General recommendation for Installing Games for Win 7,10,11

[corsair91]

General recommendation for Installing Games for Win 7,8,10,11

Avoid installing games to either

C:\Program Files
C:\Program Files (x86)

for older games,
as these folder locations are now protected by the Windows Operating System and access is restricted by design default.
Adminstrator rights required to override this.

For this reason
Recommended to install to a different location where you have full rights

say C:\mygames\gamename
or
C:\gamename

whatever

Windows XP era games expect to run with full rights
Desktop shortcut properties - advanced
Run as Administrator

May also need to set compatability mode for Older Games.


Certain gaming tools may trigger False positive warning from your
Anti-virus software.
In this case set an Anti-virus scan exclusion folder


There is problem now with Windows and older retail CD/DVD Games DRM security software features

See here for further Info

Windows Vista/7/8 update prevents some old CD-ROM games run
http://www.hookedonpirates.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7775

This Feature is included in Windows 10,11 by Microsoft design
and by Windows updates for Windows 7 & 8


You may need to source 3rd party patches or fixes to get specific games to work on Newer Windows Operation Systems.
(GOG or Steam later games versions should have these equivalent features included)

64-bit windows does not support 16-bit installers or 16-bit game tools

This thread has more info on this

NTVDMx64
http://www.hookedonpirates.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7824


These Gaming links may help

play-old-pc-games blog
https://www.play-old-pc-games.com/

pcgaming wiki
https://pcgamingwiki.com/

Wide Screen Gaming forum
https://www.wsgf.org/

Also any fansite websites on any specific games of interest may also be helpful.

Lastly avoid Intel Integrated Graphics for Gaming,
AMD or Nvdia Integrated Graphics are typically better
as a general rule of thumb.

Always research the Integrated graphics first,
Before you buy any hardware with Integrated graphics included

EDIT:

Windows 10 unable to initialise directX Workaround Fix
http://www.hookedonpirates.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7736

About 9th Post

Has a Windows Games Savegame locations overview

[corsair91]

Windows 10 may have poor backward old DirectX compatability
for anything DirectX7 or earlier.

may need something like this
put any DLLs into the game folder as Windows system folder is off limits

dgVoodoo 2
http://dege.freeweb.hu/
http://dege.freeweb.hu/Gallery/DXGamesGallery.html
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/DgVoodoo_2

dgVoodoo General Support forum
https://www.vogons.org/viewforum.php?f=59


dgVoodoo 2 is set of old graphics API's for Windows Vista/7/8/10.

They are implemented on Direct3D 11 and they can use different device types as wrapping output:
- Hardware rendering at GPU feature level 11.0 (recommended)
- Hardware rendering at GPU feature level 10.1 (has a minor limitation for DX8/9)
- Hardware rendering at GPU feature level 10.0 (there are some restrictions)
- Software rendering through Microsoft WARP renderer

The following graphics API libraries are implemented:
- Glide 2.11, Glide 2.45, Glide 3.1 and Glide 3.1 Napalm
- DirectX 1-7 (all versions of DirectDraw and Direct3D up to version 7)
- Direct3D 8.1
- Direct3D 9

[corsair91]

For Old Glide Games

nGlide is an alternate option

3Dfx Voodoo Glide api was the leading 3D Graphics accelerator until about 2001. They went bust and Nvidia bought the Tech.


As far as I can recall for example

Sierra Red Baron 3D 1998 game is sold by GOG
included in the Sierra Red Baron Game Pack with nGlide included
(may be an outdated version, replace with latest file from the website)


nGlide

Windows XP / Windows 7 / Windows 8 / Windows 10

http://www.zeus-software.com/downloads/nglide
http://www.zeus-software.com/downloads/nglide/compatibility


nGlide is a 3Dfx Voodoo Glide wrapper. It allows you to play games designed for 3Dfx Glide API without the need for having 3Dfx Voodoo graphics card.
All three API versions are supported, Glide 2.11 (glide.dll), Glide 2.60 (glide2x.dll) and Glide 3.10 (glide3x.dll). nGlide emulates Glide environment with Direct3D and Vulkan. Glide wrapper also supports high resolution modes.

[corsair91]

pcgamingwiki.com
Windows Support info

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Windows


DirectDraw is broken Section
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Windows#DirectDraw_is_broken


DirectDraw is broken
This issue actually first materialized in Windows 8.1,
unfortunately there is little more that can be done than use a DDraw wrapper:

DXGL
https://www.dxgl.info/

Wine3D for Win
https://fdossena.com/?p=wined3d/index.frag

DDraw Compat
https://github.com/narzoul/DDrawCompat

DDraw Hack
https://code.google.com/archive/p/ddhack/

DDWrapper
http://bitpatch.com/ddwrapper.html

DxWnd
https://sourceforge.net/projects/dxwnd/

DDRAW FPS Fix
https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/579-windows-881-ddraw-fps-fix/

dxwrapper
https://github.com/jarikomppa/dxwrapper

DgVoodoo 2, a glide wrapper, also has a DDraw wrapper built-in.
http://dege.freeweb.hu/

Direct3D 8 has a very similar issue on 8.1 and later as well, however the ddraw wrappers (with an exception to the ones that include a d3d8.dll) do not fix the issue as D3D8 doesn't use ddraw, being the first version of DirectX to deprecate it. Instead use a patched d3d8.dll, the DX8 to DX9 convertor or the d3d8to9 wrapper.

Users of Windows Vista and on-wards actually benefit from a DDraw wrapper due to it no longer being hardware accelerated on such systems, however the built-in DDraw wasn't completely broken until 8.1.

EDIT:

see also

d3d8to9 (DirectX 8 Games)
http://www.hookedonpirates.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8038

[corsair91]

Bump