If anyone has Windows 7 64bit Ultimate (or professional) that can run a Virtual XP Window, I'm hoping you can do a big favor for me.

I'm trying to decide if I want to buy win7 ultimate for my parents running vista premium 64bit. My parents like to play some old windows card games, that won't run on their 64bit vista. They have a free upgrade to win7 premium on the way, but win7 premium doesn't have virtual xp mode.

You can download the games for free here:

http://www.rhogue.com/tripeaks/bowep/BOWEP.zip - its the old best of microsoft entertainment pack, you don't need to install it, just extract all the files into the same directory and then try to run one of the executes.

I'm hoping someone can try it for me. Play with the compatability settings within win7 64 bit first and see if you can get the games to run (right click, under properties, compatability, try win xp and even try win 98). If the games will run in win7 64bit with its own compatablility settings then they won't even need virtual xp mode, and their premium upgrade will bew fine for them.

If it won't run as regular through win7 then try it in Virtual XP mode. Let me know if the games run. One or two may be missing dll's, but if you can get some of them to run please let me know. If they will work in Win7 64 bit with virtual xp mode then I'll pay for an ultimate upgrade for them as an XMas present.

Most 32 bit apps will run fine in a 64 bit architecture. There's only a select few that will not.

These won't run in 64bit vista.

I can get these to run in 32 bit win7 (desktop), but no luck with my laptop with 64bit vista.

they don't run in Windows 7 64bit.
they appear to be 16bit programs and will likely run in Dosbox.

Are you able to try it in Virtual XP Mode?

Windows.Virtual.PC.Windows.XP.Mode.For.Windows.7-ZWTiSO

nuff said.

with windows 7 you can download it right from microsoft for free (as long as your win7 is legit of course).

Thanks for confirming that for me.

I have win7 32 bit and they do run in virtual xp mode, so I'm assuming that 64 bit win7 won't make a difference as far as Virtual XP is concerned.

i can't confirm that because i don't have virtual xp mode set up at the moment.

however, i do believe that whether you have 32bit or 64bit Win7 that you'll get 32bit XP in the XP Mode. Not 100% sure on that as i never bothered to check it when i was running it when i had the Release Candidate set up.

Just run them in XP Mode on Windows 7 X64 and they worked fine.

Thank you for that!

I just figured out another way around things. Rather than pay for ultimate, I'll just set up a virtual xp using vmware player which is free. I just tried it on my 64bit vista and I used it to install xp pro, and of course no problems playing the games on the virtual xp. I'll just set that up for my parents and show them how to start it up

Thanks for all the help guys