Why Don't Old Games Work on New Computers?
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2018-05-06
·
1,148 words · ~5 min read
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thanks for watching techwiki click the subscribe button then enable
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notifications with the bell icon so you won't miss any future videos so you
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finally built the gaming pc of your dreams and spent the last two months
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locked in your room playing all the latest aaa titles
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but nostalgia is a hell of a drug and you
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reach for one of your favorite games of years gone by thinking well surely with
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such a powerful machine mech warrior 4 will run better than ever right wrong
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after you dig out an external optical drive to install that christmas gift
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from 18 years ago you discover to your horror that it won't load
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you used Windows compatibility mode but
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nothing happened so what gives
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well it turns out that how much computing power your pc has is only part
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of the story i mean if you think about it the nintendo 64 has more than enough
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power to run the original super mario brothers but that doesn't mean that you
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can just plug an s cartridge into it so here's
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the deal one common reason older games won't play nicely with modern hardware
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is that many of them were written for 32-bit systems you can learn more about
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the differences between these and more modern 64-bit systems up here but for
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this episode the main thing that you need to know is that most modern pcs use
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64-bit cpus and operating systems giving
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them support for more than four gigs of memory and the ability to process more
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information at once but programs need to be coded to work
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with either a 32-bit or 64-bit system
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meaning that if you're running a modern 64-bit version of Windows your pc will
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actually emulate 32-bit mode for any
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programs written for a 32-bit computer
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this includes older games sometimes this emulation works without a
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hitch but other times games just won't
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cooperate for a number of reasons sometimes older games will try to load
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additional but incompatible code often in the form of dll files used by older
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32-bit versions of Windows a Windows update might break a dependency that a
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game relies on or they might not be able to properly
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interface with a 64-bit device driver
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other games might refuse to launch at all because maybe some of their code is
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written for even older 16-bit systems
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which 64-bit Windows editions can't emulate at all or due to draconian drm
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protections like safe disk that are completely incompatible with modern
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versions of Windows and as if that weren't enough you can
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also run into issues with the hardware itself particularly your fancy new
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quad-core multi-threaded CPU
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modern operating systems will usually try to split a given program's workload
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over multiple cores as nearly every consumer-grade pc out there i mean not
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to mention even phones has at least two
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cores in it now this results in tangible efficiency improvements in modern games
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that are written with multi-core cpus in mind but
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it can wreak havoc on games whose code
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just wasn't meant to be split up that way think of it kind of like taking
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apart a lego house versus one made of glued together popsicle sticks
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but Linus is there any way to get my old games
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running or am i up kb lake without a paddle
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well there isn't a foolproof way to play
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every older title on a modern system but
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there are certainly some workarounds 32-bit versions of modern editions of
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Windows are still widely available
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for some reason and it is certainly possible to dual boot your computer with
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both a 32 and a 64-bit os
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you can also use a virtual machine if you need to run a really old version of
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Windows or fire up dosbox if you've got something that's that old
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now if your issues are performance rather than compatibility related due to
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the multi-core CPU issues we mentioned before you can try adjusting the CPU
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affinity in Windows task manager or a third-party piece of software this will
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force your game to run on only one core
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and failing that you can actually try switching off all but one core in your
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BIOS or UEFI so that Windows will actually treat your CPU as a single core
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model furthermore it is amazing how
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resourceful the gaming community is by the way especially when it comes to
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their beloved retro titles depending on exactly which game you're trying to run
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some resourceful folks out there have created guides for dealing with
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antiquated drm schemes through registry hacks and even created fixer utilities
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that you can use to launch your older games with special instructions that
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will make them run more smoothly finally as a last resort actually i'd
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recommend you try this in the first place since it can save a lot of hassle
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there's a reasonable chance that you'll find a compatible version of that game
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that you loved on a reputable digital distributor like steam or more likely
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good old games and they usually cost just a few bucks
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so there you have it you may yet be able to enjoy your
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favorite games from yesteryear if you don't mind getting a little creative
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just don't get too creative and migrate your entire digital life to an old
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school beige box running Windows me
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