Game Problems: Various 3DO and Warlords III

[Edi]

If anybody here has experience in making the following games work with WinXP Pro, advice would be greatly appreciated:

Warlords III: Darklords Rising
Might and Magic VIII: Day of the Destroyer
Might and Magic VI and VII (only if they have same problem as MM8)

I just found these and a couple of other things in a bargain bin (rereleases), and I've been looking for them for a long time. The problem is that I can't get either one to run.

There was something in the sys reqs of MM8 about it being compatible with WinXP Home edition, but it sure as hell doesn't work on Pro, even under the compatiility modes. I don't know what the problem is, except that in the installation phase it started whining about the wrong DirectX (needs 7.0, I've got the latest version).

Warlord III does start up and let's me even start a campaign, but it freezes right in the middle of the first AI turn. Under Win98 compatibility mode it doesn't even get that far. Do I need to run this one through Dosbox or use some other workaround, and if so, what is it?

I'm halfway tempted to just take my currently useless secondary hard drive, purge all installations from it and put Win98 on it just to run these and some other older games, because my system is so old it can't run anything more recent than from early 2002 at best. And many of the golden oldies I've got are better than most newer stuff anyway. I'd just rather not go through all the hassle involved in installing Win98 and then doing all the necessary configs to get it running, it's a goddamn bitch and a half.

If anybody can help, I would be most grateful. If not, well, I'll get to refresh my Win98 skills.

System Specs:
2 x Celeron 500 (of the old Pentium 2 variety)
256 MB SDRAM
ABIT BP6 mobo
Soundblaster Live! 5.1
Hard drives 40 GB (the secondary) and 120 GB (primary which runs Win XP Pro)

Edi