Old Sierra Games & Windows XP
DOS to Windows XP
a Short History
by Collector
The original King's Quest (King's Quest: Quest for the Crown) was written for the PC Jr. with their game
engine AGI which was used for all of Sierra's
games until King's Quest 4. For King's Quest 4, Sierra used their new engine, SCI
which allowed for higher resolutions greater color depths and full MIDI support. All of these games were made
to run in DOS, Microsoft's first operating system.
With the release of King's Quest 5, Windows 3x was available, so there were two versions of KQ5, one for
DOS and one for Windows. Windows 3.1 was just another program running out of 16 bit DOS, so the two versions
weren't that different. King's Quest 6 and 7 were written for DOS/Windows 3.1 as well.
Shortly after Sierra released King's Quest 7, Microsoft debuted the revolutionary 32 bit Windows 95. Though
it had some protected memory (key areas of memory such as where critical system files reside in memory) giving
it greater stability than DOS, programs still could have direct access to the hardware. This gave it good
backwards compatibility for old programs, but made it still less stabile than it could be. Later non SCI games,
such as King's Quest Mask of Eternity were released around the same time as Windows 98, which was still sitting
on top of DOS.
In the early 90s Microsoft was developing Windows NT, a true 32 bit non legacy OS. It had protected memory
and handled all of the calls that programs made to the hardware (programs no longer had direct access to the
hardware.) Though it could still run some 16 bit programs, DOS programs couldn't address the audio hardware,
so no sound in DOS games, and NT 3.5 (which had a Win 3.1 type interface) didn't handle 16 bit code very well.
NT 4 (which had a Win 95 interface) handled 16 bits better, but was still not very compatible with older programs.
NT 4 was replaced with Windows 2000 which came with a compatibility tool to help run old code. It was an
improvement over NT 4's backwards compatibility. Windows XP has its compatibility mode built into it and is
better yet at DOS emulation, but it is still far from perfect. Windows 2000/XP trades some backwards compatibility
for a great deal more stability.
Running DOS games In XP
Unlike earlier versions of Windows, XP is not based on DOS. Instead it, like Windows 2000, is based on the
NT kernel. This is one of the things that makes XP more robust than Windows 98, but it has its drawbacks for
the vintage gamer. Because XP does not run on top of DOS, XP has to run DOS programs in NT's DOS emulator,
NTVDM. Unfortunately, this emulator is less than perfect.
Modern hardware also lends it own set of problems to the equation. Besides speed problems, you might encounter
other hardware problems, such as with your graphics card. Running some games you might see text garbled on
the screen, or your graphics card might not support all the VESA
modes. You may find that different video card drivers provide the VESA support that the game demands. If not,
however, there's not much you can do except to try running the game in an emulator.
Other problems may encounter include not enough memory (conventional, extended, or expanded) errors or sound
card problems. XP does not use the old DOS configuration files, autoexec.bat and config.sys with which to
set an environment For DOS programs.
As mentioned earlier, one of the things that makes the NT line of windows so stable is that it allows programs
little direct access to the hardware. Microsoft has answered this with the development of DirectX, which provides
an addressable "layer" between programs and the hardware. DOS programs, however, cannot take advantage
of this. As a result many old games will find themselves mute. XP has minimal DOS audio support, but only
works with a few audio processors. Many sound card owners might find that they are out of luck.
So, what does this mean for our old classics such as the King's Quest games? The good news is that most of
them will run, but the down side is that we sometimes have to do a little work to get them to run. How? Just
click on the links below for help with your games.
General AGI Game Help
General DOS SCI Game Help
General Windows SCI Help
Compatibility Wizard
DOS & Windows XP
FAT32 / NTFS Files Systems
CONFIG.NT & AUTOEXEC.NT Files
Long File Names and Windows XP
Mouse Problems
VESA Modes and Windows XP
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