Might and Magic and win XP

[buzzstpoint]

A co-worker is getting bored at work so I aggreed to allow him to install Might and magic Millenium on the back PC.. But we have problems.

Ihad to run the setup in Compatibility mode. Installed two programs:
Sword of Xeen - Installed fine and works but is slow/choppy.
World of Xeen - Installed fine but wont play.. Just pops up a black screen and sits there..

I tried running in Compatibility mode. We have plenty of computer for this. Any idea how to speed up the "Sword" and to get the "World" working?

 

[Hipster Doofus]

System specs would be good to see.

Try updating the video card driver. DirectX. Have you looked at the games home page for troubleshooting?

 

[buzzstpoint]

the system spec:
1.5giz P4
256 ram
64 meg video driver
All the latest video and directx drivers.

The software was made for Win95 98/me
Requiring 133mhz processor and 32 megs of ram

So the requirements arent the problem.

 

[Ferral_Imp]

I had a similar problem with The Sims when I first got my laptop (didn't have Unleashed and Superstar expansion pack then which are designed to be compatible w/ xp) as the problem you described for World of Xeen. I found that if I hit the windows key and brought up the task manager to end the game app then restarted it, I could get it to work (though sometimes it would take a few tries).

The other problem is definitely caused by a need for more ram. I know this cuz certain games ran slow/choppy(and still do) on my comp while they would play fine on his eventhough his was an old 700 megahertz AMD processor(he got the comp back in '99) with win 98 installed and mine was a brand new laptop with win xp installed at the time (my comp is now bout a year and a half old and my father's has since given up the ghost).


EDIT: My comp also met or exceeeded the specifications of the games also but that doesn't mean anything

 

[buzzstpoint]

Seems odd we'd have to upgrade.. My his computer at home he has ME and running 500mhz and 128 ram and he says they work perfect..

 

[Ferral_Imp]

The issue with the games lies in the way the operating systems changed with the release of xp. The older versions of windows operating systems required less minimum ram than what xp does(or so I've been told). As a result, a computer running xp can have issues with a game that a computer with an older windows os had no problem with even if the xp computer has a better processor and more ram.

The only other reason why the game may be running slow/choppy is because he has several apps(like antivirus, firewall, antispy/adware, printer programs, etc) running in the background and those apps are eating up too much of the ram cuz you have to remember that all the running apps on the comp have to share the available ram and the more apps you are using the less available ram you have to run the game.