Widescreen Gaming Forum

I have just completed setting up a dual-boot system with Win7 Home Premium 64 and WinXP Home SP3, and I have found that this combination seems to be greater than the sum of its parts.

I am posting this here because I have managed to solve my display problems, and a few more besides, using this configuration, but it was unintentional - it happened by accident. This may work for some of you, but perhaps not for others, but I thought I'd mention it.

The games in question are:

Age of Empires II Age of Kings, and A of E II Conquerors
Starfleet Command (original version) SFC1
Starfleet Command Orion Pirates
Star Wars Galatcic Battlegrounds
Star Wars Galatcic Battlegrounds Clone Campaigns

These are the only ones I have tried so far.

Basically I installed the games under Windows 7 and managed to get them to run, after a fashion, using compatibility modes. SFC1 in particular was a surprise because I could never get that to run on WXP, ever, so running it on W7 was a bonus.

But the usual problems were in evidence - strange colours on SWGB and Clone Campaigns, a well-known problem. Same on Age of Kings and Conquerors.

The Starfleet Command games ran but only 3/4-width screen - a small, full height display but only 3/4 as wide as the full display. Sort of squarish. All this will be familiar to members of this forum I am sure.

Anyhow I eventually succeeded in installing my WinXP and, just for interest, tried running these games in Windows XP but from their installations in my Win7 partition.

And they worked

Perfectly. No colour or display issues at all, full widescreen, all very nice.

Granted, not everyone may be able to set up a dual-booting system for whatever reason, but if you can do it, this worked for me. I used the instructions here: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/8057-dual-boot-installation-windows-7-xp.html and I installed W7 first, then WXP. Not the best way to do it, but it worked for me after some considerable fiddling about.

So if anyone wants to try that method, go ahead. Sure it's techy, sure it might not work for everyone, but I had to share it with you because it just might help someone :)

Cheers
Tony
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