I have Flight Simulator 2000 and am trying to install it on

Hello my name is ***** ***** certified computer professional with over 10 years experience. I will be happy to help you.

As I am sure you are aware Flight Simulator 2000 is only compatible up to windows XP.

The problem is the developers never updated that same version to work with later versions of windows.

So I am sorry to say there is no way you are going to get it to run in any simple way on windows 8.1 because of the compatibility issues. Incompatible means just that.

That being said there are things you can try such as running a virtual version of windows XP within Windows 8.1.

I will tell you straight away this will not be easy, it will be time consuming and may still not work properly. If you are not very skilled with computers this may be entirely out of your comfort zone.

If you do want to explore that option I would suggest you follow this guide on setting windows XP up as a virtual machine:
https://zeltser.com/how-to-get-a-windows-xp-mode-virtual-machine-on-windows/

If you can get XP running as a virtual machine you can then try to reinstall the software.

You have to remember though that this may not work as it did on your old computer as you have modern hardware in this machine and for many other reasons as well.

My advice would be to just use flight simulator on the windows XP computer if you still have it.

Trying to get software that is not compatible to run on a newer machine is very time consuming and in many cases not possible.

Another option if you no longer have the windows XP computer is to pick up an old used computer that can run the software, it should be pretty cheap and would save you a lot of time and frustration.

As I said you could try to set up a windows XP virtual machine on your windows 8.1 computer but I cannot promise you this will work perfectly if at all.

Your only surefire way to get this working as intended is to run the software on a platform it was built for i.e. compatible with.

You are not the first person to ask about this, people love that flight simulator with the sidewinder controller but the blunt facts are it is not compatible on newer operating systems.

My professional advice is just run it on an older machine. If you like it so much it is worth spending a few dollars on an old windows XP computer for the purpose of using the simulator. Believe me, this is the path of least resistance. If you start messing with virtual machines you may find that you end up spending a lot of time and the simulator still does not work 100% correctly, that is just the nature of incompatibility. You could probably pick up a used windows xp computer for less than $100 at this point so that is what I would do if you no longer have your old computer. It is the quickest and best solution hands down.

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Thank you,
Chris