Gaming and Windows 2000
Posted: June 21, 2000
Written by: Keith "Farrel" McClellan

Introduction

Now that Windows 2000 has been out for a few months, it is time to once again look the gaming abilities of the OS and check out some new methods for playing finicky games on the OS. In many ways, it is still a chore to get a game to run well on this operating system, however, I have now been made aware of a program that should make some of the trickery required to get some games running easier. If you aren't comfortable playing around with your computer a bit to get it to do what you want though, perhaps you should continue to stick with Win9x. I won't be supporting questions about this guide and it's methods - every game is different, and I don't own every game.

The Benefits

There are several benefits to gaming on Windows 2000 as opposed to Win9x. First of all, in many operations, Win2k is up to 20% faster than good old Win9x. That kind of background speed increase is ideal for gaming, because it means that the OS takes up fewer cycles of the CPU - which means more cycles for the game. Also, because of Win2k's superior stability over Win9x and how it handles programs, a game bug that normally would have crashed a computer running Win9x will now only cause the game to crash. Also, Windows 2000 is much better suited to be run as a server, so those of you with fat pipes or a home network can benefit from having a better gaming server.

The Disadvantages

Well, of course, you have to mess around with some games to get them to run -- and some games won't run at all. Also, because the platform is so new, some of the drivers you are going to get are going to be slower than their Win9x cousins. Also, the operating system is just more complicated than Win9x -- so things that used to be 'easy' to fix may prove to be more difficult now -- running low on RAM in Win2k is a real problem, and if your VMM (Virtual Memory Manager) isn't set up properly with a generous pagefile, etc, you could run into some problems.

Another problem that crops up is the HAL, or hardware abstraction layer. This layer translates hardware commands on top of the drivers - an extra layer that isn't in Win9x. This layer, if the drivers work with it properly, shouldn't cause any problems - but for the time being if the drivers aren't properly written for it, it can cause serious slowdowns with certain hardware configurations and DirectX. It doesn't, however, appear to affect OpenGL, oddly enough.





Is This a Kick in the Pants or What?!?

Okay, you've gone through the advantages and disadvantages of attempting to run a game on Win2k and have decided to go for it. Maybe you are running a server at a LAN party, perhaps you just don't feel like rebooting to play your favorite games, or maybe you've just got big balls. Whatever it is, you're going to go for it. So you pop in a CD and try to install a game. Maybe you get it installed and you just can't seem to get it running, or maybe your system halts during the installation - whatever it is, the game just won't run. Here, proscribed by the doctor himself, are the antibiotics to kick that little sucker into submission -- or decide when to give up.

Drivers

Drivers, drivers, drivers. I know -- this is mentioned in more tweak guides than why Dan is really called the Tweak Monkey -- but it's really important. And, believe it or not, it is even more important in Win2k than it ever was before. There are a couple of reasons for this. One, of course, is because the default drivers are incredibly immature and, while stable, are slower than a doped up snail -- and some of them even create hallucinogenic effects that remind me of the days when LSD was in the middle of its tour de force.

But that isn't the only reason for new drivers in Win2k. Your computer has two software modes (actually there are four but only two are used): User mode and Kernel mode. User mode is the portion of the software your computer is running that is open to be played around with by anything, and Kernel mode is highly protected and can only be modified by other Kernel mode pieces of software. The problem is in that drivers are run in Kernel mode -- and if there is some kind of bug in them, it could take down the whole system (user mode applications can only take down themselves and possibly other user mode apps). And since Microsoft decided it was going to change the driver model for Win2k to make it easier to develop for, driver writers are having to learn a whole new set of rules, and any mistakes can have dire consequences. But with each driver revision, things get better. So keep up to date with them!

Where does the aforementioned HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) fit into that? If my understanding is correct, it is run in user mode and is the last layer that a piece of data has to go through before it starts dealing with code that is in Kernel Mode. So if there is some kind of problem in the Kernel Mode driver for your video card, a bottleneck can occur between the HAL and the video card driver - bad mojo.

Advanced Techniques

You've installed the new drivers and things still freeze up like a rubber ball dropped in a vat of liquid hydrogen. What else can you do? Well, if you could get the game to install but it just won't run, you might want to try installing whatever patches they have lying around. Beyond that, you probably won't be able to go very far unless they have some information about the subject on their website. However, if you couldn't get the game to install, you have quite a few options including a forced setup and the Ali Fakir method.





Forcing Setup

Some games have their setup programs configured so as to not allow you to install them when you are running Windows NT/2000. However, some of those same setup programs have an attribute that the Q&A guys used to test out the possibility of having the game run on NT in the first place. The attribute usually takes the form of -nt or -ntforce, but not always. To attempt to run the setup program and force it to install, go into the run dialogue box and type in the complete address of the setup program followed by the required attribute [ex: d:\setup.exe -nt]. You may be able to get more information on the topic from the game's website or from their tech support guys.

The 'Ali Fakir' Method

For those of you who were wondering, Ali Fakir is a character from Quest for Glory 2. He ran a whole bunch of different shops under a variety of different names, and he generally tricked you into buying something that was different than it appeared. It was a really cool game and you should check it out. Anyway, the point is that this method uses a couple of tricks to fake a game into thinking that it was actually installed on Win2k when actually it really wasn't.

To do this, you are going to have to be dual booting. If you aren't, sorry, you're out of luck. Boot up into Win9x and install the game as you normally would, and then go ahead and reboot into Win2k. This will work about 25% of the time (the games recreate their own registry settings), so it is worth a try and can save you some serious trouble. But if it didn't work, don't give up all hope yet. Reboot your system into Win9x and open up the registry in your editor of choice (regedit works fine for me).

Within the registry, search for the name of the game you just installed. Find it? Export that key to a registry file, and while you are at it, see if you can find the keys for the company or companies that produced and or published the game and export those keys as well. Then boot up into Win2k and merge those registry files in with your own registry (don't worry, you won't break anything, they are the same basic format now). Now, reboot your computer into Win2k and try running the game. This will give you an extra 15% or so chance of getting the game to run (most games nowadays will recreate missing registry settings, though, so this may only work with some older games).

Patch 'er Up

Once again, you can try to patch the game and see if that helps. Depending on what the patch does and the distribution method that the developers have chosen, you may have to apply the patch from within Win9x. If this is the case, check and make sure that it didn't add any new registry keys that could be necessary to the game (if it did you will need to do the regedit copy thing explained above again), and then go ahead and try the game in Win2k. If the game still won't run at all, check out and try accompat.exe (explained below) as a last resort.





Accompat.exe

There is a file on the Windows 2000 CD (there is actually a version of it included along with Win9x as well) called accompat.exe, which can be found in the support subdirectory. This program will 'fake' the program into thinking it is running under another operating system. You can use this program for two things - first, you can use it to actually install a program under Windows 2000 that refuses to install, and you can also apply the program to the games executable and see if you can get the game to run that way. The program allows you to 'emulate' the settings produced by several Microsoft OSes, such as Windows 98 and WinNT 4.0. Keep in mind, however, that using this program does add some extra overhead to your system so use it only if the above methods are causing you trouble, or you aren't dual booting your system with Win9x. This is definitely a last resort method, simply because of the extra necessary resources - but if it means that it gets a game to work, who's to complain?

Sketchy Performance

If you can actually get the game to run, but you either have serious graphical distortions even after updating your driver or perhaps the game is just running really slow, there are a few things you can do. Probably the easiest thing to do would be to turn down all the game settings to the lowest values and enable any problem solving features that the game offers and see if that helps (for example, "Safe Mode"). If it seems to clear up the problem, go ahead and turn on one option at a time until you run into problems again and leave that one off.

If, however, that doesn't work or you are simply getting graphical errors no matter what, this is something you can do. It's time to tweak out your video drivers. If you are lucky enough to have any kind of setup options for your drivers, use those. Otherwise you are going to have to delve into the registry.

There are a few keys you are going to want to run a search for in the registry: the name of the company that makes your card, the name of the company that makes the specific drivers you are using, the name of the company that makes the chip that is on your video card, and the specific name of the drivers you are using. One of these four should point you towards the proper keys to tweak out your video card. I wish I could give more information here on specific driver versions, but many of the companies are continuously revising their key and value definitions so as to make any ones that I have right now obsolete very soon (or possibly already).

Other Possibilities

There are a few other things you can do to try to improve sketchy game performance under Win2k. If the game has any type of autoexec file, you could try tweaking that to improve performance -- or, if you can get in touch with their technical support, they may be able to tell you of some kind of game setting that you can use to fix whatever problems you are currently having. Sometimes it isn't even the fault of the OS itself. If you try running the game under Win9x and it is still pretty finicky, the problem may very well be with the game and have nothing to do with the OS it is running on. Of course, if you are just experiencing a lot more hard drive read/writes than within Win9x, it is because the OS needs more RAM. 128 MB is a must to run smoothly, and many times you will find that 192+ MB will serve you much better.

Nothing Worked!

You've done everything you could, and still the game won't work. You only really have one option when it comes down to this -- you have to dual boot and run the game from within Win9x. Yes, I know it's a pain and a waste of space on another crappy Microsoft OS, but what other choice do you have?

Conclusion

I hope this guide has helped you out a bit. From what I can tell, the above methods will generally get between 90 and 95% of your games running, and running well, on Win2k. The ones that don't, well, I don't know what to tell you. As always, feel free to send in your questions/comments, but remember I won't be answering any game related or "Your Win2k Gaming Guide killed my computer" emails this time around. Of course, errata and other methods of getting games to work are most certainly welcome.

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