Classic Windows games on Windows 8

minesweeperwindows 8

Who can live without the games supplies with Windows? Countless hours of productivity have been lost to Minesweeper, Solitaire, Chess and the likes.

Sadly, Microsoft did not include desktop versions of these games in Windows 8 (altough you can download revamped Modern UI versions from the Store). Does anyone know how the run the Windows 7 versions of these in Windows 8?

Best Answer

You can run the Windows XP versions of the game relatively easily, as long as you have a Windows XP installed on another machine or VM. You can just copy the game exe files over from C:\Windows\System32\. You can also copy them from the install disk, but the process is a little more complicated. Here is an article with full instructions.

To get the Windows 7 versions of the game working is even more work, involving modifying the game binaries. I am not a lawyer, and I have not read the Windows 7 and 8 licences in detail, but I am guessing this is technically violating at least the Windows 7 license, although in reality I doubt you'll attract that much attention. I found good instructions on howtogeek.com but I won't link directly here.

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