****Will it [ ever ] Emulate XP Sp3 ???? *****

[TheAlien]

I am pretty new here so please dont yell at me BUT................With the advent of Win10 the most

XP unfriendly MS OS yet I wonder of DOSbox will run old XP games. Just cannot get them to run on Win10 ???

[Zombeaver]

You'd probably need to look into setting up a virtual OS environment with something like VirtualBox. You can install/run older versions of Windows in DOSBox - I've got a couple games that use 3.1. I don't think DOSBox would be the appropriate route for anything passed say 95 though (and even that is a bit of a stretch). You'd be better off looking into a virtual environment solution. In the past this presented problems when it came to hardware accelerated games, but it's my understanding that that's something that's improved over time with some of these and that some degree of GPU access is now available in these environments. Admittedly, my experience with VirtualBox (and other equivalents) is somewhat limited, but it's an option.

[Belgarath]

Virtualbox is great for emulating Windows XP or Windows 98.

 

Hardware accelerated 3d games can still be a problem, it depends on what games you're trying to run.

 

Me, I'm sticking to Windows 7 and will continue to do so for some years yet, why people have "upgraded" to Windows 10 remains a mystery to me.

[Zombeaver]

Yeah, I'm with ya @Belgarath, the lack of proper legacy support is actually the primary reason I haven't upgraded. That and some of the draconian measures MS is taking with UWP. W7 is doing everything I need it to do. "If it ain't broke don't break it" and all that.

[Belgarath]

Exactly, there's a whole ton of stuff that doesn't work with Win 10, is there anything that will only work with Windows 10? If there is I doubt it's much. I'm not going to break compatibility with a ton of software (especially PC games) just so I can have the latest operating system. Later isn't always greater.

[Zombeaver]

DirectX 12 is the "biggie". It doesn't actually mean much at the moment though. Hell, new games are still being released that support DX9... It's got some fancy bells and whistles but there's enough stuff that's important to me that's broken as result of W10 for that to be a primarily moot point. Nothing I've seen has indicated that it would be a beneficial trade-off for me at the moment.

Hell there are some older PC games that are already difficult to get to cooperate even under W7, let alone W10.