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[–] ChillyHellion 0 points 6 points (+6|-0) ago 

I'd give virtualization a try, since you can always fall back to dual-booting if using the VM doesn't work. It's much harder to undo a dual boot than it is to remove a virtual machine.

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[–] Arkhound 3 points -3 points (+0|-3) ago 

Hard to remove a virtual machine? You just delete it. It's harder to die from holding your breath than it is to remove a VM.

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[–] ChillyHellion 0 points 5 points (+5|-0) ago 

Right, that's my point:

It's much harder to undo a dual boot than it is to remove a virtual machine.

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[–] 2080876? 0 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago 

One thing that helps on many older games is to create a folder on your C: drive named Games and install them there instead of the Program Files folder. This is because many older games assume they can just do what they want inside their own folders but OS from Vista on protect anything in Program Files. But C:\Games is not protected and they can do what they want there. Try it and see if it helps with some of them. Just replace C:\Program Files\ in the path with C:\Games\

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[–] SkepticalMartian 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago  (edited ago)

This is entirely correct, and it's surprising this answer is not being given the love it deserves. Post Windows XP systems do in fact have reduced privileges for program files and program files(x86). This is why modern games store save data and other things inside your user directories instead of where the game resides.

Some people opt to get around this by running the games with administrator privileges, but this is a very bad idea from a security perspective. No game should ever have to run with admin. Installing to a different location is the best way to go about it.

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[–] WhyWasIHere 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

I'd advise checking out PCGamingWiki, just in case. I recently got Metal Gear Solid 2 to work on Windows 8, which required some stupid workarounds I never would have thought of to try, but I've never been disappointed with their support and explanations. If that fails, though, I guess you should check another comment.

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[–] Arotaes_Forgehammer 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

What's your main OS?

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[–] pangaea [S] ago 

Windows 10

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[–] Arotaes_Forgehammer 5 points 4 points (+9|-5) ago 

I feel bad for you

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[–] Foul_Knave ago 

any suggestions?

You can find a rig that plays XP-era games literally in a dumpster, and XP is laughably easy to crack.

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[–] pangaea [S] ago 

Also if I went the dual boot route I would get some really spectacular performance on modern hardware :P (see my specs in OP)

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[–] pangaea [S] ago 

I could probably even slap together a rig out of spare parts, perhaps with some dirt cheap ones on Ebay. Though with a VM I can play those games while doing other things on my main machine, or even copy/paste the entire system to other machines.

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[–] ABastionOfFreeSpeech ago 

I'd suggest using a third-party hypervisor, rather than Hyper-V, as there are only a few cards that are supported for direct passthrough with Hyper-V, and they're all expensive. I know that VirtualBox has some support for 3d graphics processing.

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[–] pangaea [S] ago 

I'm using VMWare.

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[–] pangaea [S] ago 

UPDATE: tried playing need for speed Porsche unleashed on an XP VM. Slightly laggy but definitely playable. http://imgur.com/PMWcgA8

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[–] pangaea [S] ago 

I've decided to give an XP VM a try, setting up now. Will try on both my laptop and desktop.

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