I thought I'd better ask this while the sale is on.

EDIT.. In case you are wondering why I don't just try it and find out.. I'd have to dig it out from somewhere.. not sure exactly where.. and the answer would just be for future reference.

I have the origional version of BG & Tales of the Sword Coast and also BG2 and Throne of Ball expansion in the big A4 boxes. I installed them both last night. I would find the patch for them though as it sorts a few minor issues out with gameplay etc.

Running on Windows 7 64 Bit with Quad Core Phenom 2, 8 Gb Ram and a MSI GTX 570 VGA card.

Only thing that happens to me with BG & IWD series is that I have to turn off the 3D Acceleration in the config screens or it flickers something rotten when you start it up. You dont really need it on in all fairness as they are painted backgrounds on the Infinity Engine, doesnt look much different at all in software only mode.

So to answer your question, yeah the disc versions work absolutely fine on Windows 7.

Actually, Planescape works spot on also. I have the 4 CD version of it from back in the day!

last time i tried (W7x64, i5 750, 5870) all the BG and IWD games worked flawlessly.

that goes for the vast majority of old games in general.

The only slight troubles I've had with the disc versions (CD and DVD) of the Infinity Engine games on Windows 7 (x64) are:

* Multiplayer in BG1: The game has to be in windowed mode (alt-enter to switch to and from full-screen) to start or join a multiplayer game, you can switch back to full-screen as soon as you've entered the multiplayer session.
* Torment: The game requires switching to 16-bit graphics.

Beyond those, everything is perfect as far as I've seen. And I believe GOG has yet to change the latter.

Yeah,

The only games I have difficulty with has been the older Lucasarts games like Grim Fandango and Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine. If you are running 64 Bit version of Windows you cant install them due to 16 Bit installers used, however there are a few sites out there with modified installers which allowed me to get them up and running.

Only other thing you may find on an odd few titles like Nomad Soul (Omnikron) & Nocturne for example is that they use 24 bit buffers at hardware level. A lot of the new Nvidia and ATI cards have gradually been phasing out the 24 bit buffers on the hardware and in the drivers so when you run the games you get missing textures etc.

I'll chime in and say that my retail German version of BG and ToSC works fine on Win7 (ATI HD 4890, 4GB, Win7 64-bit, AMD Phenom X4) works perfectly as long as you switch off the hardware acceleration from the graphics menu as iainmet said (actually, in this case I think you "switch on" software rendering). The GOG version doesn't have this problem, but then I personally don't remember them having much of a visual impact on my old Win98 PC anyway.

I think the hardware acceleration used by BG was actually DirectDraw video acceleration and was only designed to compensate for slower CPUs of the time. Seeing as DirectDraw under Windows Vista and 7 is 100% emulated anyway, it's pointless.

The only place where BG1 used hardware "acceleration" was for mirroring sprites. 3D acceleration for spell effects was added in BG2, IWD1, and IWD2.

indeed. 16bit installers are the most common compatibility problem, in my experience. the games themselves usually run fine once you manage to work your way around that. "No One Lives Forever" is a good example.

it helps if you have a 32bit environment on the side, either dual boot with XPx86 or XP-mode in W7. NOLF can be installed in a 32bit environment and copied over to the 64bit OS. plays fine.

Blood 2 is another one that can cause issues from disc also, you get a cant install on an NT based system (NT - Thats going back a few years!). You can however just copy all the files from the disc into a folder on your hard disc then its literally a case of just double click the game startup exe file and it runs flawlessley. They didnt compress any of the files on the disc for installation hence why it works!

There is a site run by a guy called Marcus Egger I think it is that has installers for most of the old Lucasarts games, full instructions on how to create a serviceable Disc 1 for Indy and the old Star Wars games. There is also a compact installer for Grim Fandango elsewhere.

Lucasarts Installers :

http://www.markusegger.at/

The dedication to old games and getting them run on new systems is great from these individuals.

I dont have NOLF 1 & 2 anymore unfortunately, loaned them to my brother and he didnt give me them back, he actually also has my Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Unreal 2 and the NOLF spinoff Contract Jack.

Hope NOLF lands on GoG somepoint, they were great games.

The latest released version of the "NT based systems" isn't that old though, NT 6.1 is quite popular today, with 6.2 on the way, though some people still cling to NT 5.1. More commonly known as Windows 7, 8, and XP respectively.

Windows (non-NT) died with Windows 4.9, a.k.a. Millennium Edition or Me.

Don't say its name!!!!!!

Meh, at least it managed to introduce half-decent USB support into the 9x line (what existed as third-party drivers for 98 was quite a joke). And as a DOS-based system it was easier to tinker with than the NT series. The worst thing it did (as far as I remember, though I never actually used it as a main system as I had already moved on to 2000) was to remove the option to reboot into DOS mode, but I seem to remember there being a way around that, wasn't there?

Yup.

That's great.

Thanks muchly, peeps.