Gadgetory

thanks for watching tech quickie click the subscribe button and enable notifications with the bell icon so you won't miss any future videos so you finally built the gaming PC of your dreams and spent the last two months locked in your room playing all the latest triple-a titles but nostalgia is a hell of a drug and you reach for one of your favorite games of years gone by thinking ball surely with such a powerful machine MechWarrior four will run better than ever right wrong after you dig out an external optical drive to install that Christmas gift from 18 years ago you discover to your horror then it won't load you use windows compatibility mode but nothing happened so what gives well it turns out that how much computing power your PC has is only part of the story I mean if you think about it the Nintendo 64 has more than enough power to run the original Super Mario Brothers but that doesn't mean that you can just plug an S cartridge into it so here's the deal one common reason older games won't play nicely with modern hardware is that many of them were written for 32-bit systems you can learn more about the differences between these and more modern 64-bit systems up here but for this episode the main thing that you need to know is that most modern pcs use 64-bit CPUs and operating systems giving them support for more than 4 gigs of memory and the ability to process more information at once but programs need to be coded to work with either a 32-bit or 64-bit system meaning that if you're running a modern 64-bit version of Windows your PC will actually emulate 32-bit mode for any programs written for a 32-bit computer this includes older games sometimes this emulation works without a hitch but other times games just won't cooperate for a number of reasons sometimes older games will try to load additional in compatible code often in the form of dll files used by older 32-bit versions of Windows a Windows Update might break a dependency that a game relies on or they might not be able to properly interface with a 64-bit device driver other games might refuse to launch at all because maybe some of their code is written for even older 16-bit systems which 64-bit Windows editions can't emulate at all or do too draconian DRM protections like safe discs that are completely incompatible with modern versions of Windows and as if that weren't enough you can also run into issues with the hardware itself particularly your fancy new quad-core multi-threaded CPU modern operating systems will usually try to split a given programs workload over multiple cores as nearly every consumer grade PC out there I mean not to mention even phones has at least two cores in it now this results in tangible efficiency improvements in modern games that are written with multi-core CPUs in mind but it can wreak havoc on games whose code just wasn't meant to be split up that way think of it kind of like taking apart a lego house versus one made of glued together popsicle sticks but Linus is there any way to get my old games running or am i up KB lake without a paddle well there isn't a foolproof way to play every older title on a modern system but there are certainly some workarounds 32-bit versions of modern editions of Windows are still widely available for some reason and it is certainly possible to dual boot your computer with both a 32 and a 64-bit OS you can also use a virtual machine if you need to run a really old version of Windows or fire up dosbox if you've got something that's battled now if your issues are performance rather than compatibility related due to the multi-core CPU issues we mentioned before you can try adjusting the CPU affinity in windows task manager or a third party piece of software this will force your game to run on only one core and failing that you can actually try switching off all but one core in your BIOS or UEFI so that Windows will actually treat your CPU as a single core model furthermore it is amazing how resourceful the gaming community is by the way especially when it comes to their beloved retro titles depending on exactly which game you're trying to run some resourceful folks out there have created guides for dealing with antiquated DRM schemes through registry hacks and even created fixer utilities that you can use to launch your older games with special instructions that will make them run more smoothly finally as a last resort actually I recommend you try this in the first place since it can save a lot of hassle there's a reasonable chance that you'll find a compatible version of that game that you loved on a reputable digital distributor like Steam or more likely good old games and they usually cost just a few bucks so there you have it you may yet be able to enjoy your favorite games from yesteryear if you don't mind getting a little creative just don't get too creative and migrate your entire digital life to an old-school beige box running Windows ME and speaking of your digital life are 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