Windows 7: PinBall

1) Create 2 folders in My Documents and give them suitable names. These will be for the Source and Destination files. I used PinBall SRC and PinBall respectively. If you wish, you can just create a Destination folder and work directly from the disk.

2) Insert XP disk into drive. When the AutoPlay dialogue appears, click on Open folder to view files.


3) Click to open the I386 folder


4) Copy the following files to your Source folder. You can copy the final file, wavemix.inf, straight to your Destination folder. If you wish, you can also work directly from the disk.


5) Open a Command Prompt.


6) Now you need to expand the aforementioned files, and copy them into your Destination folder. Note that you will need to provide the path(s) to your folder(s) here.

i) From your Source folder.


ii) From the XP disk (change drive letter to suit).


7) Repeat for all files, 68 in total.

8) Now open your Destination folder. You will notice that, although the files have been expanded, their names (or rather the 3-character extension) ends with _.You now need to rename each file to correct the file extension. Use the following table for guidance.

CH_ ... CHM
DA_ ... DAT
EX_ ... EXE
HL_ ... HLP
IN_ ... INI
MI_ ... MID
WA_ ... WAV
BM_ ... BMP

9) Your Destination folder should now look like this.


10) You can now run Pinball directly from the executable.


11) If the following dialogue appears, click Run.


12) You may now enjoy playing PinBall.

That seems like a really huge effort for such a simple game. I bet I can find a download somewhere for the game if I look hard enough.

UPDATE:

Alternate Easy Method:

1. On a Windows XP computer, click the My computer icon and navigate to C:Program FilesWindows NT folder.(you may need to click show the contents of this folder to gain access)
2. Copy the folder called Pinball to USB thumb drive or a cd or zip it up and Email it to yourself.
3. On your Vista/7 Computer logon as an administrator, then insert your device that has the folder Pinball on it. Copy the folder Pinball to C:Program FilesMicrosoft Games. You may need to deal with the User Account Control a few times.
4. Now open the Pinball folder at C:Program FilesMicrosoft Games and locate the file called pinball.exe
5. Right click the Pinball.exe file and drag it to the Games folder in the Start menu and choose copy here, and you’re done.

A friend of mine actually sent me the link to this forum, and I made an account just now because I wanted to mention that this method works if you have Windows XP mode installed on your windows 7 computer. So, if you have Windows 7 Professional and are able to get Windows XP mode, you can copy the folder from that. When I did it, I mounted my flash drive in Windows XP mode and copied to that, but now that I think of it you could probably directly copy it over to your hard drive since you can access your actual Windows 7 drive from Windows XP mode.

UPDATE: I can run pinball, but it is very sluggish and not playable. If anyone has a way to make it work outside of Windows XP mode, let me know since that is where I retrieved the file.

You do NOT need a Windows XP disk to load/play Pinball in Vista or Windows 7

You do NOT need a Windows XP drive or partition to load/plan Pinball in Vista or Windows 7

You DO need access to a computer running XP, and you DO need a flash drive

Here's what I just did to install and run Pinball on my new computer that's running Windows 7/64:

Insert a flash drive into the XP machine

Go to C:Program Files\Windows NT

Use SEND TO to copy the PINBALL folder to the drive

Insert the flash drive into the Vista or Windows 7 machine

Open C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games

Using your mouse, move the PINBALL folder into C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games

Right click on the PINBALL file (the one with the logo) and create a shortcut on your desktop.

It loads, it runs, and all functions appear to be intact.

Have tried following the instructions supplied by Dwarf but gett error message in cmd promt see attachment. Any suggestions

I am trying this on my netbook using windows starter

Dave Heff

Hi Dave and welcome to Windows 7 Forums

Have you copied the files from the XP disk to the source folder? The message you are getting indicates that the file cannot be found.

For XP Mode / Virtual PC users:

1. Copy the folder [XP Mode]C:\Program Files\Windows NT\Pinball to your host.
2. Play

Hi Dwarf

thanks for your prompt reply, yes pretty sure I have copied all the files you listed, but will have anotrher look. The disc I am usinng is a Dell reinstallation cd using XP Home Edition

Dave

Thanks for your help, being a novice to the cmd promt, it felt quite scary inputing items...but sure enough I now have pinball up & Running allthough it freezes in full screen, but I can live with that. Once again many thanks and a happy new year

Yes, you can just copy the Pinball folder (Program Files\Windows NT\ Pinball) from any XP machine into your Windows 7 Program Files\Microsoft Games, but the HELP buttons (both types: menu and context) won't work, because the necessary files are not in the XP folder referred to above. To find what you need (back on XP) go to C:\WINDOWS\Help, and grab pinball.chm, pinball.chw (these two are for menu/html help), and pinball.hlp (context help..the little ? up next to the X on the Options/Player Controls screen).
Copy to windows 7, put the .chm and .chw in C:\Windows\Help (not in Help\Help), and put the .hlp in C:\Windows. Html help now opens, but that ? in the player controls screen won't work yet (not that you need it); but if you're curious, follow the suggested help and support trail to microsoft Article 917607.
By the way, instead of having to make a shortcut of the pinball .exe to put in your start menu, you can download an installer here Microsoft Pinball For Windows Vista & 7 - Home which puts everthing in place for you (But you'll still have to get the HELP files as detailed above).
Any comments welcome, I've probably missed something...oh yes, with the html help, you won't be able to open the 'Using the Help Viewer' topics..no loss, but damn. The necessary files must be somewhere back in XP.
UPDATE: Since doing the above (including installing the two 'fix it' files from microsoft Article 917607 mentioned above), have experienced some strange behavior generally, so probably not a good idea to do all this unless you know what you are doing. I'll try to figure this out properly and hopefully update this post again.