Vista - All of my old games run improperly and I have selected the compatibility option

All of my newer games like Doom, Call of Duty 4, Crysis, Assassin's Creed, and Quake 4 run just fine. But my favorite games like Age of Mythology, Star Craft, Sacrifice, WarCraft 3, and age of empires run like @#$%. They load up fine and they do not crash, but they lag to the point that they are unplayable.

It should have nothing to do with my computers capabilities.

2.4 processor
4gs of ram
Nvidia Geforce 9800
300g hard drive

I have selected the compatability option for all these games and have experienced no improvment.

Between this and the annoying promts vista always gives you. I am about ready to throw my copy in the trash and go back to XP.

Hello dgmv700, welcome.

The only game I can't get to run is GP4.
Have you tried disable visual themes, disable desktop composition,
on the compatibility tab.
Or run as win 98.

Yeah disabling the other options doesnt seem to work and the games wont even start up in 98.

So if I can't conveniently play the majority of my games and vista uses more resources than XP and it batters me with annoying prompts, than what good is vista? What does vista have to offer me that I do not already have with XP? I think I will be ok with only 3gs of ram instead of 4.

Your old games were not designed for Vista. I would suggest getting a old XP computer to play them on.

Or you can duel boot.

Shouldn't Vista be designed for both old and new games? Its not like we are changing from tape decks to cds or vcrs to dvds. We are talking about software that is still stored on cds. When we changed to dvds we didnt discard all movies made before 1998. No thats right we transfered that data to the new technology. Microsoft lets not just rename damaged goods, slap a new coat of paint on it, and try to peddle it as new merchandise.

Just uninstall "smart doctor" if you have a ASUS nvidia 9800 grapic card. Smart doctor was the problem for me.

Between this and the annoying promts vista always gives you. I am about ready to throw my copy in the trash and go back to XP.

answer:just turn UAC it off in the controll panel.
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its all down to compatability, its like you trying to play an xbox game in an xbox 360, it has to download an emulator to play the game and not all games work, some games work flawlessly, some games refuse to work altogether, secondly companies that transfer their movies/recordings onto current formats are due to the company investing money into it, i dont think ensemble studios are going to invest money into re-releasing their old games for compatability to please a few nostalgic customers. You cannot just assume that because what you have heard in the media is something you must worship like a religion, i havent had a problem with vista and its useability, seems to be stable and runs all the games i need, if you want to play old games, i suggest you dual boot or get an old machine to play old games. Just ask yourself if you have had any productive problems with vista? EG/ Bluescreening, driver issues, display problems? nope? then vista works properly.