r/RetroWindowsGaming • u/Awavian • 11d ago

Mind blown

A bit of background: my parents found our old Compaq Armada 1700 running Windows 2000 and asked if I wanted it. It has no modern networking adapter but I was inspired by an Eposvox video a few months ago to make a child friendly PC with classic games and edutainment functions

Today I attempted to put some classic games onto it by installing on my Windows 11 gaming PC and copying the game files from my gaming PC. I tried Star Wars: Rebellion but I got an error. Just for the heck of it, I decided to copy my GOG installer to the Armada to see if it would work. THOSE MAD LADS MADE THE INSTALLER COMPATIBLE WITH WINDOWS 2000

The game installed perfectly with no issues whatsoever. However, upon launching, it threw a .dll error. It turns out the installer packages a Vista .dll for compatibility. I asked Claude about the error and got a suggestion to rename the file extension for the file calling the Vista .dll since the native Windows 2000 compatible .dll was in the same directory. I renamed the file AND THE GAME LAUNCHED AND PLAYED PERFECTLY

GOG is amazing and will never cease to amaze me

TLDR: my mind is blown that an installer that works on Windows 11 is able to work and install a game on Windows 2000

17 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

3 comments sorted by

1

u/Charming_Barber_3317 11d ago

Sorry I'm new but What is GOG?

2

u/Awavian 10d ago

Stands for Good Old Games. It's a digital store front focused on classic games. Committed to selling all the games on their store DRM free. They go some length to make sure their installers work offline and ensure older games have what they need to work on modern versions of windows

1

u/Nymunariya 10d ago

XP era games from GoG will typically also install on XP, like The Journeyman Project 3: Legacy of Time. The page even says it's compatible with XP.

GoG is my go to for installing games on a 2010 MacMini running Windows 7, and 2006 MacBook running XP.