Windows Visa, XP, or 7?

[doomsriker]

I am putting together a “retro” build to play some slightly older games that don’t like to run on my windows 10 PC and I need help picking the best operating system between XP, Vista, and 7. I am having compatibility issues with a lot of older games from the late 90s and early 2000s and I have the other PC just sitting unused so I want to make use of it. Some of the games I want to play are fallout 3, the unreal tournament games, serious Sam games, and humongous games (yes I know I could do a VM or something but I’d rather do this). The system is a 2nd gen i5 with 8gb DD3 and an R5 240 GPU. I really appreciate your help here as I am not very knowledgeable about older versions of windows.  

[arnavvr]

If you want to play games from the Late 90s or early 2000s, Windows XP is probably your best bet. You may find driver incompatibility with Sandy Bridge products though.

[8tg]

Windows 7 will have the least issues with running older games, while also being decently modern with daily usability as well if you need it. 

vistas lifespan was too short for a lot of specialized software to get older games working properly to run, but there’s a fix or workaround for just about anything on 7

 

XP is an option, but games newer than XP may have issues, it’ll also be the most difficult to get working with that hardware, as certain motherboard features on Sandy bridge and current gpu features for that card may not work properly

 

Generally speaking my suggestions are to keep hardware and software era appropriate to minimize potential problems. Windows 7 is the best fit for that machine. If we were talking a core2duo I’d say vista first and maybe XP depending on what exactly you’re trying to play, because for some games vista can be better (anything designed for games for windows live for example is way easier to deal with in native vista)

[Shimejii]

Windows XP is gonna have a bad time unless you know what your doing. Windows 7 should be your best bet

[LionSpeck]

Why not both?
Windows has a multi boot functionality built-in. You could just install XP and 7 in parallel, use XP for the few games that have issues on 7.

[doomsriker]

2 minutes ago, LionSpeck said:

Why not both?
Windows has a multi boot functionality built-in. You could just install XP and 7 in parallel, use XP for the few games that have issues on 7.

Ok this is gunna sound crazy, but could I just install both on 2 separate hard drives and physically disconnect one and reconnect the other (with the system unplugged of course) from time to time? Or would this cause issues somehow? And could I share a game storage hard drive between these two without issue? (most of my games are on steam btw)

[LionSpeck]

1 minute ago, doomsriker said:

Ok this is gunna sound crazy, but could I just install both on 2 separate hard drives and physically disconnect one and reconnect the other (with the system unplugged of course) from time to time?

You could; but why on earth would you do that? With multi boot you wouldn't have to touch any cable or open any side panel; or even have two separate drives. Just two partitions, an 8+ GB one for xp, the rest for 7.

 

2 minutes ago, doomsriker said:

And could I share a game storage hard drive between these two without issue? (most of my games are on steam btw)

Sure, I think there shouldn't be any problem with that. Especially with steam games. You would only have problems with save files, if you were to play the same games alternatively on the two OSes.

[doomsriker]

13 minutes ago, LionSpeck said:

You could; but why on earth would you do that? With multi boot you wouldn't have to touch any cable or open any side panel; or even have two separate drives. Just two partitions, an 8+ GB one for xp, the rest for 7.

Like I said it sounds a bit crazy but I have a bunch of old hard drives sitting around right now and I might go this route now that I’m thinking about it. 

[jaslion]

On 2/14/2022 at 1:09 AM, doomsriker said:

Like I said it sounds a bit crazy but I have a bunch of old hard drives sitting around right now and I might go this route now that I’m thinking about it. 

You'll wear out the connectors doing this and like you can just leave both drives connected and not do this. Just instal xp first on drive 1 and then 7 on drive 2. Then you don't have to start breaking hardware and cables of overuse of cable attaching and detaching.