Compatibility problem?? with XP game

earweed

Sister-in-law just got new comp with Windows 7 home. Wants to put her old SIMS game on the computer. The SIMS game ran on her XP machine with 1 GB. Her new comp has 2 GB and the game installed but wont run, says not enough memory.
Any recommendations for solving the problem (aside from putting Virtual PC on her machine with XP and installing there, which would prob work)

Config

earweed wrote: »

Sister-in-law just got new comp with Windows 7 home. Wants to put her old SIMS game on the computer. The SIMS game ran on her XP machine with 1 GB. Her new comp has 2 GB and the game installed but wont run, says not enough memory.
Any recommendations for solving the problem (aside from putting Virtual PC on her machine with XP and installing there, which would prob work)

Has she tried running the game in the compatibility mode for XP?

crrussell3

I have also found that a lot of the older games don't behave properly on dual/quad core machines. This requires you to set the affinity for the games' exe to use only 1 core.

earweed

Config wrote: »

Has she tried running the game in the compatibility mode for XP?

That's only for 7 pro or higher, I believe

crrussell3

earweed wrote: »

That's only for 7 pro or higher, I believe

XP Mode, which is a virtualized XP Environment, is Pro and above. Running any application in compatibility mode, which is done by right clicking the shortcut/exe and clicking on the compatibility tab, and selecting the windows version you want it to run as. This is available in any version of the OS since Windows XP.

Psoasman

If you are getting the message of not enough memory, do you have more RAM you can add?

MentholMoose

Check the EA website for patches or workarounds.

Claymoore

earweed wrote: »

That's only for 7 pro or higher, I believe

Compatibility Mode is not the same thing as the XP Mode Virtual Machine.

You can tell a program to load in compatibility mode by going into the properties of the shortcut and choosing the compatibility mode tab. Choose one of the Windows XP options.

You can also create application shims (compatibility modes are collections of shims) using the Application Compatibility Toolkit. Lots of shims are designed specifically for games, and they do some strange things. One shim lies about the processor speed (old games can't count above 1 GHz), and I believe there are processor affinity shims as well as memory lies. Shims are very powerful, but ultimately you want an application that is compatible with Windows 7. Check the manufacturer's site for updates first.

Devilsbane

earweed wrote: »

(aside from putting Virtual PC on her machine with XP and installing there, which would prob work)

Actually that probably wouldn't work. Most VM's have a very difficult time trying to support 3D games. I tried to play a flight simulator game about a year ago and was unable to play it. I tried to update the video driver but was unable to find one that was for 3D gaming inside of Virtual PC 2007.

I did a search of the web, and was pretty much told it isn't possible. Maybe things have changed in the past year.

Compatibility mode might fix the problem, if it doesn't you might need to play with some other tools.

And yes, XP mode and compatibility modes are different and you do need 7 pro or higher for xp mode. (All it is is an XP VM loaded into Virtual PC, except you don't need a cd key)