Gaming Laptop Windows8 Disaster

[ffxik]

As far as I know the product key that is assigned to each disc is only good for one computer.  I'm not to sure that it can be transferred from one to the other.  To answer your question though.  Yes,  installing multiple OS's and choosing which OS you wish to use is possible.  It's called dual booting and it's not that hard to pull off.   

Actually for Windows 8 the Product Key is in the BIOS. Now, dual booting on Win8 can be an issue for a variety of reasons. First is that you'll need to manually edit the BCD to enable the boot menu, or else Win8 won't be bootable. Also notebooks with Win8 now are running on UEFI 2.3.1 firmware, usually with SecureBoot enabled. You can't install Windows XP 32bit on that setting. If you disable UEFI, you won't be able to boot Windows 8 at all.

Do not use Windows XP 64bit for games. And do not use VMs for games that require any sort of video card, as the Hypervisor provides a generic one.

What is the game you are trying to play?

I don't know much about Win8's ins and outs admittedly except that I hate to use it.  I was referring to his WinXP disc though.  The more I associate with people that have 8, I really don't want to waste my time with that OS

[pceslayer]

Most of those Win95 and 98 games wont run on anything newer than XP. They are not true 32bit games and probably have a 16bit installer.
That 16bit crap got ripped out of the kernel starting with Vista.

Fable is 32bit so it should work fine... NFS3 has a vista patch out there to make it playable on a 64bit OS.

If you want a gaming laptop for games from that era, you need to buy a old laptop from that era. It'll save you a ton of money too.

-=EDIT=-
This may help
http://www.reactos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=90351

Also make sure you download the DirectX 9c runtime library.

[sin2beta]

I said this on another thread, but will also put it here. Check out GOG.com and Steam. They take care of everything for you regarding old games on modern tech. Insanely good prices.

[brunauss]

I said this on another thread, but will also put it here. Check out GOG.com and Steam. They take care of everything for you regarding old games on modern tech. Insanely good prices.

That option is a nice one, but some of us are not rich gamers and frankly find it counter productive to buy all the games again, just to make Windows happy. I also recommend getting a second hard drive, then formatting and partitioning it to 32 bit for your old operating system. Would be cheaper than buying a whole other computer and not take up additional space.

[90snostalga]

I said this on another thread, but will also put it here. Check out GOG.com and Steam. They take care of everything for you regarding old games on modern tech. Insanely good prices.

That option is a nice one, but some of us are not rich gamers and frankly find it counter productive to buy all the games again, just to make Windows happy. I also recommend getting a second hard drive, then formatting and partitioning it to 32 bit for your old operating system. Would be cheaper than buying a whole other computer and not take up additional space.

Yes I agree.  All the pc games I find are by thrift shopping and are usually under 5 bucks for all.  Plus I prefer to have the actual copy just in case something happens to the computer in any way but I do appreciate the recommendations Beta.