Windows 95 Install?

[Twiggz]

I have this old game called Robert E. Lee: Civil War General, I used to play this game all the time and it's designed for windows 95. I've tried this thing in compatibility mode on windows 7, windows Vista, and Windows XP and it just doesn't run right. Is there a way if I come up with an install of windows 95 to get it loaded on any of my computers in my sig? I know I can't just try to install it because its incompatible with newer computers?

I decided this belonged here because we would be talking mostly about windows and not this game. I'm not very knowledgeable in this area.

 

[fcomstoc]

I love that game, I still own a real CD copy of it. I haven't played it in awhile because of the same issue and because it is pretty old. I don't really know a good solution for this I just wanted to give a shout-out for that game.

 

[Cigarsmoker]

As and experiment, you might want to install 95 to an external USB drive. I doubt this will work as there's probably no driver support or no driver written for 95. I'm also guessing that is probably why the game won't run in compatibility mode.

 

[fcomstoc]

You could try win 98 it might have better support

 

[wagex]

Is just ask around for anold junker put 95 on it and have a retro gaming rig can probably snag one up on eBay pretty cheap

 

[c627627]

Yeah, the drivers for modern motherboards are not there.

You can install Windows 98 or Windows ME on platforms using Athlon XP CPUs. You can dual boot Windows XP/Me or Win XP/98 on them. Just install 98 or Me first. Then install WinXP on another partition. I have a pretty fast 2.4GHz nForce2 system just for this purpose. It has WinXP and Win Me installed on it.

 

[Twiggz]

Okay I was thinking this was probably going to be the route to go, if I wanted to do this. So I need to just find an old computer, but you guys think it will work fine on win 98? Me?

 

[c627627]

Windows 95 programs should work fine under Windows 98 or Windows ME.

Those operating system can be extremely buggy so I would drive image those partitions as soon as you finish installation and as soon as you set things as you like them to be.

There are also programs which slow things down for really old games, they run in the background of "fast" systems (that is systems available a few years after 1995). Things were very different 10 years ago then say 15 years ago. There are entire forums devoted to running DOS games, check them out but come back to post what ended up happening and if your game worked.

 

[Twiggz]

Will do and thanks

 

[SteveLord]

Why not a virtual machine with VirtualBox?

 

[fcomstoc]

Why not a virtual machine with VirtualBox?

VBox does seem to support all the way back to 3.1 so that might work for you.

 

[SteveLord]

My old man use to play that game a lot. I was too young to enjoy anything requiring serious strategy or thinking.

That and Great Naval Battles from SSi.

 

[fcomstoc]

BTW do you have a copy of Win 95 because M# does not consider that abondonware; legit copies sell for around $50.

 

[Twiggz]

Why not a virtual machine with VirtualBox?

Like I said earlier, I'm not very knowledgeable about this stuff. I don't know how to do that, while i'm sure I could learn it, I wasn't sure if something like that was an option.

BTW do you have a copy of Win 95 because M# does not consider that abondonware; legit copies sell for around $50.

No I don't have a copy but I think my dad probably does, I never got my own copy of windows until XP, but I have looked into the pricing.

Edit: Well, it really doesn't matter now, though i'd still like to learn that. I bought an old 900mhz celeron computer that comes with windows 98 cd and coa that is tested fully working. Hopefully it works... The things I do for reasons that don't really matter that much

 

[Audioaficionado]

You could also try VMWare VMPlayer (free to download and use) and install Win95/98 in a VM.

 

[fcomstoc]

I think that when I did run that game I had Windows 98 SE. It worked with no problems that I can remember, that was a few years ago though.

 

[Twiggz]

You could also try VMWare VMPlayer (free to download and use) and install Win95/98 in a VM.

I dl'd VMware player and gave it go with a copy of windows xp home edition, it's very simple to use but I have a few questions. I installed it onto my 80gb drive instead of my ssd because I wasn't sure about the size (turns out it's small). Then during setup it said that it recommended 40gb of space, so I put that on my usb drive hah, but i've installed everything and have my virtual desktop running but it only took up 2gb of space on my usb drive ? Is 40 just what I cannot exceed?

Edit: okay, I think I got it, it does start out small apparently. I would have given this a go before I bought that old computer, but earlier posts indicated that was the way to go and i'm kinda impulsive sometimes. At least if the old machine breaks down or something, i'll have the windows software that comes with it and I can do this then.

 

[Audioaficionado]

Windows makes you create a large minimum partition size to install, but after the installation is finished VMPlayer will let you shrink it back down.

 

[Metlcub]

You would need Win 95 OSR2 if I remember for USB support, the first Win95 release did not have USB compatability. I would use Win 98 or even ME. Those 2 should play it. Maybe even Win 2k. but I would shoot for Win 98.

I think there is away to run a vertual copy of Win 98 in win 7 but Im not sure how it's done. It's like running a copy of Win in Mac OS.

 

[Twiggz]

Good because I ended up getting a copy of windows 98 (along with an old computer) so i'll try it soon. I should also be able to load up windows 98 with vmplayer in windows vista right?