Trouble Installing Jimmy Neutron Game on XP

June 9, 2005 4:47 PM

Help my 5 year old! Trouble installing a Jimmy Neutron game ('95, '98, ME) on a windows XP box.

I just bought a copy of the game Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius from a cheapo online retailer. When I go install it, it loads 99% and freezes. I suspect this might have to do with the game listing Windows '95, '98, ME as compatible systems, and my computer being XP Home Edition. Any ideas? I have one disappointed 5 year old on my hands. Thanks.

posted by LarryC to computers & internet (6 comments total)

There's just no running some pre-XP software (frequently games) on XP. I clicked on your question all ready to dole out the "try emulation mode" advice, but that doesn't help if you can't install.

Your easiest solution would probably be to set up a separate 95, 98, or ME box, I fear.
posted by Zed_Lopez at 5:02 PM on June 9, 2005

having researched this kind of thing for other games like sim city 3000, i can say that often it's erratic ... some people can install and run them on xp and some can't

and you can run the setup.exe in emulation mode ... that might work, i've done it before with a couple of games ...
posted by pyramid termite at 6:56 PM on June 9, 2005

Got it! The word "emulation" from the above suggestions was the Google search term that brought me the answer. There is an XP utility that allows a PC to emulate earlier MS operating systems--but everyone but me already knew that. Termite was right that was erratic, I tried installing the game while emulating Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, finally it worked. The boy flew Jimmy Neutron all over town with his jet pack, and was ever so happy. Thanks guys.
posted by LarryC at 7:43 PM on June 9, 2005

I didn't know about this, either. Can you please link the utility? Thanks--
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 9:10 PM on June 9, 2005

Sure--here are Microsoft's directions, a little more concise than the page I followed. The tricky part is the "compatability mode" drop down menu. I went through every selection, any of them should have worked, but only the last one did.
posted by LarryC at 9:59 PM on June 9, 2005

Arrived late, glad to hear you got it working. If you ever need to run even older games, try DOSBox, a program that emulates an old school MS-DOS based setup.
posted by blag at 2:00 AM on June 10, 2005