I just came across a bunch of old PC games (Alone in the Dark, Monkey Island, Police Quest, ect.)

I'm trying to install them but usually all I get is a blank command prompt or it just vanishes quickly. I'm running XP...so i'm guessing that's the reason. Is there some old windows emulator that I can run it in?

I have no idea.

you should be able to set the program to run in windows 98 or whatever is required. however, i'm not sure how. just go into the properties and mess around

search for a program called DOSBOX which is a dos emulator for win...it works great, and its how I play some of my old games (kings quest, etc)

You don't need DOSBOX to run them. Just change the correct .exe (after installation) compatibility to Win95. I have a really old one, Mastery of Magic (might be Masters), and that's how I got it to play. You don't do that to the MSDOS shortcut, but to the actual file.

For any old LucasArts game like Monkey Island you can use a program called SCUMMVM.

Here's the link for it : http://www.scummvm.org/downloads.php

I love the old LucasArts games like Monkey Island and Sam and Max and Day of the Tentacle.

I used this because I couldn't get any of them to work, they would crash.

Awesome. Thanks for the feedback.

But the games won't install so I can't change the exe's after the fact.

I'll try the other things.

Dos Box is great. The sound works and everything. It also emulates the cpu, meaning that it can run on a mac or whatever. Completely cross platform.

I had that problem with MoM. There was some site, Underdog or Underground or something like that, that I downloaded it from.

While that may be illegal if you don't own the rights, I do own the game, so I did nothing legally wrong.