Well, I've been able to get all my older games up and running smoothly on Windows 7 64 bit - except for the original Runaway.

During the intro, the game will freeze several times. Eventually, it will play out, but it is annoying to have to sit through a video that has such frequent long pauses. I'm not sure if the other videos do this as I haven't yet replayed the entire game, although I'm sure it's a possibility. And I would like to be able to enjoy all of the cut scenes in the game without having to worry about this.

I've searched the internet for a solution and have come up with nothing so far. If anyone has any suggestions or solutions for this problem, I would be most grateful. Thanks in advance.

That is so good to hear, venus. Well, not your problem! But that your games are playing on 64-bit Windows 7. I've been doing a fair bit of testing games on my 32-bit Windows 7 Release Candidate, but plan on doing my clean install over XP Pro as 64-bit.

I hope someone else has a suggestion for you.

You are going to love the 64-bit, Draclvr! It did present some extra challenges with certain games - Grim Fandango, TLJ, Still Life - but I did eventually manage to get them all working. In fact, I can help you with these games if you have any problems.

The only one I am still unable to work around is Runaway. I realize that Win 7 is fairly new, so perhaps no one else has encountered this yet. It's just that since Runaway 3 will be out fairly soon, I wanted to replay the first two games beforehand. If worse comes to worse, I can always replay the first Runaway on my old Windows 98, though I'd have to use the minimum settings.

I am still hoping someone might have the answer to this, though.

What about the Runaway offered by GOG? Is this one updated to run on Windows 7? I hate to spend money on a game I already have, but it doesn't cost too much, and without DRM it could be worth it. Does anyone know about this version?

What differences have you noticed between 32bit and 64? How big is the speed increas. Do things that werent specifically written for 64bit still benefit speedwise or do they run as if on 32bit Windows?

Mj2c, unfortunately I can't really make a comparison, as I've only tried the 64 bit. The only thing I can comment on is Draclvr, who is currently running the 32-bit, seemed to have fewer problems installing and/or running certain older games than I have. Though I was able to get most everything (except Runaway) working with some tweaks and found that pretty much everything runs very smoothly all on all. Sorry I couldn't be more help.

In the meantime, does anyone have any suggestions for the Runaway problem? I would really appreciate any input.

Could it be your video card acceleration? I also had cut scene issues in A Vampyre Story which I played on my old HP computer. It was resolved by upgrading my on-board sound card drivers.

Thanks for the suggestion, Draclvr. Unfortunately, my video and sound drivers are all up to date, so that's not the problem.

It looks as though I may have to play the game on my Windows '98, which is a shame, as I can't run it on the highest setting. I suppose I'll just have to hope that a patch is made eventually.

It could actually be that older drivers may work better for the game.

Have you tried turning off extra cores?

How would I go about doing this, mj2c? Unfortunately, the extent of my knowledge for getting older games to work stops at applying patches and/or changing compatibility mode. How do I turn off extra cores?

Run the game then go back to the desktop. Right-click on the taskbar and select Task Manager.
Select the processes tab and find the Runaway .exe in the list. Right-click it and choose Set Affinity. You should be able to turn off extra cores here.

I googled and found an intro fix here if you want to try it http://www.neoseeker.com/forums/4674/t853603-runaway-intro-fix/

Hey, mj2c, sorry I missed your posts before! I wanted to let you know that I tried the patch a while ago, and it didn't help me. Most likely because my problem is with all the videos, and not just the intro. (I found this out by playing a bit into the game, and I realized that the next video would also freeze for long periods of time.) I also tried your suggestion to turn off extra cores just now, but unfortunately, this had no effect.

I do appreciate the suggestions, though. Thanks very much for trying! I suppose I will just have to wait and see if others start having the same problem and come up with a solution. For now, I will resign myself to playing it on my '98 with lower quality settings.

You could try it through a virtual machine like Virtualbox

Are you using XP inside of VirtualBox?
VirtualBox seems very sluggish with Windows 98.

After mj2c posted the original reference to VirtualBox I tried XP as well - the newest version does seem to be improved (and provides DX support - just as VMware does).

Windows 9x is still a bit sluggish -- at least for me it was.

Edit -

I forgot to mention -- so long as a game doesn't require hardware acceleration, it will play just fine (generally) under any virtualized environment. Even those that require DirectX.

Jenny, I`m using XP on VirtualBox and it's fast than our (admittedly old) xp desktop. As for sluggish behaviour with win98

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* High CPU load while running Windows 98 Windows 98 does not execute the 'hlt' instruction, which temporarily turns off the CPU, when it has no work to do. Download and install rain20 from here.

* Poor graphical output in Windows 98 Unlike more modern systems, Windows 98 does not come with a driver which will work with the VirtualBox graphics card, so it falls back to using it as a 16 color VGA card. While Sun does not provide Guest Additions for Windows 98, the Display Doctor 7 Beta suite by the company SciTech does contain a driver which will allow you to use higher color and resolution graphics modes. Please note that neither Sun nor SciTech support nor accept liability for the use of this program.

Display Doctor 7 Beta requires activation codes to work. We understand that the free activation code for Display Doctor 6 also applies to version 7 Beta: http://www.scitechsoft.com/ftp/sdd/regcodes.txt.

You might also want to look at the following site pointed out by users of VirtualBox, which also provides VESA drivers for Windows 98: http://www.bearwindows.boot-land.net/vbe9x.htm. Please be aware that Sun provides this link in good faith, but cannot take responsibility for the site or the software which it refers to.

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Note, if you do use VB with a newer OS than 98 then make sure when you install the GuestAdditions whilst in safe mode or the DirectX stuff wont work.

I don't know if the CPU load is "high" in Windows 98 or not, but I'm not sure why rain would help. It seems to be for helping CPU's run cooler, not for helping Windows 98 run faster.

I didn't do much testing with a Windows XP guest, but just clicking around the desktop wasn't sluggish and didn't have "sticky mouse" the way the Windows 98 guest did. I did try Display Doctor with Windows 98, but though it looked better, and maybe ran a little smoother, it still was a bit "sticky."

Did you turn on hardware virtualisation in the bios? The first time I tried using a VM I didnt do this and the performance was awfull. VB has other settings that help boost performance as well.

Mj2c, I tried installing the game in XP Mode. It installed fine, but it wouldn't run at all. I kept clicking on the icon, and nothing was happening. From what I can tell, it looks as though VirtualBox is a very similar program?

I suppose it couldn't hurt to give it a try in any case. Which download do you recommend?

Similar program to what? You using a different VM?
http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

Venus,
I don't know if XP Mode will work as well as VirtualPC (or even VirtualBox). If you're playing on XP inside VirtualPC (or VirtualBox), you can change to Windows 98 compatibility the same way you could on a computer with XP. Even better would be to play on Windows 98 inside VirtualPC, since the game was made for Windows 98. It was first published before XP was released.

I can't say if there are any differences between the original version released in 2001 and the North American version released in 2003, but it ran just fine on native XP.

If the game requires 3D hardware Acceleration you're going to have to use something like Virtual Box or VMware Player, neither Virtual PC nor XP Mode (Windows Virtual PC) support it.

Using them requires that you have a valid copy of the operating system you intend to run it under. If you want to run any version of Windows 9x, VMware Player is the better of the two choices.

It's good that it ran on XP, but was that the original XP or XP SP1?
Or was it XP SP2 or SP3?

The original XP and SP1 did not have the security restrictions that were introduced later.
So if someone is running it on XP SP2 or SP3, they may need to watch what location they're installing it to and not let it install to C:\Program Files

I'm not sure what happens if you use "XP Mode" on Windows 7. I assume it would default to XP SP3 security (the latest) but I don't have Windows 7 and can't test it.

I don't think it needs a 3D card. The game box only says the card has to do 1024x768 and 16-bit color. Mobygames has a scan of the game box ***here***.

Also, are we talking about a boxed version or the GOG version? A boxed version may have copy "protection" that prevents the game from running in a Virtual Machine or XP Mode.

I suppose I could dig out my copy and install it on VBox (with and without DirectX switched on). I`ll have to see how much space I have on the Virtual disk - only set it up as a 10 gigger so I could play Still Life.