I believe relatively few people upgrade new Windows releases to their existing PC. Most people use the same Windows release that originally came preloaded with their PC, and move to the next Windows version only when they buy a completely new PC (and again get OEM Windows preloaded with it).

Also you must remember that if you are a retro gamer, switching from WinXP to (esp. 64bit) to Win7 can cause more compatibility problems. That's why not all GOG games provide Win7 support either.

I hope Win8 comes out soon, then we can point fingers to those who still use the ancient Win7 OS. Get on with the times already! :)

I of course have the best of both worlds, Win7 on one PC and XP + Win98SE on an older retrogaming PC.

Good suggestions, but I believe the question was not "can I run XP on a machine I'm planning to buy?", but rather "already running XP on machine heavily overpowered for it, how do I set up 7 to dualboot?"

If you are adding Windows 7 to an existing XP system, you don't need a slipstreamed XP disk, because you're not installing XP ;)

But nLite is an excellent program if you must slipstream drivers into an install disk. For things like nvRaid that do not boot properly if they're not slipstreamed, it's a lifesaver.

It is very easy. Just find some tutorials on dual booting and read them carefully. If you have just XP but more than one partition it should be easy since you can just install Windows Seven on the other one. You will have to move anything you want to keep there however since it must be formatted before you can install an operating system on it. If you have XP and just one partition you may have to make backups and format the whole drive into two partitions. If you don't want to format, there could be some partition programs that can do it for you, it is probably a good idea to make backups first just in case something goes wrong.

If you have just Windows Seven and just one partition and want to have a XP too, it is much easier since from Vista onwards Microsoft added a program that can make several partitions out of one without erasing your files.

When you are finished you will be greeted with a boot menu every time your computer starts. It gives you 30 seconds to choose the operating system of your choice. You can have up to four operating systems installed. Having an extra OS could also be useful if you got a problem with your normal OS that made it unable to start, even in safe mode.

If want a separate operating system for browsing potentially mal-ware infested sites it is much better to install an OS on a virtual machine instead.

Last time i read about this which was several years ago, it was recommended to first install XP and then Vista and not the other way around since the XP installation would overwrite some of the new file restoring functionality in the new version of the NTFS system. Not something that would break your OS but something that you would want to avoid if you could. Maybe there is some sort of fix for it now, but if not it is better to install the older operating system first if you can.

My bad, should have read more carefully. . . =)

sorry XP COMPATIBLE games -.- theres lists out there it's about 10-15 games out of THOUSANDS many of the OLD issues were non win7/64bit DRM drivers most have now got compatible versions which you need to install. Games with bugs do include games like Dungeon keeper 2 and gabriel knight 3 which is why you see about compatibility issues.

Yeah, should have read more carefully, I'm used to installing XP with Vista or Win 7. I still have boxes with DOS 6.22 installed to insure running old CAD programs to guarantee I can open old CAD files . . . =)

yeah well, maybe we should be looking at data regarding Gaming PCs, not grandma's word processor and office PCs. according to the Steam Hardware Survey over 50% are using W7. only some 19% still use XP. hell, more Steam users use Vista than XP...

why? there are hardly any games that don't work on W7. so far, out of the 200 or so games i tried on W7, only the original Colin McRae Rally didn't work.

you must be doing something wrong. i don't even remember the last time i've seen a Windows error screen of any kind. system lock-ups? blue-screens? black screens? what are those? also, driver installation after Windows re-installation has become a piece of cake.

really...

how so? also try upgrading your RAM and CPU some time. if your OS's demand for resources is becoming a problem, you should really think about upgrading your hardware.

well, d'oh, that's exactly why you can shut it down. you telling me choice is bad?!?

OK... if that kind of stuff gives you trouble i wonder how you tie your shoe laces...

I don't see why GOG should support Windows XP when Microsoft stopped supporting it.

For example, if you look at the latest (and upcoming) Version of IE, you can only get it if you Windows Vista/7.

That's kind of a bummer as IE 8 and below have piss poor HTML5 support.

Hopefully, that means that many XP users will drop IE for another browser and keep the habit once they upgrade their OS.

There's no point. I did that back when Windows 7 launched. Never used XP again despite my pessimistic caution regarding Windows 7. Uninstalled it. Never looked back (apart from on my secondary rig which still uses it).
XP is still supported. It still gets regular updates and will do for - what was it? At least another two years or so.

like i said, out of the maybe 200 or so games i've tried in W7, the only game that was impossible to get to run was Colin McRae Rally. all other games from the W95, W98 and WXP era i've tried run more or less flawlessly. some cannot be installed in a x64 environment due to their 16-bit installer (No One Lives Forever) but this can easily be worked around.

W7x64 is amazingly backwards compatible.

all Sierra city builders work. all Microsoft strategy games. all Raven shooters. all Lucas Arts shooters. Deus Ex. Papyrus racing games. Diablo series. Hitman series. No One Lives Forever 1 & 2. Colin McRae Rally 2.0 - 2005. the list is endless. and thanks to DOSBOX, DOS-games are a non-issue as well.

At least for me that doesn't solve the issue.

To fix the funky color issue, I use the task kill workaround, e.g. a bat file for running a game (in this case KKND Extreme):

taskkill /F /IM Explorer.exe
KKND.exe
Start explorer.exe

Too bad though that killing explorer kills also the ability to change Windows sound volume during the gameplay, so it is a bit shitty workaround. There are other workarounds though.

I'd love to hear how to do that. I tried it a couple of months ago with VMWare Player, and my verdict is that it can't be done.

Sure I was able to install and run Win98SE on VMWare Player, but you can forget about using it for games, especially for 3D accelerated games. Googling for it revealed that VMWare does not support e.g. 3D acceleration for Win9x, and probably never will. I think I couldn't get sounds to work either.

I think VMWare isn't even interested in trying to make Win9x to work good, their interests are obviously in modern OSes (Linux distros, running Win8 beta in VM etc.), not in retrogaming.

I have some games that I haven't been able to get to run satisfactorily on Win7, or even XP. Heavy Gear (1) is one such game, I'm currently playing it on a laptop which has also Win98SE installed on it. I had different kinds of problems if I try to run it on XP, even on that same machine. (The funny thing is that 1.0 version of HG seemed to work on Win7 and XP, but as soon as I applied any official patches on it, it broke down).

GOG support till past midnight, that's how I like it!

(I sure hope they are paying you overtime. ;-P)

I've run into video (FMV) problems in quite a few Win9x games. One problem is e.g. games relying on some old Quicktime players. Intel Indeo can be quite problematic as well.

Case in point, Wheel of Time (a fantasy FPS). By default the videos simply don't work (ie. the game just skips all videos), and the best I could achieve in Win7 by fiddling with different QT player (and Itunes) versions was that I got the videos to play, but they show only one frame every few seconds, skipping all the other frames. So basically it shows the FMVs as slideshows. Still, when I play the videos through the QT player in Win7, they play fine. Go figure.

I couldn't get e.g. Return to Krondor videos to play either, so I bought the GOG version, which I presume shows them. And there are many others.

Heavy Gear I already mentioned, the updated versions fail (tried on three different computers with either Win7 or XP). If you don't update the game, it seems to work fine even in Win7, but who in their right mind wouldn't want to update the game?

Then there are some special cases that seem to run fine, but running the game outside Win98 may cause some scripting bug which makes the game unwinnable. Some other fantasy FPS (not WoT, name escapes me).

Working Win98SE emulation or virtual machine would be quite welcome to me.