How to play or install old CD games in Windows 10

does anyone know if Microsoft will do a fix so that we can run our old cd games. such as total war, civilization, etc. because Microsoft didn’t include «safe disk» in the windows 10 system. The only way to play our favourites is to repurchase them from «steam»

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Most of the games are not compatible with Windows 10. I suggest you to contact the game manufacture to download and check for the updates on the Game.

You can also try to install the game in Compatibility mode and check if it works.

A compatibility mode is a software mechanism in which a software either emulates an older version of software in order to allow incompatible software or files to remain compatible with the computer’s newer hardware or software. Here’s how:

1. Download the game from the manufacturer’s website and save it on your local disk.
2. Right click on the setup file of the game and select » Properties «.
3. Select » Compatibility » Tab.
4. Place a check mark next to » Run this program in Compatibility mode » and select operating system that is

Compatible for the game to run from the drop down list.
5. Let the game install and then check the functionality.

Hope this helps. If the issue remains unresolved, please get back to us and we would be happy to help.

How to install and play old computer games on Windows 10

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Thank you for contacting Microsoft Community.

I understand your requirement in this regard.

Which games are you referring to?

What do you mean by «none of the compatibility tab options work» from your description?

Did you tried installing them in compatibility mode?

Are you trying to convey the same?

It depends on the Game which you’re trying to install and play on Windows 10. Most programs and games designed for earlier versions of Windows will still works in the latest version of Windows depends on that particular application or game. Some might run poorly or not at all. You can try installing the games in compatibility mode, if you haven’t tried before.

Compatibility mode runs the program using settings from a previous version of Windows. Follow the below mentioned steps to install the game in Compatibility mode.

* Right-click on the Game setup file (I.e. .exe file) and click on ‘Properties’ .

* Go to ‘Compatibility’ tab and click Run compatibility troubleshooter, then select Try recommended setting and click Next again Next . Now it will ask you to Test the program, click on it and continue with installation. Once this is done, check if everything works fine. If it does, go back to Test the program window and click Next, then save the setup file with that settings. Reboot your PC and see it resolve the issue.

Keep us posted if you require further assistance.

How to run old games on Windows 10

By Joanna Nelius 29 October 2019

Windows 95 games on Windows 10. It can be done.

Perhaps one of the biggest challenges facing games older than ten years is getting them to work on modern PCs. Unlike film, books or other mediums, games can’t be as easily updated to work with current technology, but that doesn’t mean these games are lost to videogame history. There are emulators and compatibility modes in operating systems to help us revisit the games of our childhood.

Like a few previous iterations of Windows, Windows 10 still has both the ‘run as administrator’ and ‘troubleshoot compatibility’ options. If you right click on the game icon, there is an option at the bottom called Properties. If you click on that, a pop-up box will appear with a few tabs. Navigate to the Compatibility tab and check the compatibility mode box to un-gray the dropdown menu beneath and choose what previous version of windows you want to run your game in.

Windows should automatically detect how old your game is. So if you are trying to install something like 3-D Ultra Minigolf from 1997, it will let you choose a compatibility mode as far back as Windows 95. However, this isn’t always a fool-proof method; DOS games from way-back-when, for example, may be a particular challenge, but there are a few things you can do to get older games working on a modern machine, whether it’s tweaking some settings or installing other software.

What is compatibility mode?

Compatibility mode is a software mechanism inside of Windows that allows the operation system to emulate older versions of itself.

While Microsoft tries to make programs and file formats backwards compatible, it does’t always work with older games because the gap between when each one was released is too large. It depends on the program and how it’s optimized and designed, if it’s inherently backwards compatible, etc. There’s a few specific reasons why older games won’t run automatically on Windows 10, even in compatibility mode:

1. 64-bit Windows 10 no longer supports 16-bit applications.
2. Some older software depends on old Windows libraries that are no longer included with Windows 10.
3. Since Windows XP, all versions of Windows no longer run on top of DOS.
4. Older games rely on non-existent DRM (digital rights management) solutions that stop programs from booting.

But what if compatibility mode doesn’t work?

There are several third-party software solutions that are great workarounds, and a few Windows settings that you can turn off (although I would not necessarily recommend).

First, check Steam to see if it happens to have the game you want to play. Some developers will release remastered versions of older games to be compatible with modern operations systems. Duke Nukem 3D and Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines are two such games that have been re-released on the digital store front over the last several years. Sure, you’re technically purchasing a second copy of the game if you previously owned (or still own) it on CD, but you’re paying for the convenience of not downloading extra software or messing with Windows settings at that point.

GOG has also made it its mission to track down older games and make them available for purchase again, too. A few games they have made compatible with newer operating systems are Eye of the Beholder and Beneath a Steel Sky.

There are also abandonware sites where you can search for and download older games for free that have already been modified to be compatible with Windows 10. However (and this is a big however), you do use these sites at your own risk; while abandonware games are no longer supported by either the developer or publisher, many are still technically under copyright, since copyrighted works that have been abandoned by their creators do not automatically become public property. (In the USA, copyright usually expires after 70 years from the date of publication.) It is up to the developer/publisher whether or not they want to pursue a copyright violation.

But what if I want to install from a CD?

If you still have your old game discs lying around—and an optical drive—and want to install your games the old-fashioned way, take a look at something called DOSBox. DOSBox is a stand-alone DOS emulator that supports hundreds of older games. You can find instructions on how to play a game via DOSBox here. There’s no legal gray area around emulation.

You can also try something like VirtualBox, a program that lets you build a virtual machine on your computer to run 16-bit applications in a window on your desktop—another emulator, in essence. Unlike Windows 7, Windows 10 does not have a «Windows XP mode,» which was a virtual machine with an XP license. You can basically create the same thing with VirtualBox, but you’ll need a Windows XP license. That alone doesn’t make this an ideal option, but it’s still an option.

Another option is to disable driver signature enforcement if it’s older drivers that are preventing your game from installing and/or running. This is not ideal either, as driver signing helps keep malicious or unstable drivers off your OS. But if you want to risk it so you can try to get through all 120 Lemmings levels again, here’s how to disable driver signature enforcement:

1. Open the advanced boot menu by pressing Shift while you click Restart.
2. Select Troubleshoot > Advanced Options > Startup Settings.
3. Press Restart.
4. Select 7, disable driver signature enforcement.
5. Press Enter to boot your system.

How to install Windows 10

By Alan Dexter 16 April 2021

It’s easier than you think to get Windows 10 on your gaming PC.

Whether you’re installing Windows 10 on a machine for the first time, or looking to start afresh by reinstalling it on top of an old install, it’s never been easier to get Microsoft’s OS on your systems. You don’t need much in the way of existing kit either, just an 8GB USB stick and a PC that is already up and running. If you have an existing install, it may be worth trying a Windows 10 reset first.

CPU: 1 GHz or faster
RAM: 2 GB
HDD space: 32 GB
GPU: DirectX 9 or later
Display: 800 x 600

You don’t even need to hunt down an ISO burning tool anymore either, as Microsoft provides everything you need on the software side of things thanks to its Windows 10 media creation tool. Simply navigate over to the Windows 10 installation site, scroll down to the Create Windows 10 installation media section, and then hit the Download tool now button. This will download the latest version of the Media Creation Tool onto your machine.

Once downloaded, open the folder you saved it in and launch the app to get started. The first thing you’ll have to do is Accept the terms of the Microsoft Software License, after which it will display that it is Getting a few things ready, before giving you the option to Upgrade this PC now or Create installation media for another PC. It’s this second option you want to check before hitting the next button.

You next to get to set a different language, edition, and architecture for your installation—useful if you’re installing Windows 10 on a completely different sort of machine, but generally you can stick with the recommended settings and hit next.

Here’s where you get to decide whether to burn the image straight to a USB flash drive or whether to create an ISO file image. You want the USB option. Plug your drive into one of the USB ports, and select it on the next screen.

The utility will then download the actual Windows 10 installation files before verifying them. How long this takes depends on your connection to the big ol’ interweb, but it shouldn’t take too long. Once that stage is complete, it will then copy the image across to your drive.

Once the files have been copied across, simply eject your USB by right clicking it in the system tray and selecting Eject, then take the USB drive out of your main machine and plug it into a USB port on the machine you want to install Windows 10 onto. Go ahead and turn the machine on.

There’s a good chance that you’ll need to select the boot order of the drives on that machine, which will require a quick trip to the UEFI/BIOS—generally entered by repeatedly hitting F2 or delete as the machine boots.

Once in your UEFI or BIOS you need to head to the section called Boot order then Boot Option Priorities, and make sure that USB drives appear before your boot drive. Save the changes and you should find that your machine automatically spots the drive and begins installing Windows.

The rest of the process should be fairly straightforward. You’ll need to select your keyboard layout and language for the installation, and then select where you want Windows 10 to be installed. This last step is only tricky if you have multiple drives installed, so just take it slow and make sure you’re installing it to the right drive (an SSD is best).

On the site, Microsoft makes a point of saying that you’ll need a license in order to install Windows 10, although this isn’t actually the case. You can install it just fine without one. The resultant ‘preview’ installation doesn’t let you customize some aspect of Windows 10 and, in theory, only critical updates are installed—in practice you’d be hard pushed to spot any real differences over an activated install, though.

Well, apart from one, which is a watermark in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, which says ‘Activate Windows’. This is something you can do at any point in the future at least, and allows you to track down a normal license (around $139) or a budget OEM license should you choose to (which can be picked up for as little as $25 or even less if you shop around).

You can also remove the watermark for the current Windows 10 session by opening up the command prompt, typing: slmgr -rearm, and pressing enter. It’ll come back when you reboot, but if you’re trying to grab screenshots, then it’s an option.

Alan has spent far too much of his life in World of Warcraft and playing Magic the Gathering to be a normal human being, which is why he has retreated to the warm embrace of gaming hardware.

How to quickly set up a new gaming PC with Windows 10

By James Norris 26 December 2018

Install Windows 10 on a new system in less than an hour with a USB stick and these tips.

If you haven’t installed Windows lately, you may remember it as a frustrating ordeal. But things have changed since the optical drive era, and installing Windows 10 is faster and smoother than it was even with Windows 7. With a bit of prep and a quick flash drive or two, you can be cruising with a clean OS on your new rig less than an hour after you click the install button.

Here’s the fastest way to get Windows 10 installed on a new gaming rig.

Fast drives at 16+ GB will make your installation easier.

Pick a pair of speedy sticks

You’ll need media to install from, and USB flash drives are the perfect choice. Pick two in USB 3 flavor and get the fastest ones you can. It makes a difference during installation. It’s also smart to shoot for larger sizes, at least 16 GB. While the OS files themselves don’t take up much space, there will be other important uses for those free gigabytes before installation is over. The 32GB version of our favorite flash drive is cheap, and you can find even cheaper budget drives that are still plenty fast for the job.

Start with software

You won’t need to find Windows 10 installation media or get a retail product from a store; Microsoft offers a media creation tool via free download directly on their website, which creates an installer for you. Grab the version compatible with your system and, this is important, have your Win10 product key ready, as you’ll be entering it in eventually. You can buy that from the Windows store or from Amazon, where you can get a cheaper OEM version. If you’re undecided on which version to grab, see our guide for the difference between Windows 10 Home and Pro. As HowToGeek points out, you can likely also use a Windows 7 or Windows 8 key to register, too, if you’re upgrading from an old PC.

Select “Create installation media for another PC” and click “Next.” Language, edition and architecture options follow. Pick the appropriate edition for your product key and stick with 64-bit variants unless you absolutely require 32-bit for legacy reasons.

Picking the right media type on the next screen is less obvious than it seems, as there are merits to both direct USB installer creation and the more flexible Win10 ISO images. The flash drive method is usually the best way to go, but if your system has problems booting with them, there are speedy alternatives using the ISO and third party utilities like Rufus, which offers a wider variety of options for creating bootable USB media. The ISO version also comes in handy when installing Windows 10 to a virtual machine for a test drive using software like VirtualBox.

Select the USB flash drive option and pick the attached device you’ll be using as the installer. While the installer itself is less than 5 GB, the extra space will come in handy for the next step. For now, the media creation tool will format the flash drive, download and transfer the installer, and make the USB bootable.

Driver Directions

The first use for that extra space is a folder housing all the drivers for the motherboard, graphics card and whatever other components you have installed, along with a few choice utilities to keep handy on any system.

Avoid using any drivers that shipped with your hardware, and download the newest version from the manufacturer instead. Otherwise you may end up installing them all over again. The software that comes inside the box with most hardware is usually outdated before it leaves the factory. Keep in mind that this is step is mostly going above and beyond; these tools can be handy, and sometimes you will need to manually install some drivers for your hardware, but Windows 10 is typically very good at getting everything running out of the box.

Go to the manufacturer’s website and find the product support page for your hardware and operating system, then download all relevant files for your system. Since these are probably compressed, do your future-self a favor and decompress them now into logically named folders you’ll be able to read at a glance. Folders with names like APRP_Win7-8-8-1_V10028 aren’t very helpful.

While you should install all the necessary drivers for your system, you don’t need to install all the software available for every component. Many manufacturers include optional, bloated versions of their drivers, third-party utilities and other extras that aren’t required for operation and occasionally cause trouble. Keep your system lean and mean by avoiding software kruft and fluff.

Tools for the road

Check out our guide to the first programs you should install on your new PC for more suggestions, which you can download to your drive now or simply download when your OS is installed. We recommend bundling them all up with Ninite, which makes installing the basics on a new system incredibly convenient.

As usual with Windows, there’ll soon be more space devoted to drivers, utilities and updates than to the operating system itself. Having all this at your fingertips during the initial install is one reason why it pays to prep beforehand.

Installing Win 10

Now that your speedy flash drive is packed full of Win 10 goodness, it’s time for installation. Don’t worry, it won’t take long. Plug the drive into a USB 3 port and restart your PC. You should see a command for selecting the drive to boot from, like the Delete key. Hammer on it to bring up the boot menu, and select your USB flash drive from the list to load the Windows installer tool.

Select your language, click Next, and start the installation.

At this point you’ll be prompted for your Product Key. Enter it or click Skip if you prefer to do this later. Keep in mind that you’ll be running an unactivated version of Windows if you install without the product key, and some features will be disabled until you enter it.

Next up is installation type. You can either install over an existing version of windows and keep your settings, or go for a clean install with the Custom option. For a new system you’ll be picking Custom.

You’ll need to pick the target drive where Windows 10 will be installed, and there’s the usual set of drive tools available to assist, including deleting, formatting and extended partition options. In most cases, it’s best to start with unallocated space on a bare drive and let Windows perform the partitioning during installation. Once you’ve selected the drive, click Next and Win10 will finish the initial installation, reporting progress via the status screen.

Error note: the most common issue we’ve run into installing Windows is the «We couldn’t create a new partition error» on an SSD or hard drive. Usually you can solve this problem using a walkthrough like this one, which takes you through the diskpart utility.

Once the installer is finished, you’ll be presented with a settings configuration process using Cortana, Microsoft’s AI assistant. Our advice: mute Cortana so you don’t have to listen to it. But if you want the voice guidance, you can leave the sound on.

You’ll go through several screens asking you to set your region, keyboard layout, and Microsoft ID, which you can use to sync settings and files between Windows PCs, or ignore and just create a local login for your PC.

After setting up a login and password, you’ll come to the privacy settings. There are now lots of options here, after the launch version of Windows 10 caused many users to riot over the lack of transparency around data usage. My recommendation is to turn all of these options off unless you have a specific reason to leave them on. There’s little to gain by sharing this information with Microsoft or people on your contact list.

After a few moments configuring apps and settings, the system will boot to the new Win 10 desktop.

Now it’s time for the final step. Copy the driver folder from the USB flash drive to your local disk and take stock. You probably won’t need drivers for your ethernet or Wi-Fi connection, if Windows 10 did its job right. If you need or want to manually install the drivers yourself, go through your installer folder starting with the programs for your motherboard, and following with other utilities and your software essentials like Chrome or Firefox and Steam. After some clicking and a reboot or two, you’ll be done. Welcome to Windows 10!

As a precaution during wrap up, consider using the built-in Windows System Image Tool tucked away in the File History controls to back-up your new OS install to a flash drive, so next time you install Win 10 it’ll take 10 minutes, instead of 45.

Otherwise, you’re good to game. Make sure you’ve got the latest updates from Nvidia or AMD installed, download Steam, and start queuing up some games!

For more advice on how to get started with your new gaming PC, check out the following guides: