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My quest: Get G-Nome (developed by 7th Level) to work on my Windows 7 64 bit installation.
Now I realize there are some obvious obstacles (64 bit environment and a Win95 era game). However, I have tried several options I THOUGHT might be a work around and all have ended in failure. Also, if any of these options seem like garbage to you, you are probably right. Please just keep in mind I am a learner and tried to do as much as I could before posting for help.
I will list them for your reference below:
- MS XP Mode in Virtual PC - Failure because the simulated card or virtual PC in general does not support 3d accerlation. The games audio worked fine and the 2d menu screens did as well but as soon as a 3d model had to be rendered it crashed.
- DosBox 0.74 - Failure because Win95 is too new (?) for dos era programs and when I tried to run the setup.exe I was told I had executed an "illegal command"
- Wine - I have an install of Linux on my machine and I am currently learning to use it. I have some basic knowledge though. I tried to run a win95 environment through Wine and install G-nome that way. Unfortunately, the installer would hang whenever I executed "wine setup.exe". I tried as well by logging in as a super user and the install actually did work then. However, when the game booted it just played the audio. There were no visuals but I could hear myself navigating the unseen 2D menu screen through what I could hear from the speakers. Obviously not playable. I checked the wine database of games (https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=9805) and only a few people had written about attempts with G-nome, none sounded promising.
- VirtualBox - Failure beacuse in my ignorance I did not realize I had to have an XP installation disk (lost mine years ago) for this method to work.
- VMWare - Failure. This attempt was the most cumbersome. Bear with me. I had to DL VMWare workstation trial and the standalone converter. I then put the MS XP Mode on a NTFS USB drive (unchecked the "read only" box on the .VHD file as well) and then mounted that from the USB as a physical drive. I then used the standalone converter to create a .vmx file from that. Finally I was able to link that to my trial workstation only to discover my chipset/motherboard supports VT-d and not VT-x. So no dice.
I feel I have exhausted my options. As far as I can see, my only recourse now is to find someone willing to sell me a Windows XP CD and key from Amazon or ebay (seeing as MS doesn't sell them anymore).
Can anyone weigh in on this with suggestions? I would greatly appreciate it.
I just want to indulge in a little nostalgia.
Nukesub
Posted 2015-07-07T01:36:16.547
Reputation: 37
2Just point VirtualBox at the VHD for the MS XP Mode instead of creating a new installation. – Michael Frank – 2015-07-07T01:57:50.307
HowToGeek has a LOOOOOOONG explanation on how to do this here: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/12183/how-to-run-xp-mode-in-virtualbox-on-windows-7/
– Michael Frank – 2015-07-07T01:59:09.717Michael, thanks for the suggestion and link. Seems obvious now but like I said I am learning. I appreciate the tip. Also I just read somewhere that if you copy and paste the CD contents into the x86 program files and run the installer from there it will apparently work. Gonna try that real quick then I will move on to yours if that doesn't work. – Nukesub – 2015-07-07T02:00:19.263
That's okay, I didn't know how to do it before I read your question either. :) I also think the only downside you might run into is licensing, but you'll get a 30 day trial which might be long enough to satisfy your nostalgia needs. – Michael Frank – 2015-07-07T02:01:25.253
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/12309/install-xp-mode-with-virtualbox-using-the-vmlite-plugin/ Might be a better guide, as I think it deals with the activation issues in the original link. – Michael Frank – 2015-07-07T02:07:28.073
I appreciate the links Michael! – Nukesub – 2015-07-07T02:09:42.027