Emulate win98 on vista? what to do?

My next laptop will have vista however i have a few games (daggerfall, Total annhilation, original Unreal tournament, Carmaggedon DTR200)) That i like to play. I couldn't get these to run on my old laptop with winxp due to its underpowered and the screen REFUSED to goto 640x480 without crashing.
This Next laptop I am getting should have enough power to run these easily even if emulated. can VMWARE work? I am not sure i could get drivers for win98 for an radeon M4850?? Dosbox works for daggerfall on my current laptop.
any comments or suggestions? I have a win98 disc already so is not an issue. but it was never designed for mobiles so i am hesitant to try it. Not afraid to try wine in linux if need be. I have Ubuntu on my old desktop that i use for home office crap and dvd stuff. so I have a smidgin of linux knowledge just not much.

 

Lots of users on the forum recommend Microsoft Virtual Machine, it should be a free download and helps to emulate the older windows operating system platforms.

 

You might also try the bulit-in feature of windows 98 emulation in vista. You have the option of setting the resolution to 640x480 and running in 256 colors, which might be helpful. I haven't used it, though, so no idea if this actually works.

 

I'd say get Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 SP1. Games tend to do lots of things (privileged instructions, etc) that directly access the hardware which the NT kernel won't allow. VMware is good, but not free

 

VMWare Server is free.

 

This will be your best bet. Install your game, right click the launch icon > Properties and switch to "Compatibility" tab.

From there, check "Run this program in compatibility mode for" and select "Windows 98/ Windows Me" from the drop down box. Then check whatever you want under "Settings".

I doubt XP don't come with the compatibility option, have you check?

 

I use VMware Workstation running Windows XP SP2 to run all of my old Windows 98 games within my Asus G1SN (2.5Ghz Core Duo).

I had problems with DirectX when I tried Windows 98 and found the games worked better in Windows XP anyway.

I recommend you try Virtual PC and Virtual Box since they are free. VMware Workstation has a free 30 day trial though.

I find all of my old games run better within the Virtual machine than they do using compatibility modes on my actual Laptop.

 

virtual pc or virtual box sound good and the price is acceptable
thanks guys will give it a shot

 

Virtual PC is pretty much perfect, but the one thing its not great at is gaming or other 3d kind of things. For an old 2 game like Worms its great but I would not expect 3d games to run well or run at all.

A virtual machine is not the same thing as just checking the compatibility tab in Vista, that does little to nothing, and if its a program thats 16bit or older and you have 64bit Vista there is no way to run it no matter what kind of compatibility you use, but if you run a virtual machine it can work.

 

If you are so upset about having to to use Vista (as indicate d by your unhappy face emoticon there), don't. Go on Craigslist or ebay and find an old laptop that you can run Win98 on and be happy. Nobody is forcing you to upgrade.

 

Yes, OP try this first, I was going to post the same thing

It has helped me on a couple games in the past, it's a minutes work that could do the trick.

Also, look out for patches for the game

 

Original UT does run ok on vista/win7 IF your gfx card driver supports
it properly. I cant even play it on winXP when i had nVidia Vanta 16MB
because nVidia broke the compatibility.

 

I play UT on Vista. Works fine.