Win 2000 Pro Compatibility: Games & Issues

[Integral]

Now that I have acess to a computer with win2000 Pro as the OS, what sort of compatibility issues will I be seeing? Will games run ok? Anyone know what games will NOT work with this OS?

Any info or experience you wish to share would be appreciated.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Now that I have acess to a computer with win2000 Pro as the OS, what sort of compatibility issues will I be seeing? Will games run ok? Anyone know what games will NOT work with this OS?

Any info or experience you wish to share would be appreciated.

I would have to say that 99.99% of games on the market today will work on Win2k.

 

[Integral]

Well, I did it. I am off to a terrible start. 0 out of 4 games work. All 3 of my combat mission games fail to start, looks like it is issues with the video driver. They worked fine in 98.

Ice Wind Dale II looks like it is going to stat but locks up when it tries to enter the actual game play.

Sigh...

 

[dduardo]

Did you get the lastest video drivers from the manufacters. I know that nvidia uses the same drivers for win2k and winxp.

 

[Integral]

Yes I did, unfortunately that may be the trouble with my older games.

 

[master_coda]

Yes I did, unfortunately that may be the trouble with my older games.

How old are they? Until after the mid-90s, a lot of games were still written using the old DOS-style way of drawing on screen. That won't work in Windows 2000; it doesn't allow direct access to video hardware. You can have similar problems with old games that need to access your sound card.

 

[NoTime]

I had one old win 98 class game that I tried installing on win 2k.

A little time with the debugger showed the problem to be sloppy memory management.
98 does not care if you play outside of your sandbox.
Win 2k and XP do.

I had dual boot anyway, so I didn't bother trying to fix it.

 

[Integral]

I have tried the Combat Mission set of games. The oldest was but out about 5 years ago, the newest within the last 2 year. All 3 of these games behave exactly the same way, it is a video problem. Their support page mentions over and over trouble with newer Nivida drivers (I have a GF4 ti4200). Naturally the support page claims it is bugs in the Invida drivers


The other game is Icewind Dale II, which on the scale of things is not that old of a game. It looks like it is doing fine, makes it through all of into videos, let's me choose a party and then when it tries to start the actual game play it locks up. I never see a game play screen.

 

[pack_rat2]

I've heard that a number of games for 9X won't run under Win2K. But there's a solution. Partition your HD and have both 98SE & 2K.

 

[master_coda]

I have tried the Combat Mission set of games. The oldest was but out about 5 years ago, the newest within the last 2 year. All 3 of these games behave exactly the same way, it is a video problem. Their support page mentions over and over trouble with newer Nivida drivers (I have a GF4 ti4200). Naturally the support page claims it is bugs in the Invida drivers


The other game is Icewind Dale II, which on the scale of things is not that old of a game. It looks like it is doing fine, makes it through all of into videos, let's me choose a party and then when it tries to start the actual game play it locks up. I never see a game play screen.

You've installed all the latest updates for win2k, right?

Anyway, if the problem is the drivers, then you could try installing older drivers as well; that's not really the best solution but it's worth trying. If the drivers weren't a problem before you installed win2k, then it might be something newer in the drivers.

 

[NoTime]

I have tried the Combat Mission set of games. The oldest was but out about 5 years ago, the newest within the last 2 year. All 3 of these games behave exactly the same way, it is a video problem. Their support page mentions over and over trouble with newer Nivida drivers (I have a GF4 ti4200). Naturally the support page claims it is bugs in the Invida drivers

Welcome to the wonderful world of multi vendor support
Somebody has already mentioned going downlevel on the drivers.
Could be worth a try.
The Nvida site has a version change list, last time I looked at it.
Don't recall any changes that most people would care about.

The other game is Icewind Dale II, which on the scale of things is not that old of a game. It looks like it is doing fine, makes it through all of into videos, let's me choose a party and then when it tries to start the actual game play it locks up. I never see a game play screen.

This one works more like the memory problem one I had did.
Runs to a certain point, then crashes.

 

[Integral]

I finally got all of the above games going. For the Combat Mission games the trouble was that one of the first screens is asking if the displayed video mode is right! You are given a chance to try a different mode, BUT their default mode was unreadable. It turns out that everything was working I just could not see it. I tried different modes on my desktop till I found one that enabled me to read the screen. When I relized that I had some control on the game. I just started cycling through the options in the game (just hit enter) then waited a minute till it changed to the new mode. Finally I hit the right one. All works fine now.

For Icewind Dale I had to set some of the game graphics settings to software, that allows it to run. I am still poking around in the Nvidia controls to figure out why the game will not use the hardware correctly.

Thanks for your input.