Question

I bought this computer 2 months ago and I'm trying to get my older games to play with it. The one that is giving me more trouble is Star Trek Starfleet Academy, DVD-ROM version. It will simply not play any of the movies. It's just stuck there. I tried looking at them manually with the Win Media Player and they play fine. Can you help me with this?
Thank you.

Answer

Unfortunately getting older games to work with newer operating systems such as Microsoft Windows XP can be difficult because most games rely on either older software programs or older operating systems.

As far as getting the game to work we suggest you check with the software developer for any updates or patches that can be installed on the computer to help with compatibility issues.

Regarding the inability to play any of the movies it's possible that you do not have the proper codecs installed on the computer to play the video because of the incompatibility between the new media player. Often since these are game movies the codecs will be included with the game install. You may want to review the below codec dictionary definition for links to codec related documents and try downloading the DivX codec. However it's likely that the game is using a proprietary codec, which is why it's not working.

http://www.computerhope.com/jargon/c/codec.htm

If the game installs any type of special video add-on you may also want to see if there is an update for that video player.