Since these are all just DOS games, you might even consider installing DOS 6.3.

Well, there's Rayman Forever, which is a Windows 98 game - actually, I'm not sure the installation is so weird. I think that's the only one I have, but I might have more. Then there's King's Quest 7 and Space Quest 6 - not sure if they work better in Windows or DOS, but not Windows XP that's for sure.

I'll start shooting things at Harekiet to see how far he can get DosBox. He doesn't want to release any new binaries because they're ugly and half-completed. That said, the one he gave me a while back that has support for RealSound works fine, but he won't let me release it. Boo, Harekiet! Booooo!

Death to Harekiet!

Oh wait...that probly isn't such a great idea.... 😁

dyinginformant wrote:

For games that seem hopeless to run properly or at all on Windows XP or any newer Windows version, the best thing to do is set up a dual boot and install Windows 95 or 98. (which do you recommend BTW? What the heck is the difference between 95 and 98?)

That would have to be Windows 98 or 98SE. Windows 95 is cheaper, more readily available, and uses less resources, but we've already hit the point where Windows 95 has a problem with modern hardware. I've yet to get USB or AGP video cards to work properly with it. Also, the first version of Windows 95 only works with FAT16 hard drive partitions. FAT16 wastes huge amounts of space on anything other than the smallest partitions.

Win98 gives you proper support for USB devices and 3d support for AGP video cards. "Game-wise", Win98 has the best all-around support of both the old (DOS) and the new (3D video).

If you use only "old" 2D games, you might be able to get by with Win95.

I know that dual booting will help me, though I am a little nervous about doing it,...

Understandably so.

...and unless I get absolutely flawless step by step help from someone or some tutorial, I think it's one of those things that I should do by taking my PC into the place I bought it and get the guy to do it for me for a fee.

Ouch. That would probably not be cheap.

Well, http://www.windowsreinstall.com/ has a guide for a "parallel" install of XP (IE: Dual-boot), but it starts from within another Windows (Win98).

BTW, there is a compromise method between the two mentioned (complete re-install or the resize and install Win98 trick).

Basically it's the same as the complete re-install, except that you can preserve your personal files. You install and run something like Partition Manager (be sure to create the "Rescue Diskettes"), then resize your hard drive so there's a fairly large amount of free space on your drive. You then create a new partition for your personal files, then copy them all to that partition. Then use Partition Manager to hide that partition (this keeps either OS from messing with it). You then use the "rescue diskettes" to delete the old XP partition.

That leaves space at the "front" of the drive (for Win98 or some other DOS-OS) and space at the "end" of the drive (for XP) with your personal partition in the middle.

Having said all that, I'm getting the impression that you haven't dealt with the "guts" of the PC before and maybe you should hand this over to someone who's a little more experienced.

However, before you hand it over to a "pro" I would say your best bet is this:
Buy a CD-RW drive and some blank CD's. This will be about or less. Install this, backup your files to CD's. Then format the entire drive and start with a fresh DOS-or-Win9x install. Once you have everything installed, set up and running properly. You can then insert your XP CD and start the XP install (being sure to choose "New Install"). XP will detect the DOS-or-Win9x OS an install itself with a dual-boot that allows you to choose which OS at each boot-up.

BTW, you need to provide as much data up front as possible. If this is an "eMachine" (for example) it's not possible to set up a normal install.

Another question I have is, since the older OS I will only use for a few older games, and for no other uses, is there any way to limit what portions of say, Windows 98 loads?

When you first install Windows 98, choose custom install and go through all the option for what you do or do not want installed. Some things like wordpad will always install, but that's not a major concern as it's quite small (200K). You can also choose minimal install, but I'd bet you'd find something missing that you were used to having available at a critical moment (Of course, you could still add-it-on using "Add/Remove Programs" in the Control Panel).

I would recommend setting aside 2 Gigs of space the front of your hard drive. That should give you enough space for most of your "trouble-makers".

Another thing you want, is for your DOS section to be using FAT32 for it's partition (format it for FAT32 before installing Win9x), and you want the rest of your hard drive to use NTFS partitions. There are 2 major reasons for this:

1) NTFS is a much better filesystem than FAT32. You're only using FAT32 on the Win9x partition because Win9x can't read NTFS partitions.

2) Safety. While XP (and most XP programs) know what Win9x is and how it works, DOS and many Windows programs aren't going to "understand" XP. By keeping XP on NTFS (which Win9x can't "see") you're preventing old, mis-behaving programs from trying to "update","modify", or change your XP in any way.

Wow. You really know what you are talking about. Indeed, I have never put together, or managed the 'guts' of a PC before, only used them under normal circumstances for years. My technical language is very limited, especially when it comes to math. I don't know nor care how many Megabites are in a Gigabite, or how fast 1.6 GHz is, I just know what I need to know. In most cases, the bigger the number, the faster or more powerful it is. When talking about CPU speed, ram, or harddrive space, bigger is better (except for old games 😉 ) When talking about ping times in online gaming, you want as low a number as possible. Still not really sure what number is considered normal, or when it becomes bad, I just know lower is faster and smoother, and less lag.

I also don't know technical explanations or details, but I know what pixels, sprites, polygons, wireframes, and some other things are. In a nutshell, I only know what I need to know to be a knowledgable gamer. I will need to learn more though as I've become interested in making mods for games. Well, college should help that.

I don't think I have an Emachine. Unfortunately, I don't think my PC is any brand name, just a clone. It is from a small local computer store, and they have good deals and are friendly to work with. Maybe the guy there will help me dual boot for a good price, but it's more likely if I make it as easy as possible for him, by using the trick you said. But I guess I'll need a CD-RW first.

I don't know why people say Win9x, because I don't recall there being 9 versions of Windows. That's some info I'm surprised I don't know. I also don't know why people call a Playstation a PSX for short. Shouldn't they call it a PS?

I will do what you said at the end (the FAT32 and stuff), probably not on my own. If I'm going to the trouble of setting up a dual boot, I might as well do it RIGHT so I have no conflicts. Even if I save my personal files and uninstall Windows XP, what about all my games and some special settings some have (Unreal has a patch and a certain 3D selection, Elite Force has specific settings I had to set to make the brightness and Vsync work properly). I don't want to have to set up anything again. For some games, I'd had to reinstall it a few times already.

Hmm, I want to learn more about dual booting, but maybe I'll worry about that once I have a way to back up my system.

dyinginformant wrote:

My technical language is very limited, especially when it comes to math. ...In a nutshell, I only know what I need to know to be a knowledgable gamer.

Unfortunately, DOS games tend to deal with a lot of tech info. Some are written fairly well and run easily under all kinds of circumstances. Others are absolute pigs and demand very-specificsettings.

I don't think I have an Emachine. Unfortunately, I don't think my PC is any brand name, just a clone.

Actually, that's good news. It means that your PC is likely to not have any of the proprietary things that tend cause problems when dealing with DELL, etc..

Maybe the guy there will help me dual boot for a good price,... .

Worth a shot, especially if they're a local shop and not a "major chain".

I don't know why people say Win9x, because I don't recall there being 9 versions of Windows.

Heh. That's "shorthand" for all the versions of Windows95. There was Windows 95a,b,and c, Windows 98, Windows 98SE, and Windows ME: all variations of the same OS. It's a "math" thing, x = Any unknown value. Therefore, Win9x could be 95a,95b,95c,98, or 98SE (doesn't quite fit for SE, and not at all for ME).

Basically Win9x means any variation of Windows 95.

If I'm going to the trouble of setting up a dual boot, I might as well do it RIGHT so I have no conflicts.

Make sure drive letters are taken into consideration. You want them to be consistent between the two OS's. Windows has a bad tendency to just "grab" any old letter available and use it, you don't want that.

I set my XP boot partition to be N:, you can't choose it after install, so I created a lot of tiny partitions until I hit the letter N during XP setup. Why would I do this? Drives appearing and disappearing cause letters to change around and cause confusion. By making it N, I've made it very unlikely that any temporary drive or partition will conflict with my existing drive letters. Don't worry about this too much, but I will emphasize that you want the same letter for your CD-ROM on both 98 and XP. having your CD change letters all the time will give you headaches.

...what about all my games and some special settings some have (Unreal has a patch and a certain 3D selection, Elite Force has specific settings I had to set to make the brightness and Vsync work properly). I don't want to have to set up anything again.

No exact answer here, it will depend on the game. Some will probably need re-install, others probably won't.

Your best bet is to copy all of them to an archive (CD-R, another partition, whatever,...), then copy them back after you get your computer back. I was surprised to find that a lot of Windows games don't really need all the registry entries created by a games installer. The one thing I know that will be gone is your collection of icons and start menu entries (unless of course you archive that as well and know how to restore it.), but new icons are pretty easy to create.

Examples from my PC:
Quake III Arena: Works just fine from a filecopy, no need to re-install.
Unreal Tournament: Same as above except I lost the special entries in the registry that identify .UTX and some other files as "for Unreal Tournament". It still played fine.

Others may be more particular.

dyinginformant wrote:

I don't know nor care how many Megabites are in a Gigabite, or how fast 1.6 GHz is, I just know what I need to know.

I don't know how many megabites are in a gigabite either, but there are 1024 megabytes in one gigabyte. (Sorry, being a nitpicky arse once again, ignore it.)

dyinginformant wrote:

In most cases, the bigger the number, the faster or more powerful it is. When talking about CPU speed, ram, or harddrive space, bigger is better (except for old games 😉 )

EEEEEK! NO! Higher clock speed does NOT always mean better performance! That's why AMD has stopped naming their chips by actual clock speed. Instead, they're writing them as relative "performance" numbers that measure speed; as in, "this is how fast your clock would have to be on a P4 to match the performance of this CPU." The Pentium 4 only processes ONE instruction per clock cycle, whereas the Athlon process FOUR. Now, while this doesn't actually mean you get a four-fold increase in speed, it DOES mean that AMD's processors are siginificantly faster at comparable clock speeds.
In a nutshell: performance is not always measured in MHz or GHz (or THz).

dyinginformant wrote:

When talking about ping times in online gaming, you want as low a number as possible. Still not really sure what number is considered normal, or when it becomes bad, I just know lower is faster and smoother, and less lag.

0-75ms is considered "LPB" (;)), 76-150ms is considered "excellent," 151-350ms is considered "normal," 351-500ms is considered "slow," and >500ms is considered "get broadband. now." Hope this mini-guide helps you out. Optimizing your Windows TCP/IP send/receive settings will also help.

dyinginformant wrote:

I also don't know technical explanations or details, but I know what pixels, sprites, polygons, wireframes, and some other things are. In a nutshell, I only know what I need to know to be a knowledgable gamer. I will need to learn more though as I've become interested in making mods for games. Well, college should help that.

You certainly seem to know quite a bit for someone that claims to be not very knowledgeable.

Oh geez, let's not get into AMD vs Intel.... that's what became really confusing when I bought my PC and is still really confusing. The Athlon is still better than the Duron or something, because it's faster. And a Pentium 4 is way faster than Pentium 2. I'm not sure but I think they organised how fast the CPU was and past that it's the next version of Pentium. For example, I have never heard of a Pentium 2 800MHz. Or am I wrong about this? My 1.6GHz is way fast and I'm proud of it, but then there are people gloating about their 2.2 GHz machines. Higher number = faster. That is true. Now Anthon vs Pentium - I dunno. It was confusing because AMD compared the price of their CPU with a Pentium 4 which they advertised as cheaper than Intel's chip, but it's also slower and less compatble.

I DON'T KNOW! AHH! 😁 I just remember going in, sure of what I wanted to get (when I was price shopping for a PC), based on reviews in gaming mags, and this guy was in there who told me about all his experiences with AMD, and with different RAM, etc. I completely changed my mind in which PC to get, and so far, it's been a good decision.

Hmm, but I think I got duped into buying the wrong video card. The GeForce 4 was out, and the Ti was soon to come out, but you know how expensive the best stuff is when it's brand new. I was also confused with those GeForce cards the MXs vs the Tis, I didn't know the difference. I thought any GeForce 4 would beat any GeForce 3, but it turns out any Ti beats any MX. (in other words, I thought a GeForce 4 MX would be better than a GeForce 3 Ti, but I was wrong).

I ended up buying the GeForce 4 MX 440, because it has a good balance of power and price, but I really didn't want much lacking in power. I don't need the BEST. But how about the second or third best? If my card is mid range than I'm upset. Luckily so far I've only been running not too old 3D games, but is my PC set up for games like Max Payne and newer? I want all the cool effects turned on, 1024x720 res (whatever is the one after 800x600), and very fast and smooth FPS. I want no lacking in visuals or speed basically. But I don't need frame rates in the 300s in resolutions in the 2000s(width). That's just too much money, and frame rates like that your eyes can't notice anyway. But, ofcourse, you get a longer time before you need an upgrade.

dyinginformant wrote:

I'm not sure but I think they organised how fast the CPU was and past that it's the next version of Pentium.

I wouldn't sweat this too much. The new "interpretive" speed ratings were created because too many people relied on processor speeds alone as a measure of performance. Basically, most people think that a 2GHz PC will run everything exactly twice as fast as a 1GHz PC, and it won't. I prefer to have the actual processor speed. If I want "relative" performance ratings, I'll read a review of the processor.

I was also confused with those GeForce cards the MXs vs the Tis, I didn't know the difference. I thought any GeForce 4 would beat any GeForce 3, but it turns out any Ti beats any MX.

Unfortunately, NVidia played around with the naming conventions for their cards. The MX440 is more of a GeForce2 than a 4. The people who got MX cards expected them to be slower, but not missing hardware features (It doesn't have support for DirectX8-compliant pixel shaders and vertex shaders, like the GeForce3 and higher cards did). Hopefully, they won't do that again.

...but is my PC set up for games like Max Payne and newer?

It should run it fine, not necessarily at 1024x768. I was able to run the demo on a "ATI Rage Pro" with 8Megs (of course, I could almost swear that I could hear the card screaming while running it).

Ti beats MX, yes, but in the case of a GF3, the Ti200 is actually SLOWER than the regular GF3, which is slower than the Ti500.

Great. I knew it. They duped me.

So for a great PERFORMING card that isn't the BEST or MOST EXPENSIVE, but is definitely a great card and not too much to afford, which would you recommend? The GeForce 3 Ti 500?

Hell, yes! The GF3Ti500 is FABULOUS! I got my from Hercules, and they don't sell it anymore, but I'm sure you can find other ones from reputable manufacturers. It looks like Visiontek's Xtasy 6964 works really well. [3DMark: 5107 @ 1600x1200x32]

Hmm. I thought so. But I guess there's no need to get it right now, since I'm not really playing the most demanding games yet. However, I definitely want to be ready for Metal Gear Solid 2 Substance, but that comes out in the spring. By then I guess the GF3Ti500 will be a bit cheaper. Oh man, I want that game so bad, why do PCers have to wait longer?

So much for staying on topic. Oh well. I'm not quite ready to dual boot just yet. Not until I get the ability to backup my system.

dyinginformant wrote:

...I definitely want to be ready for Metal Gear Solid 2 Substance, but that comes out in the spring...I want that game so bad, why do PCers have to wait longer?

I dunno. The same reason I had to shell out $300 for a PS2 to play GTA3 since it was taking too long for them to port it, I suppose. At least I've got one to play Vice City on, I suppose. Or I could wait 5 years for a PS2 emulator that works.