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16-bit gaming/64-bit system

chadrickmcgowan

Cadet
Newbie
After a theft, I upgraded from 32-bit Vista to 64-bit 7. Needless to say the change has restored my faith in Microsoft as a software company. My problem, though, is that I was in the middle of 'Star Trek: Judgement Rites' on my old system yet I am unable to even install the game on my new computer. I wish companies would release new versions of games so that they are compatible with new operating software. Being as this miracle may never come to pass, I need some sort of solution which I am unable to find. Can anyone help? All I get is a message telling me that I need to check to see if I need an x86 or x64 bit launcher.
 
After a theft, I upgraded from 32-bit Vista to 64-bit 7. Needless to say the change has restored my faith in Microsoft as a software company. My problem, though, is that I was in the middle of 'Star Trek: Judgement Rites' on my old system yet I am unable to even install the game on my new computer. I wish companies would release new versions of games so that they are compatible with new operating software. Being as this miracle may never come to pass, I need some sort of solution which I am unable to find. Can anyone help? All I get is a message telling me that I need to check to see if I need an x86 or x64 bit launcher.

Try DOSBOX..

http://www.dosbox.com/
 
Let me know if that works. I have DOSBox on my W7 x64 machine, but have never tried running the 16 bit apps under it.

I have only used it to test slipstreamed installations of XP for other people.
 
^ DOSBOX is usually great for gaming. I've had a ton of luck running old, pre-Windows games on it.
 
Judgment Rites is a DOS game so DosBox will run it just fine. In fact it will probably run it better than a native DOS environment. The only issues I have ever had with Judgment Rites are sound problems with the CD-ROM version but it was still very playable.

Make sure you download one of the available frontends for DOSBox as it makes configuring games much easier.

DOSBox does run on 64-bit systems. The only 16-bit applications that you can't run on 64-bit windows are in fact 16-bit windows applications.
 
If you have Window 7 Pro or Ultimate, you can download and install XP Mode, which is like having a whole copy of XP that 7 can use whatever parts it needs out of to run games that you set to run in XP Compatibility Mode. I'm not sure if this will help in this case - I always found the performance of Judgement Rites to be dodgy even under XP - but if you got it running well under that piece of crap Vista then I suspect it might. I know it has bailed me out when installing custom industry specific software on some of my clients' systems.
 
^ Will it allow 16 bit to run under the (initial) 64 bit W7?

I'm also wondering if some of the things I want to run aren't 8 bit:

Earl Weaver Baseball 1
Starflight
Pirates!
old Windows Entertainment games
 
^ Will it allow 16 bit to run under the (initial) 64 bit W7?
I just did a little research, and, apparently not. You'd have to run those in the virtual XP, which is like having a whole separate XP machine in a window.

So I'll second the recommendation of DosBox, unless you want a whole other PC in a window - in which case I will recommend VirtualBox. It's free, it has better compatibility with more stuff, in my experience, and it doesn't care which version of Windows 7 you have.
 
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