When I reformatted my computer and installed Windows 7 a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t think much about what I should save and what I should not. Of course I backed up all my music, documents, photos, important files, and so on, but there were a few things that got lost in the move, so to speak. So one night when I realized my Heroes of Might and Magic II saves were no longer, I set out to reinstall the venerable game.
Load the CD in the CD drive and click install. Error message: 16-bit games like HOMM2 don’t work in 64-bit Windows 7. Absurd! However there seemed to be some hope: By using a mode called Windows XP Virtual, I could in theory run any software that was compatible with Windows XP (which this game was). I downloaded the appropriate updates from Microsoft and ran the installation within Windows XP again. Fail! One and a half hours of my life irrevocably taken from me, and all I am left with is an incomprehensible error message.
So if you are looking for backwards compatibility with old-as-stone games, stick with the 32-bit Windows 7 (on which HOMM2 works, so there is a happy ending to this episode since my laptop runs Win7 32-bit), or dual boot with Windows XP. This virtual driver mode is nonsense.
Answer:
1) 16-bit games like Heroes of Might and Magic 2 do not work with 64-bit Windows 7.
2) Windows XP Virtual for Windows 7 is a crapshoot that hasn’t proven itself useful yet.
3) 16-bit games do work with Windows 7 32-bit.
Keywords: “heroes of might and magic 2″, “windows 7″, “compatibility”, “16-bit”, “windows 7 64-bit”, “win7″, etc etc.