Windows 2000/XP/Vista emulators

Bliss, originally known as Bucolic Green Hills, is the default and popular wallpaper of Windows XP

Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista was based on Windows NT. Playing games for these platforms on a modern system can be quite easy as programs can be run on later windows without sacrifices in backwards compability. For example if a program runs on Windows 7,there is a big chance it will work on Windows 10 and so on. If the program however doesn't know to work on Windows 7,Compability settings can be used to work with the aforementioned operating system,which will also work in Windows 10.

But...if you are trying to get them working, you should only be using this page as a last resort and would be better suited to read the PCGamingWiki, which likely already has information on the game you want. If you don't have the game you want, you can download it from myabandonware if it's not available on the platforms like steam or gog.

Wrappers

Sometimes, all that may be missing in order to get an old game running is a DLL wrapper for the graphics API. This is common for games that were designed for 3Dfx Glide cards. More information is available at the respective page.

Game Engine Recreations and Source Ports

Many games are considered enough of a cult classic that the source code is made publicly available for study and use as a base for ports to newer platforms. For some titles, this is done by the developer themselves to show other developers the viability of such a project. However, for most games this'll usually be done by force through reverse engineering.

We have already listed many of the most popular video game ports and recreations at the respective page.

Hypervisors

Most viable way to get Windows 2000/XP/Vista software running is to run the operating system in a virtual machine at the moment. This requires you to know how to manually install a Windows NT-family operating system on a computer. If you do decide to install Windows XP in a virtual machine, you will need to install integrations for features like 3D acceleration, mouse integration and shared folders etc.

VMWare Tools supports Windows 95 through Windows 10. VirtualBox does not include 3D acceleration for Windows XP/Vista due to changes in VirtualBox's 3D acceleration system, you must use VirtualBox 6.0.24 or earlier to use 3D acceleration in a Windows XP or Vista guest.

Recommendations for a 3D accelerated WinXP VM

Type 2 Hypervisors

Name	Operating System(s)	vGPU Adapter
PC / x86
VirtualBox		VBoxVGA
VMware Workstation		SVGA3D
Parallels Desktop		Parallels Video Adapter

 You can use Type 2 hypervisors with wrappers like "WineD3D for Windows" or "DxWnd" etc. on the guest OS side for increasing your chance if games uncompatible with vgpu adapter. DxWnd 2.05.70, WineD3D 1.7.52 or 1.9.7-staging(partially) versions are the latest compatible versions with Windows XP (if OneCoreAPI is not installed to OS), for getting these old "WineD3D for Windows" builds use this link

Type 1 Hypervisors

Name	Operating System(s)	vGPU Adapter
PC / x86
QEMU+KVM		GPU-Passthrough
QEMU-3dfx+KVM		MESA GL/3Dfx Glide Pass-Through ($)
QEMU-3dfx+WHPX		MESA GL/3Dfx Glide Pass-Through ($)

 You need XP compatible GPU Drivers for GPU-P, latest supported GPU and GPU drivers from AMD; its 200 series and from nVidia; its 900 series. For more information about this you can use this link.

 With Windows host and WHPX it will be much slower performance wise compared to Linux host and KVM. You will have to stay with QEMU TCG entirely until you manually switched to 'ACPI PC' kernel. The starting 'ACPI Uniprocessor' kernel does not boot on QEMU WHPX.
 Hyper-V + GPU-P only for Windows 10/11 host/guest systems at the moment. So you don't have any option other than "QEMU-3dfx with WHPX" OR "Type 2 hypervisors" for current Windows hosts at the moment.

Videos;

QEMU+KVM GPU passthrough guide for Windows XP VMs
KJ Liew's QEMU-3dfx ($) Windows XP SP3 Retro Gaming VM From Scratch to 3D Acceleration in 15 mins

Compatibility pages;

vGPU adapter compatibility sheet for WinXP (only partially translated via GT)
Working games under VirtualBox (Linux host - Windows guest)
SVGA3D (VMWare) - 3D Applications Compatibility List
WineHQ appdb (useful for "WineD3D for Windows" wrapper)

Hardware emulation

86Box and Windows XP

These are emulators in the truest sense, in that they don't do any kind of cheating the way a hypervisor would. 3D graphics and Pentium CPU emulation for these systems usually requires modest to powerful single thread performance of CPUs. PCem, 86Box and PCBox are full retro x86 computer emulators, spanning from the original IBM 5150 to Pentium III PCs. Setting it up is much like building an actual retro computer, but in software, so expect it to be as difficult as setting up an actual retro PC. This means you're going to have to install Windows 2000/XP (no Vista support at the moment) along with all necessary drivers for the hardware you chose. This is also a great option if you want most accurate option for 3DFX Voodoo emulation and Windows 2000/XP games, even if it may be difficult to set up and slow performance compared to Hypervisors.

For more information;

Main article: POS_(Pong_Consoles)_CPUs_and_Other_Chips#Intel_CPU.27s

 What about implementing KVM and these virtual adapters (VMware SVGA/SVGA II and VBoxVGA emulation) for emulators like DOSBox forks or others.
 DOSBox-X issue page "Windows NT, 2000, XP - how to install them as guest?"
 Vogons.org thread: "Using PCem with a XP guest"