Slow down older Windows-games

[godlike]

Recently I've been playing a lot of old Windows games and a lot of them have this problem where they speed up to the point where it's unplayable. I am running most of the games thru a Windows 98 installation on VMware but they are still too fast and there's no option in VMware to slow down the cpu-speed.

Do you guys have any ideas on how to fix this? I've tried lowering the affinity for VMware but it doesnt work. It's still too fast.

I accidentally posted this in the wrong subforum. Tried to find the answer in Tutorials but couldnt find it. Perhaps a mod could move this thread into Troubleshooting for me.

[dosraider]

Tricky question .... :(

Try a CPU killer app as moslo for win or similar running in the VM, however the outcome in a VM is unpredictable, trial and error will be your destiny ....

Or try to open some background minimized apps in the VM, notebook .... write ... music player even ?
Keep the VM busy a bit? Can of course cause some lagging in your games. :mhh:

In VPC you can lower guest mem setting for the VM, can't you in VmWare? Should slow things down a bit ....

What you should NOT do is trying to slow down your host PC.

[The Fifth Horseman]

If any of them are compatible with Windows 3.1, you could solve the issue by running them in Windows 3.1 inside DOSBox.

[Japo]

I'd try a different software from VMware, just to see if it helps. Different VM programs work very differently and shit happens (happened to me).

[Scatty]

Try this (http://www.pcwelt.de/downloads/Slowdown-starten-1332493.html) old program (click on the red button Download jetzt starten to download, don't worry program itself is in English), it works like a charm for Windows 98 or 95, not sure about newer Windows versions.
However a fair warning - the program itself was designed to access the CPU directly to slow it down, so no telling how (and if) it will work in emulated Windows 98 in VMware.

[Eagle of Fire]

This problem sound very strange to me as you should not have speed problems running native Windows games in Windows. Whatever the version.

The problem thus lie either in the emulation software you are using or maybe you are simply running direct ports or games which are DOS games made to run in Windows 3.11. Either way, running Windows 3.11 in DOSBox as Fifth suggested should help fix this problem.

[Smiling Spectre]

There are really a lot of "non-tied to processor" Windows games, Eagle of Fire. Especially in Win95-98 era (so from 1995 to 2000). They are become unpredicable on fast machines and unplayable too.

I used CPU Killer at some time, as I remember, on my Win98 and early WinXP. It worked for me just fine. But then on WinXP I discovered Microsoft Virtual PC, and it mostly eliminated speed issues in most of games when I tried (maybe it was too slow, or maybe there is "fix processor timing" somewhere, I dunno, as I didn't research it). Unfortunately, it was quite long ago - about 5-6 years now - so I cannot say how good it can work nowadays.

[Eagle of Fire]

Well, I believe that those programs you are mentioning are DOS programs which have been modified to be run under Windows. This was a very common thing to see in the Windows 95 era and was still common at the very beginning of Windows 98.

But a real Windows native program running in Windows? I'm yet to see that happening.

[zirkoni]

In VirtualBox you can set an execution cap:

http://imageshack.us/scaled/thumb/688/vboxcap.png (http://img688.imageshack.us/img688/4523/vboxcap.png) <<< click

[Japo]

EOF is right about games for DirectX (or previously WinG), but Windows 9x includes DOS and runs DOS programs natively, and was supposed to, so any game "for Windows" from that time may be actually a DOS program. (Which doesn't mean the game could run on previous standalone versions, maybe it didn't run on DOS 6.x, but did on Windows 9x (or DOS 7 or higher), for whatever weird reason such as hardware.

There's a pretty good way to know: games actually for the Windows API from that time, had to make it really clear that they required DirectX (or WinG) and usually included a version of these libraries in their installation disks. So if you see a game published for Windows 9x without DirectX (or WinG earlier) bundled in the installer, 95% chances are that it's a DOS program (even if it's designed for the Windows 9x environment).

While at the same time, any game for DOS (6 or lower) may not need any modification to run in Windows. 95% of the time the problem was a high conventional memory requirement, which could sometimes be solved by "booting in DOS mode" (i.e. starting Windows 9x normally but without the Windows part, only DOS 7.x); except sometimes this didn't cut it either if you had a modern sound card, as the SB16 emulation drivers took too much memory; plus having enough conventional memory was hard enough on DOS 6.x.

Also I keep the prejudice that MS Virtual PC is better at emulating Windows (including DOS-on-Win9x!) than any competing software, such as VMware. If only because VPC is made by Microsoft, and so was Windows, and the latter's not open source. DOS was open source in practice--since it was coded in assembly and simple enough--and Peter Norton (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Norton) or Qbix among others cracked it all right.

[Smiling Spectre]

Ok, several titles from the top of my head: Resident Evil 1 (http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/resident-evil), AI Wars, Might & Magic 7 (http://www.mobygames.com/game/might-and-magic-vii-for-blood-and-honor), Incoming (http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/incoming-the-final-conflict).

First two are too fast (AI wars is incredibly fast) if "Graphic acceleration" is on, but quite bearable with "software rendering". M&M is ok in real-time mode, but have insanely fast movement in turn-based, and Incoming have "normal" world, but lightning speed for vehicle/view movement. And this games are not alone any way - I seen much more, but with my affinity to slow (or better turn-based) gaming I simply cannot remember action games so good - usually I am dropping it next second after I discovered that it's unplayable. :)

Did I pass the test? ;)

[Japo]

:p You're probably right, I was just generalizing but it's perfectly possible for a modern game to have no proper timing programmed as well as a DOS one, but I think less frequent... The most established 3D engines I can recall (Morrowind...) when they find more powerful hardware they usually produce more FPS but preserve the timing... :unsure:

I have a cookie for you Spectre :D

http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m87/japofran/fun/lolz/th_cookie_zps6453ac06.jpg

[Smiling Spectre]

Thank you, Japo! :D