Just curious if anyone knew if there was an emulator program to run two instances of windows at once or to run two games at once.

My problem is most of my friend’s wont build a gaming computer or just can’t afford one. I have enough horsepower with my computer to run two games at once, regardless of what it is.

I want to hook up two keyboards, two mice, two monitors and have someone right next to me playing on my machine with me. Almost as if the computer is acting as server, doing all the work for you.

I have everything, to do this, including two video cards, (not SLI or CF). I wont go in depth of what the computer has for hardware.

Does anyone know of a way to do this?

Is their any hardware that can be installed to do this?

Just get them to run games at low graphic settings?

What games are we talking?

There are ways to do it for officey things, but I doubt it could manage a game!

EDIT: I'll take a look, see if I can find the software again.

This is for linux:
http://www2.userful.com/products/downloads/free-2-user

This is the one I was thinking of for XP:
http://www.thinsoftinc.com/product [...] etwin.aspx

I doubt it.... I think you would run into dx errors and other system shared drivers.
If you we using a mac and running paralells you might be able to run the mac version of the game on one screen and the xp version of the game on the other screen....but I'm not sure about that either!
Why not just build a mild second machine for guests and you could use it also for storing video and mp3 files....

Good point. The computer would take a big hit trying to access the same files from 2 concurrent users.

That BeTwin software works for some stuff, but not games. It uses windows terminal services or remote desktop protocol to allow two users on at once which doesn't support directx. I've looked for similar solutions but haven't found any. I'd be interested if someone has found one though.

Well, I love to LAN with my friends but they are all so cheap or lazy. This would remedy this lol.

I'm in Michigan and cant find anyone to LAN with.

I cant see spending $600 plus dollars for my lame friends to game lol

Their is no way to turn the computer into some type of accessible server?

Possibly have two hard drives with xp on both?

What am I missing? lol

It can be done but not with all games. Some games just dont like being run twice. What do you plan on playing?

I have done this with World of Warcraft and can confirm it that works ok (works on dual monitors too). Although this means that the sound from both games gets mixed unless you have 2 soundcards (1 for each instance of the game running) and each of you are wearing headphones say.

You will also need Vista as XP will not allow multiple apps accessing the same Directx components at the same time. Vista allows this: Aero + windowed game for example.

The keyboard/mouse is a big problem though as although you can plug in 2 of each they will control both versions of the game running so i dont really know how you could split them up so that each keyboard/mouse controlls a different window/game!

Well, if you read the FAQ on this website it says you can play games with it.

The games I would be playing might be Shadowbane or anything of the sort. I can easily run 6+ Shadowbanes at once with no problem whatsoever so I am not so concerned about running the games, I just gotta find out how.

Simple solution : get new friends !!

They offer a 15-day trial so that would answer your question as to whether this BeTwin 2000/XP would work or not

Sounds like it should according to their site but unless you actually try it you'll never know!

I don't know how their Vista version is, but I know for a fact that their XP version can't do directx for multiply users. That was a limitation of the RDP protocol, maybe if Vista does it better it'll work with the Vista version.

You need less poor friends or you need to quit being so selfish and spread the love.

So you are confirming this does not work with the XP version?

If you're not playing super intense games, you can get a used Dell for 100.00 or so on line! To keep it real cheap, 17" & 19" crt monitors are almost free!
Get each of them to chip in 20.00 bucks and you're off to the races!

No easy solution for your question...Sorry.
Happy Gaming!

Anyone else?

Just found this the other day....might work...but it sells for like 299.00.
http://www.ncomputing.com/Xseries.aspx