Installing old programs

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I have a 10 year old audio/visual CD ROM giving the history of the British Civil War. The program is 16 bit and stated to be compatible with Windows 95, 98 and ME. I have tried to install it on my Windows 7 64 bit computer, trying all of the compatibility modes, but without success. Is there a practical way to get it to work or should I just dump it.

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Which version of Win 7, Home Premium, Pro or Ultimate. The last 2 have XP Mode available. There are ways to use VM’s to install Win XP (32 Bit)

Also Win 8 32 Bit does run some 16 Bit apps.

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Home Premium 64 bit. It is not important enough to buy a copy of XP 32 bit.

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“It is not important enough to buy a copy of XP 32 bit.”

If you have sent an old PC to the junkyard, you still have the right to use the old licence key for Windows 95, 98 or ME.
You can install any old version of Windows in “Microsoft Virtual PC 2007”.
Download it from here:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=24439

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Mike,

You might try copying the disk to a folder on your HD, setting the INSTALL program to run under Win XP compatibility, and see if that works.

Zig

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If you have a valid XP license you are not using, you can use VirtualBox to install XP and use the apps. VirtualBox is free.

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I tried copying to a folder on the hard drive and running in various compatibility modes, but without success. Unfortunately I scrapped my old XP desktop without keeping the licence details – a moral here. I find the CD basically contains .AIF audio files and .MOV movie files, which I can play individually – I need to rename them all to something recognisable but then I shall have full access to all the material, although not as convenient as the original program. Thank you all.

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A shot in the dark here, but if the program comes with a separate dll files, try simultaneously placing them in the wow64 & windows32 bit directory.
This has worked for me when getting DVD2AVI to run.

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The App is most likely a DOS App, and you would need a special Emulator Program to run it on Windows 7. Unfortunately, the old Windows XP DOS-Run Window hasn’t been supported since Vista. I don’t run DOS Apps, but one possible solution might be to set up a DOS Virtual Machine inside of Windows 7. You might need to get your hands on a licensed copy of DOS to do this, and modern hardware might not be able to run a DOS VM in any event. But it might be worth a try.

One emulator which may work even in 64-bit Windows 7 is DOS Box. It is reported to have limited features, but maybe just enough to play that CD ROM. Windows 8 32-bit will be able to run many 16-bit DOS Apps, using its Legacy Modes. Hyper-V is also included with Windows 8 Pro, and may be able to set up a Virtual Hard Drive (VHD) for this purpose. But I think if it works, DOS Box under Windows 7 would be the simplest route.

Someone who is still running Windows 98 or ME might be able to rip the CD ROM to a modern format.

I wish I could have you over to my house, as my Dad runs Windows ME on his favorite computer. But I see you’re in the UK, while I’m in the United States. I’m pretty sure the CD ROM would work beautifully on Dad’s computer. The video might then be capable of being captured, as the hardware on Dad’s computer is actually pretty up to date — he just won’t upgrade his usage habits to any newer OS version! 😀

-- rc primak

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Its the 64 bit Windows that is the root of the problem. Both Vista and 7 in the x86 (32 bit) versions will run 16 bit and DOS software; but, the x64 flavor of 7 has no 16 bit support. Ironically, most users and systems slow down using x64 as they need twice as much ram to meet par and the CPU’s cache really gets hurt.
If you really want it to work, you’ld need to reinstall using x86; but, your key is good for either and there is the benefit of never having the bloatware that comes on most systems. Microsoft will let you download 7 with SP1 so you can start fresh if you care to: http://www.mydigitallife.info/official-windows-7-sp1-iso-from-digital-river/

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Its the 64 bit Windows that is the root of the problem. Both Vista and 7 in the x86 (32 bit) versions will run 16 bit and DOS software; but, the x64 flavor of 7 has no 16 bit support. Ironically, most users and systems slow down using x64 as they need twice as much ram to meet par and the CPU’s cache really gets hurt.
If you really want it to work, you’ld need to reinstall using x86; but, your key is good for either and there is the benefit of never having the bloatware that comes on most systems. Microsoft will let you download 7 with SP1 so you can start fresh if you care to: http://www.mydigitallife.info/official-windows-7-sp1-iso-from-digital-river/

DOS Box works in x64 systems. And Hyper-V and native support for some DOS features is said to work in 64-bit Windows 8. I haven’t tried any of this, but my links do indicate support for these statements.

-- rc primak

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