I am on the verge of upgrading my game rig from the venerable XP to W7 64-bit. I've had a bit of practice with W7 on my work PC, and after figuring out how to disable the *absurd* user security features, have found it to be pretty good - not a big change from XP, which is why I need to ask the question:

What kind of reverse compatibility game issues am I going to run into? I have legacy boxes to handle old DOS/W9x stuff, but what about the ocean of Vista/XP/W7 32-bit things out there? Do they mostly work or are they mostly lost causes? Is W7 64-bit just for gaming "going forward", or a bonafide game platform?

Go NY Giants!!!

See all my 'rant' posts re this.  I ended up not being able to play half of my games released in the last 10 years.  In about 90% of the cases it's a DRM issue, (7 is much more finicky about allowing DRM to run) and I got past it by getting "no-CD cracks" for these games.

Of course games released in the least 18 months or so should be fine.

You have a bigger problem when it's an online activation type of game, (though I believe they too can be hacked) but those are in the minority.  A few games are beyond redemption, such as Beyond Good and Evil, but luckily GOG has a working? copy of the latter game.  Sadly it's one of their more expensive offerings.

 EDIT: A good alternative is to dual-boot with XP.   I wish I'd done that from the start. Virtual PC's aren't a good idea, because 7 still seems to pick up the DRM, right through the other operating system.

...hmmmm. Win 7 Pro comes with something called XP Mode. I wonder if it is robust enough for W7 not to 'see' the DRM stuff. Need to look into it because if 'XP Mode' is effectively a dual boot, then the extra dough for Pro may be worth it to keep the game stable alive. I have a ton of games in the 10-12 year old range I'd hate to see 'hors de combat' [becasue I haven't played them yet!] and this concern has held me back from W7 so far.

I'd also like to avoid a conventional dual boot since I'm considering an SSD boot drive - they aren't cheap and I don't want to waste space with *two* bloated OSs on it...

But the promise of Dx11, a straightforward SSD install, and some of the other features do have an allure, and W7 has a good fit and feel from what I can tell at work. 

EDIT: Just read XP Mode runs in virtualization and doesn't handle graphics accelleration and a host of other gaming fundamentals very well or at all. Next idea..

EDIT: Just read XP Mode runs in virtualization and doesn't handle graphics accelleration and a host of other gaming fundamentals very well or at all. Next idea..

Nope, it sure won't do that one. You can however run VMware Player (v3 and above) for games that require acceleration. Having said that, don't confuse acceleration with DirectX - Virtual PC handles DirectX non accelerated graphics just fine.

I don't know if we're just talking adventure here.

BS4 doesn't work, I'm sure there are others but I haven't taken the time to experiment. I'll hang on to the XP tower in the closet as long as I still have games with 16 bit installers and Quicktime to play someday.

GO PATRIOTS!!!

I can understand 7 and the SSD, but why not simply keep your old hard drive that you used with XP as the boot drive for XP?  Depending on which mobo you're getting, some of these new mobo's make dual booting easier than it used to be.

It will certainly also help with the space problem, because those SSD's come out with mighty little space and having a conventional hard drive or two still hanging around will certainly help with that.  (You could keep all your older and slower stuff on them.)

 I use VMware Workstation, btw, and there is some DRM that worked fine in XP that still sticks on it, even when I installed my old XP on it. ..but keep in mind i don't only play adventures,  quite a few of those are action games.  Those are the ones I got no-CD hacks for. For really old games, I put my old Win 98 on it, and there was some problem with that too, I can't exactly remember what it is now - those were mostly adventures.  It might have been that they had 16-bit installers.  Now it bothers me that I can't remember.

Yes Trav I can brain transplant to the upgraded rig! - or more precisely, not remove the XP HD when I go SSD for W7. I'm only swapping motherboard, ram and cpu so the XP installed graphic driver environment will be fine [keeping my crossfired HD5770s as they are still pretty solid]. And XP is already on a new 750gb SATA 3 HD so no back-stepping there. Now that I think about it, that's why I ugraded the XP HD in the first place - to do this - thinking out loud is good... thanks all.

1:45 to kickoff, GO GIANTS, GO BIG BLUE!!!

We won the Super Bowl....

I use VMware Workstation, btw, and there is some DRM that worked fine in XP that still sticks on it, even when I installed my old XP on it.

I haven't run into that one Trav, got an example?

We lost the Super Bowl...

Originally Posted By InlandAZ (6 FEB 2012 8:13am)

I use VMware Workstation, btw, and there is some DRM that worked fine in XP that still sticks on it, even when I installed my old XP on it.

 

I haven't run into that one Trav, got an example?

Call of Juarez was one of them that I remember off the top of my head.

 I think heroes of Annihilated Empires was another, and on top of that, it needed some patch that you couldn't use with the no-CD crack , and so when I tried playing the game on VMware, unpatched so I could use the DRM  hack, it shows up a tiny screen, and I can't get the window to resize.