Old Game Problems

[Compaq]

Hi, I have a P-2 400mhz with an ASUS MEL-M Mboard, 192 MB Ram, 20 gig WD HDD, GeForce 2 MX 400 PCI, Yamaha DS-XG onboard audio, 52x Creative cd-rom. I am running Win 98 and haven't had any gaming problems till now.
A friend of mine gave me some of his old PC games that he dosen't play anymore. I tried to install one of them and it didn't work. The name of the game is Shivers. It's says Win 95 or Win 3.1 under system requirements. When I installed it I got an error saying it couldnt find a file. Then I tried to play it and it wouldn't play instead I lost my sound totally. So I uninstalled it and rebooted and things were back to normal.
So my question is this: Is it safe to install games for old windows on a win 98 computer? Or should I throw these oldies away? Thanks in advance for any help.

[RAcastClarke]

I honestly think that it is a better idea to either get an older machine, or just dump them.

If you really, really, want to play these old games, then you could get yourself a copy of BootMagic and Win 95 (or 3.1 even) and dual boot the OS's. It's not worth it, really.

There's always e-bay too, if you want to get rid of those games. You never know, they could be worth something.

[Compaq]

Thanks for the reply. I talked to the guy that gave me the games and he said he is running Win 98. He has an HP thats about 4 or 5 years old, so I don't know, Ebay sounds like a plan. : )

[NegotiatorSmith]

So my question is this: Is it safe to install games for old windows on a win 98 computer? Or should I throw these oldies away?

Yes, it's safe, none of the games should try to alter any critical system files or anything. If you try to install or play an old game and it doesn't work, that's that, it just doesn't work. You'd probably have a much easier time getting old games to work on that system than any modern one, and if you still want to play those games, describe in detail exactly what happened when you try to play them (including the word-for-word text of any error messages). You should be able to get most any game designed for DOS, Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 working under Windows 98, especially since you can boot right into DOS with 98. You shouldn't have to dual-boot; why you'd want to dual-boot into Windows 95 is beyond me, as 95 and 98 aren't very different, they share the same kernel...

If this were a modern high-end system running Windows 2000 or XP, I would then suggest that you get an older machine or dual-boot to Windows 98.

[Compaq]

Hey thanks for the reply negotiator. I think I will try another one and see what happens. Half-Life looks like a good one to try. I was afraid to try any more until I got some feedback from this post. Thanks again.

[NegotiatorSmith]

I don't know what Half-Life's system requirements are, but I know that the game was released around the same time that Windows 98 was, so it should run on 98 fine, assuming that your system meets the requirements.

[RAcastClarke]

Half Life will run on an old machine. It runs on my 6 year old thing just fine.

Half life is awesome, and I highly recommend it.