Old Games on Vista

Reader IndigoBrown123 has come up with a way to get ZSX running on Vista; I still haven’t tried it, so use it your own risk:

OK I had that exact same error with ZSX:
Run-time error ‘429′:
ActiveX component can’t create object

On Vista but managed to get it to work. I had to do the following steps:

1. Download and Install VB6 runtimes:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=7B9BA261-7A9C-43E7-9117-F673077FFB3C&displaylang=en

2. Download and Install AllRuntimes.exe (as Admin):
http://www.spacejock.com/Runtimes.html

3. Download and Register dx7vb.dll (as Admin)
http://www.dlldump.com/download-dll-files_new.php/dllfiles/D/dx7vb.dll/5.03.2600.2180/download.html
Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> Right-Click ‘Command Prompt’ -> Run as Administrator
regsvr32 dx7vb.dll

4. Download and Register dx8vb.dll (as Admin)
http://www.dlldump.com/download-dll-files_new.php/dllfiles/D/dx8vb.dll/5.03.2600.2180/download.html
Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> Right-Click ‘Command Prompt’ -> Run as Administrator
regsvr32 dx8vb.dll

After that it all worked. I am not sure how many of these steps are necessary but the game works after I installed and registered that lot.

Thanks, indigoBrown123!

2 Comments January 5, 2008

Vista and the Old Games

It has come to my attention that Vista doesn’t play well with my older games, i.e. everything before The Dishwasher.  ZSX3/Manic Space, which I’ve ran on Vista successfully, uses DirectX 8.0, but the older ones (ZSX 1 + 2, SCZ) use DX7, and I’ve had no luck with that.

Here’s a nice technical discussion/flamewar on the msdn boards about the topic.

The gist is that some developers are feeling spurned by Microsoft for dropping support for old technologies, but Microsoft has stated that the technology has reached its planned end-of-life, and it’s time to move on.  I tend to side with Microsoft on this one–technology does not age like classic novels.  It is a shame to see old games die, but honestly–we shouldn’t have to bury each new OS release in piles of legacy support.

So, long story short, if you want to play SCZ, ZSX2 or ZSX, use a Windows 2000/Me/XP box.  If anyone figures out how to get the older ones working on Vista, let me know.

6 Comments August 29, 2007