How to Get Minesweeper and Seven Other Classic Games Back on Windows 11
Spider, Minesweeper, and Hearts—those longtime Windows staples (as well as other familiar titles from Solitaire to Freecell) have disappeared since Windows 8 launched in 2012. Sure, you can find versions of these games in the Microsoft Store, but they’re laden with ads and generally aren’t as enjoyable to play as the classic versions many of us remember. But there is a way to bring back the OG time wasters.
It’s not even particularly difficult to do: the installer created by Winaero – a long-running website that offers all sorts of tools for system customization – makes it easy to run these classic games on computers running Windows 8, 10 or 11. The games are slightly modified to look better on higher-resolution displays, but are otherwise identical to the originals. Games included: Chess, FreeCell, Hearts, Mahjong, Minesweeper, Purble Place, Solitaire and Spider Solitaire. (There’s even support for installing a collection of “Internet games” from the 2000s, although given that Microsoft shut down the server a long time ago, I’m not sure why you’d bother.)
Simply download and run the installer and you can choose which games you want to install.
Once the installer runs, you can find whatever you selected from the Start menu by either searching for a specific title or opening the All tab and scrolling to the recently added Games folder.
The games work exactly as you remember, with the same Windows 7 aesthetic. There are no ads, no prompts to try more games, and no online leaderboards—just a few simple games you can play on your PC to give your brain a break between tasks. Simply put: these are the best versions of these games that Microsoft has ever released. Nice to see them again.
One issue worth noting is that games may stop working after major Windows updates. In this case, you will have to run the installer again – this is the developer’s decision. Do this and the games will be working again in no time.