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I have the original box-copy of "Medal of Honor Airborne", where the system requirements state that the game cannot be played on Windows Vista 64-bit. Why are some games not supported on 64-bit operating systems?

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    Related (if not duplicate): gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/1393/…
    – Oak
    Commented Sep 6, 2010 at 8:43
  • Not sure it's technically a duplicate but it does answer the question more directly and with more quality
    – user106385
    Commented Jul 26, 2015 at 16:40

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32 bit games can run 64 bit Windows, typically without any issues. Older 16 bit games designed for Windows XP or earlier will not run on Windows Vista/7 64 bit.

Many times, software and games will claim they do not run on a particular operating system (Windows Vista 64 bit in this case) simply because they don't want to allocate resources to test on that particular system or support it. According to this forum post, Medal of Honor: Airborne runs just fine on Vista 64 bit.

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  • Thanks for answering. It's interesting that I couldn't even install the game. It just rejects to install on Vista x64.
    – Mehper C. Palavuzlar
    Commented Jul 7, 2010 at 22:42
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    Perhaps the problem is that the installer program is 16 bit but the actual game is 32 bit. I would try installing the game on a virtual machine and then simply copying the game directory to your Vista machine and run it. Usually old games don't touch the registry.
    – cowgod
    Commented Jul 8, 2010 at 7:12
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    I seriously doubt that. It's the UT3 engine, so it's definitely 64-bit compatible. The installer is just set-up to refuse to install on a 64-bit system because EA doesn't want to have to deal with 64-bit problems. IE laziness. Just run the installer in compatibility mode as marco suggested.
    – user56
    Commented Jul 8, 2010 at 13:44
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    Why wouldn't a 16 bit game run on 32 bit Windows Vista or Windows 7?
    – Andrew J. Brehm
    Commented Jul 16, 2010 at 13:43
  • I believe 32-bit versions of Vista and 7 can run 16-bit programs in compatibility mode (natively, without a virtual machine) as they have WoW (Windows on Windows, not WOW64).
    – Nick T
    Commented Aug 4, 2010 at 17:22
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For some games (not all unfortunately) that worked well in previous Windows versions (e.g. Windows XP), in Vista or Windows 7 you have the possibility to start the game in compatibility mode.

Just right-click on the executable, select Properties and in the Compatibilty tab choose Windows XP and try. Same for installers.

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You can also try to run the software in Windows 7's XP-mode, which simulates a complete and independent Windows XP within your machine.

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  • Win7 Professional and above only. It's VMs for the rest of them.
    – Mazura
    Commented Feb 1, 2016 at 2:42

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