haha. Although the game is pretty poorly made it would seem. It has very poor load balancing on multi core CPU's - for instance on my system it's at like 80-90% usage on a single one of the cores, and around 20% on the rest.
It also strangulates the system drive with lots of random reads and writes and you can't change which drive it uses - so if you use an SSD as the system drive it will put a bunch of activity on that drive which you may not want.

It seems to write/read to/from the harddrive everytime a new segment of the world is created - wouldn't it be better to just keep it in the RAM and then save the progress when you are done or save manually?

Ooh, 2TB. That doesn't sound good. Most HDDs bigger then 1.5TB seem to be unrealiable and go bad. From what I hear, anyway.

What problems are you having with these older games? Like I've said, I have 64 bit Windows 7 and I rarely have issues with old games.

So, you've heard all the downsides of downgrad-- I mean upgrading to XP, now for the upsides.

First, it requires significantly less out of hardware, so if you're putting off upgrading your PC for a while, XP is going to help.

Second, my wife and I have a total of 6 working computers, 2 desktops and 4 laptops. Only my computers have XP (two with Home, one with Pro). My wife's has Vista and flavours of 7. Not only do I have the least problems with the games we play, but I also have to do less just to get them to run properly. Yeah, I'm in charge of them all, and I like Vista and 7 machines the least, not just from working on my wife's computers but family and friends' as well.

Thirdly, the option to go with XP isn't inherently bad nor is it inherently good. There will be some games you can't play, but it's yet to happen to me, I'm pretty picky about games anyways -- Skyrim works just fine, no problems at all except for in-game bugs unrelated to the OS, and we play MMO's which work perfectly fine as well on my machines. For older games, they work better on my computers than my wife's, especially patched versions of the original two C&C, Starcraft, Doom, Rise of the Triads, Sim City 2k, etc.

Back to specs, it's pointless and a waste to go with a regular 32 bit version of XP, which is standard, if you have 4+ GB of RAM, and I heavily dislike the 64 bit version of XP.

I also don't know where you'd get an XP copy legally, the newest laptop I have is 2 years old, and I was able to get it with the laptop as a downgrade to a pre-installed 7, after months of searching and reviewing, the downgrade (which I call upgrade) I promptly used, and used the 7 discs as a coaster. I guess maybe some really specific shops that have kept their (OEM) XP inventory for a while or got some special licenses, or on Ebay or something, might be your best chances.

Another option for you is dual booting both XP and 7, using 7 only when having any issues running something on XP, which should be very, very rarely.

Always exercise your options, regardless of what computer messiahs may believe, as the topic is highly opinionated. If you understand what you're getting yourself into, you'll benefit greatly. Both Home and Pro are okay, but if you want to move to XP, I'd certainly vouch for it, I don't see myself switching away from XP unless either Win 2000 becomes available by some miracle, Microsoft releases an Operating System I actually like (unlikely in the near future), or until I learn how to more properly tune up any given Linux distro I plan on using.

Oh you can code high performance applications in Java... The problem lies with Notch's programming and the JRE

I play command and conquer Tiberian Sun on Windows 7 and that was released for Windows 98 and have no problems, same with Red Alert 2

There are many games that require quite a bit of effort to run in Win7 that work just fine in XP. Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodines is one - I'm having horrific difficulties with it in Win7.

Also, XP is far less intensive than Win7, so if the OP has an older computer, XP, might be a better choice for him.

If one has an older computer that can't run 7 well then there's really no need to put 7 on it to begin with.

As for Bloodlines, that runs fine for me as well.

HALP ME CAUSE I CAN'T

And it ran fine on XP.

If I could, I'd have three gaming computers - one cutting edge with Win7, one with decent specs and XP, and one with Windows 95 (cause Win95 also had the option to boot in DOS).

That way I could play anything without having to mess about with compatibility or emulators.

If you're going to go XP then the 32-bit Home version is fine for playing games. I personally prefer Win7 x64. I literally never have any problems with games and it performs better for me than XP ever did. I don't have less than 4GB of RAM on any of my machines, though, and that's where 7 really shows gains over XP IMO. I didn't find Vista to be that bad after the hardware vendors got their act together with drivers and the service packs were released.

Try this

right click on the game executable icon and run it with compatibility mode on XP service pack 2

'Failed to find Steam'.

Apparently this is a common problem and I can't find a solution online. Short of trying a non-Steam version I guess. But I know of people that can play the Steam version on Win7.

The solution to that is to run steam itself as administrator. I find out that I'm having this issue as well. Wasn't having it before I had to reinstall it, but I am now. Works after doing that, but may not be a good idea as Steam doesn't like it.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2025035 Have you tried any of this?

I didn't partition a 2TB hdd, it was a 500gb.

Issues of the 'This game is not compatible with a 64 bit OS.' variety.

I know that, I was just comenting.

Had to comment... I have five 2TB HDDs and all of them are in perfect working order. I've even had two of them for over two years. No problems. They're all Samsungs, FYI. Go Corsair or Samsung, or don't go at all. (Avoid Western Digital.)

I don't know if unreliability is a fact or not, it's just what the reviews that I read back when I was picking out a hard drive last year said.

I have Windows 7 64 bit and I'm running Fallout 1 and 2 beautifully. It required installing a couple of patches each, but the end result is great.

And while you're at it avoid Hitachi, Toshiba, Maxtor, Quantum, IBM, and Seagate. Oh, and Samsung.

There's so much superstition regarding hard drives...it cracks me up. If you listen to what people say on forums every brand of hard drive is terrible and unreliable. The funny thing is that over the years that I've been building computers pretty much every HDD manufacturer has had their good and bad models. I guess once someone has a bad experience and loses data they hold a grudge. I can't say I blame them, but you really have to look at these things on a model-by-model basis. No one brand is universally great or terrible.

So much wrongs in this thread... actually, the title of it should be changed to "Downgrading OS due to confirmation bias"

1. Vista SP2 and Windows 7 SP1 run EXACTLY the same on the same hardware. I've tested it, there is no difference in performance assuming a dual-core processor and at least 2 GB of RAM. (Windows 7 does have an edge when it comes to memory management, and so performs better on 1 GB)

2. If you don't like Vista and like Windows 7, it is entirely because of confirmation bias, you've not tried it with SP2, or you've not tried a fresh (as in no bloatware/crapware from a prebuilt rig) install of it.

3. Windows 7's memory management is far superior to XP's. Windows 7 runs better on 1 GB systems than XP does (assuming either an Intel Atom chipset or a dual-core processor)

5. There is nothing wrong with 2 TB hard drives, assuming they only have three platters, which is the norm for modern 2 TB hard drives. platter and head counts are what increase your chances of failure with HDDs. For the past 1.5 years, though, most 2 TB drives on the market have been 3-platter drives.

6. Partitioning a hard drive has no impact on performances and doesn't break anything. It cannot be a PiTA (in fact, it is the opposite: partitioning system data from personal data can save you many a headaches)

7. IF YOU LIKE WINDOWS 7 THEN YOU LIKE VISTA SP2. Stop calling Vista crap if you like Windows 7, because they are the same (UAC is less secure in Windows 7 by default and they gave it some new aero effects, but beyond that, all under-the-hood differences between the two were effectively nullified with SP2, where Microsoft ported a bunch of the kernel changes back to Vista). All you are doing is falling for confirmation bias or using outdated information to make your judgement

10. There's nothing bloated about Professional version of Windows as most of the differing features are disabled by default (with Windows 7 you don't even save hard drive space with Home editions, as every edition of Windows 7 includes all the features of the others, they are just inaccessible without the right key -- made Windows Anytime Upgrade a lot simpler). The one advantage for the vast majority of home users for Windows Professional editions is that it extends the support cycle, meaning you don't have to upgrade as often. In my experience, most people keep their computers going for years and years without upgrading, so it is a very big advantage in my book. It's a shame most people are unaware of this fact (which is why I always push people to get the professional edition on any PC they plan on keeping in the long-run, as it more than pays for itself).

11. Outside of A TechNet license of some kind, you won't be able to find a copy of Windows XP in the modern world

12. There are various reasons to not us XP anymore, but the biggest is the incredibly poor security of the OS. No ASLR (mmm, I do loves me some overflow) and everyone running as admin does that. Tthere are numerous known security holes in Windows XP Microsoft has not patched, claiming it is architecturally impossible to patch them, and it's only a matter of time before a worm abuses these to get installed with zero user interaction.

13. While Win2k was a wonderful OS, going back to it would be the biggest mistake anyone could make as there are countless unpatched security holes for it (I remember reading an article a while back where it was estimated that 60% of still-existing Win2k installs have some malware on them). Don't use an unsupported (and therefore unpatched) OS connected to a network.

14. Going off of the above: I do highly recommend upgrading to Windows 7, despite it not being much different from Vista. Why? Vista Home and Ultimate editions reach End of Life in 2.5 months time (April 10th 2012). After this point Vista Home and Ultimate editions will stop receiving security updates and malware will easily infect them with no hopes of a cure. I recommend upgrading to Windows 7 Professional as otherwise you'll have a repeat of this in January 13th 2015 (less than 3 years away now), as that's when Windows 7 Home and Ultimate editions reach end of support. Windows 7 Professional will be supported until 2020


Aye. The only one I avoid is Seagate (because they haven't earned my trust back, don't think they ever will due to their poor handling of the firmware problem 2 years ago) and any one where there has been a verified and reported incident RECENTLY

I see what you mean.