How to play old games on Windows 11

 

There are games that never get old no matter how many years and decades have passed since they were released, titles like Virtua Cop, Claw, and Midtown Madness are good examples and many more as well. It is true that the gaming industry has developed amazingly in recent years, but this does not prevent you from thinking about those old games that can still be downloaded for free from the Internet as we explained in a previous article, but if you try to play them on a modern computer running Windows 11, you may encounter an error message because there is no Compatibility, unlike software, old games cannot be easily reformatted or updated to be compatible with the latest technology, but if you are determined to play these games, let us review some solutions and tricks that you can try to recreate the experience of old favorite games on Windows 11.

 

Run the game in Administrator mode

 

Modern versions of the Windows system contain many features related to protecting user accounts as well as protecting system files from viruses and programs of unknown origin, including "User Access control", which limits programs and games to access all control permissions immediately after launch, so that important data is not deleted if The program was carrying a virus, instead, the feature ensures that the user first agrees to the game or program's access to the control permissions required to work without problems. But for older games, there were no such restrictions as they were developed to run on Windows 95 or XP and have access to all control permissions right after launch.

 

Therefore, you may be surprised that the solution is so simple, but really running an old game in administrator mode and giving it all access rights with a high probability will make it work without facing any kind of problem. All you have to do is instead of double-clicking on the game's launch file, right-click on it and select "Run as administrator" and then "Yes" and you can play your favorite game again. However, some other games may require additional tasks to run, so if this method does not work, you can try the following solutions.

 

Enable compatibility mode for the game

 

Microsoft is aware that some old programs and games that were running in Windows 98, XP, and Vista will not work again on modern versions such as Windows 11, so it provided users with a "Compatibility Mode", which, when activated, gives the illusion that the game is running on the Windows XP environment. Old or Windows 95 and therefore by a large percentage will work without any problems.

 

This mode can be activated by right-clicking on the game's launch file and selecting "Properties", then in the window that appears, go to the "Compatibility" section and under the "Compatibility mode" section, activate the "Run this program in compatibility mode" option by placing a check mark (✔ ).

 

Next, from the drop-down list, select the version of Windows that you think is suitable for running your game. This depends entirely on the age of the game itself. If it was released in the '90s, try Windows 95 or Windows 98. If it's a bit newer, choose Windows XP (SP2). After you are done, press OK and launch the game again. If this attempt also fails, there is still hope for the game to run on Windows 11.

 

Download a modified version of the game

 

In the event that the old game was stored on a CD that you purchased from a local or online seller, you may encounter a problem running it in its current state even after trying the previous solutions, because the game is programmed primarily to run on special hardware or even specific software libraries that Microsoft has abandoned. In recent versions of Windows. Fortunately, many of these games have been adopted by some developers and tweaked to run decently by today's standards with better FPS, higher rendering resolutions, support for modern libraries like DirectX, and so on.

 

These modified versions can be downloaded from well-known sites such as My Abandonware or ModDB, where there is a huge collection of old games modified to work without problems on Windows 11, just search for the name of the game and the site will give you a direct link to download it in the form of a zip file that contains all the files required to run the game directly, without adjusting any settings.

 

Run the game on a virtual system

 

The final solution if none of the previous methods work to run an old game on Windows 11 is to try to run this game through a virtual system running an old operating system such as Windows 98 or XP by Oracle VirtualBox or VMware or without external software via Hyper-V. So to do this, you will first have to search on the Internet for a link to download an old version of Windows as an ISO file to use to install the system on one of the mentioned programs, or you can review our previous topic: 4 ways to download any version of Windows. After preparing the virtual system, you can transfer the games to it and play them directly within this system.

 

Well, these were some of our tried and tested methods that worked for you to get old games to work on Windows 11 and we hope they helped you turn back the clock and remember the days when those games were the simple pleasures of life!