I'm feeling like it's time for a new computer, and I've found one I think looks good (yes, it's pre-built, please don't go into that now). The main thing I'm worried about is that it has Windows 7 (x64). I'm really worried about games not working on 7, I play mostly games from here and the occasional modern-ish game like Arkham Asylum. Do any of you have any wisdom or advice to share?

I was thinking about doing something similar recently. I went through my backlog of games and checked the game pages of each, compiled a list of games that had no windows 7 support and then asked here which games ran without much problem. i scratched several off the list after checking the answers and looking online for people who might have had problems with the same game and ended up with about 2 or 3 games that could be potentially troublesome. i now have those on cue to be played on XP before i touch any other GOG's.

Also, my wife has a laptop with win 7 and that helped me test two of the games that I wasn't sure if they'd run or not.

I suggest making a list of how many games that don't support windows 7 you own.

Nice Mieu from Abyss :p I'm currently watching the series during smoke breaks.

About switching to Win7 -- it's pretty awesome, but you definitely will run into compatibility problems once in a while. Not all the time, but occasionally. You could buy a separate hard drive or pull out an old one from somewhere and install WinXP on that for your incompatible stuff (dual boot on separate hard drives). Virtualization might work, but I haven't tested it yet.

Whatever you do, just don't mess with dual-boot WinXP and Win7 on a single hard drive -- it's more trouble than it's worth.

I could pull out my hard drive from my current computer and use it for XP, I suppose. I might also mess around with running XP in VMWare, if I can find the XP disc that came with my current comp.

Of my 100 something GOGs, only two don't work 100%. The rest either just worked, or worked with light/heavy tweaking.

And actually, the two that don't work seem to have frame rate issues, the frame rates are to high. I don't know for sure though, too lazy to do tests and try and fix it right now. :P

A number of games here need me to write a batch file, to kill explorer.exe, otherwise you get major discoloration. Then when I exit, it launches explorer.exe again.

And small number of games also need me to limit the amount of cores they use to prevent crashing.

So yeah, you might run into trouble, and every PC is different so something that worked for me might not work for you.

Also, I'm not completely knowledgeable on this subject, but I think virtualization won't support games running on Direct3D or OpenGL (Correct me if I'm wrong)

Haven't had a game that would not run on 7 x64 so far.

Don't eat the yellow snow.

Not what you were looking for? ok...

Most of the games that have been broken in recent times have been a result of DirectX changes, those problems exist in XP and Vista too.

Apart from a couple of games that require admin privileges or running without explorer I haven't actually come across anything that wouldn't run that worked on XP, that's not to say there aren't any games that don't work just that their few & far between I guess.

At the end of the day though you can't use an old O/S forever and compatibility worsens rather than improves with the passage of time, Therefore there's no real reason not to use Win7 if it comes installed with a new machine.

I use Win7 since its released and have not run into any game that makes trouble to me.
I usually have admin rights and UAC at lowest level and any 32 Bit and 64 Bit Windows Software/Game runs which is...uh...maybe around 100 Programs at all (and all Original).
Older 32 Bit games may have trouble with the DRM Software but usually they have been either patched or the DRM Developer (Tages, Securom etc.) offers a DRM Update that makes the Game run with Win7 x 64.
16 Bit Software wont run without Emulator but i dont think you want to run Win 95 Software or something ;)
And even if you can use probably the Virtual-PC Emulator Software.
All GoG-games i own run with Win7 x64 like charm.

I dont wait for Win8 - to me Win7 could last ten more years and i would be happy!

Same here, the only compatibility problems I've had were with 16bit programs. Usually it was installer programs from the win9x era.

But in general I've found games to run more reliably on my Win 7 system than on my XP system.

Run a copy of XP in VirtualBox.

I had the same fears. So I bought another harddisk, a 2TB one and installed it as a secondary harddisk. Then I installed Win7 on it. My WinXP harddisk is still my main one. I can choose which Windows to boot up to. I install those with Direct X 11 into the Win7 harddisk and play most of my other games on WinXP.

But I've tried most of my older excluding GoG-made Win7 compatible games on Win7, games like Rollercoaster Tycoon 3, Medieval 2 Total War etc... seems to work fine.

Honestly, I have way more problems with getting games to display properly on a widescreen than I do with games not working on Windows 7. I think I own (or at least tried to play) one game that wouldn't work with W7. I can't say the same with games not playing nice with my 42" widescreen.

I switched to Win 7 when it first launched, and other than a handful of games most stuff works better on 7 than it does on Vista when it claims Vista support.

The games that give issue are:

Original disc copy of The Witcher (you have to upgrade tages to get it to run)
Sacred 2 vanilla (32 bit it seems to run fine but x64 and it will >not< work PERIOD)
Chronicles of Riddick (Again you have to upgrade tages to get it to run)

As far as GOG's, a lot of games when 7 first came out needed tweaks to run properly. In V:TM for example, if you had indexing off on the folder the game was in the saves would go all funky and you would start from the beginning every time, but everything you'd killed prior to saving and reloading would already be dead, essentially breaking the game.

Gothic 2 had some issues but those were related to graphics card drivers, not so much Win 7. I believe that situation has been fixed for a while.

If you have a spare hard drive I have a spare copy of Win 7 HP x64 I'm not doing anything win. It's the upgrade edition but don't let that fool you, the upgrade disc comes with the full version of Win 7. It even has 32bit on one disc if you prefer that. Maybe we could work out an arrangement and I can mail you my copy of Win 7 in exchange for a game or something. PM me if you're interested.

And yes, it's a legit copy. I bought it for $50 in the fire sale they had when it first launched. I just ended up getting a new pc that comes with 7 with SP 1 pre installed, along with the 7 disc, so I have no use for my old copy. PM me if interested.

WIndows 7 is far better than Vista for compatibility, and from my personal experience most of the games on GOG that don't list Windows 7 compatibility actually do work. Sometimes you need minor tweaking, not very often. And I've managed to get every non-GOG older game I've ever tried running somehow through Googling a solution.

I definitely think you should jump on it. So long as you don't have any older games on discs you absolutely need to run you'll be fine. Basically WIndows 7 is fine for old games if the majority of your old games are from GOG.