Age of Rifles and Windows XP

Do you have any old gaming favorites such as Age of Rifles which, despite your best efforts, just refuse to run on Windows XP? If the answer is yes and you have some knowledge of DOS, a good program to turn to is DOSBox. DOSBox is a Windows, Linux and Mac-based product which allows you to run all of your old DOS games with as little hassle as possible. It took me a little bit of trial and error (and some reading of the manual) to get things set up properly, but now Age of Rifles runs relatively smoothly on my Windows XP Home desktop. I first heard about this piece of software in this post on the Age of Rifles Yahoo Group. Thanks to user “Patrick” for the idea.

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6 responses to “Age of Rifles and Windows XP”

  1. jztemple Avatar
    jztemple

    Great, now I have to drag out my copy of AOR and try to get it to run! 😉

  2. Brett Schulte Avatar

    JZ,

    I know how you feel. AOR is not the only old classic I’ve got stored away. DOSBox opens up a whole new can of worms…

    Brett

  3. jztemple Avatar
    jztemple

    Turns out it’s not so hard after all. I googled “running age of rifles on winxp”, first link was http://www.wargamer.com/aor/trouble.asp which is lots of info and files on how to run AOR under advanced OS. I installed AOR and the campaign disk, patched it up to the hilt, then set the Win95 compatibility mode for the Rifles shortcut. I renamed the planes2.smk as suggested and viola, AOR is running! No sound, but per the web link info I have to disable all my CD-ROM drives except the one with the CD (damn, that’s annoying). So now it works with sound, but no music, but that’s fine since I never listened to the music in games anyway. Oh, and I had to add that mouse speed up file and .bat line.

    I’m still awaiting approval for the Yahoo AOR group so I can see what’s hidden in there.

    Sadly, of course, our memories trick us into remembering how great something was. The game is amazingly simplistic compared with the HPS ACW series. Still, it runs just fine, so I can play around with it and reminisce about AOR to the new generation.

  4. markpeters Avatar
    markpeters

    Brett,

    I have Civil War Generals II, which refuses to run on XP Windows. It’s not DOS based; it ran on Windows 98. Would this still work, and how much knowledge is required? I can’t rember the last time I used DOS commands!

  5. Brett Schulte Avatar

    Mark,

    That’s an excellent question, but I’m afraid I don’t have a great answer at the moment. My copy of CWG2 is tucked away in some remote corner of my basement. Have you tried using the Windows XP “compatibility mode”? You simply right-click on the game’s executable file and left click on “Properties”. In the new window, look for the “Compatibility” tab. Try changing that to “Windows 98” and see if it does the trick. This usually allows most programs compatible with earlier versions of Windows to run smoothly in XP, but I do know of exceptions.

    If anyone else reads this and knows of a better way, by all means comment!

    Brett

  6. markpeters Avatar
    markpeters

    Brett,

    Thanks for the help. I haven’t tried the ‘compatability’ tab, but will do so. I’ll let you know how it all works out.

    Mark

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