Playing old PC Games in Windows 7

[Housemum]

I have the Jump Ahead series of kids' software, and they are the only computer games I find worthwhile (although she's just about outgrowing these as they stop at year 2, my 7yo doesn't "get" these Club Penguin online communities any more than I do - she likes to be able to simply have a game and choose to play it rather than have to explore and chat).

However, since having to buy a new PC which came with Windows 7 they won't even run in compatibility mode. They used to run in XP, although a few of the games were actually Windows 95/98 games.

Before I shell out £40 or so to Microsoft to upgrade to a higher edition of Windows 7, will the Virtual PC XP mode in Windows 7 work for this or is there a free solution out there somewhere? (That's not too techy for idiots like me to use)

Thanks for any advice.

Virtual XP Mode for Windows 7 should work, it's basically a whole Windows XP Machine running under Windows 7.

However there might be other ways...

To begin with you could Google the exact name of the package you're trying to run with Windows 7.

For example literally google:
"Jump Ahead" "Game Name" "Windows 7"

Someone might very well know some tricks to get it working.

I've used a tool called DosBox to get much older DOS era games working on modern PCs, but I don't think that'll be much help for Windows 95 and onwards

I'll give that a try tomorrow. I've used DOS box before - I used to have s fab lion king game that was never reissued