probably not in this boat, but it’s worth keeping in mind that the 64-bit versions of Vista don’t support 16-bit code any more. Anything that runs under MS-DOS or Windows 3.x won’t work (although I suppose that 32-bit programs from that era that used an extender to make the leap from the 16-bit OS could be hacked to work).
Deus Ex ran fine for me in XP, and AVP2 at least. And by Sand of Time, do you mean Prince of Persia? Because that came out for XP I’m pretty sure, not 9x.
Microsoft redesigned the audio and graphics parts of Windows for Vista. Their design goals seemed to be more focused on “improved” DRM than on anything that would be beneficial for writing or running games.
Some of these games also work fine if when you install them you run them in the compatibility mode for that OS. Right click on the installer, select the compatibility tab, and select the OS of choice. I have fixed over a dozen misc apps for people by reinstalling this way.
Bolding mine. This is the root of many failures. I have seen several apps that were written for XP that will not work after service pack 2 is installed.
I personally have been using Vista for well over a year now, no problems.
If you really really need to run legacy apps on new machines, setting up a copy of the proper OS in a virtual machine works beautifully. We just did this for an accounting office that wanted newer more reliable machines but still had to support an old DOS 6.22 Payroll program. When they want to run the payroll software, they just pop open the VM and run it.
Don’t try this on your $499 Bust buy special laptop with 512M of ram, but it will work fabulously on recent vintage XP and vista boxes with sufficent ram.
Short answer: Everything works more smoothly in XP than Vista.
Short answer #2: Everything works more smoothly in the previous OS than the new one. [However, IMHO, Vista is worse than XP ever was.]
Long answer: [deleted, because it was a long-winded list of anecdotes that didn’t really expand on the above.]
I don’t want to turn this into a Vista bashing hijack, but why not just buy new PC’s with XP? I know that it’s hard or impossible to walk into Best Buy and buy a PC with XP, but I understand that Dell has relented and is offering some models with XP. (I don’t know about other manufacturers).
I’m curious to know if they felt like going to Vista was the best option, or if they felt like going to Vista was their ONLY option.
If you feel 100% competent about installing XP, go right ahead. Otherwise, get the people who sell the computer to you to do it for you, so that you are buying the machine with the OS pre-installed.
This may be no problem, or you may find that dealers want to sell you a Vista machine and not an XP. I had to buy a new computer last year and spent a lot of time shopping around (by phone and internet) before making a decision. In my experience, what the first line sales droids said was irrelevant (they are just reciting from script). When I made it clear that it was either XP or no deal, end of story, the suppliers sniffed the coffee and found a way to supply an XP machine. They go where the money is. Your money, your choice.
I eventually got a very hi-spec PC with XP Media Edition installed. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty darn good.
Its a bit of a testament to XP, I guess, but now that it is mature it fulfils the primary obligation of an OS - you don’t notice it, it just works. I can’t say the same for my Vista or Debian boxes.