Running old (1994 / 1995) software with Windows 7

[james t kirk]

Long story short, I recently bought a book that comes with some analytical software. The software is old (1994). My laptop with Windows 7 will not run the executable files giving me the error message about 32 bit vs. 64 bit systems. I contacted McGraw Hill to no avail. The author of the book passed away 10 years ago.

Question:

Is is possible to dumb down Windows 7 to make it run software files that would be happier working with Windows 95 or Windows 98 (or even DOS)??

 

[nofrill]

If your Windows 7 version is anything more than Starter and Home (ie. Professional, Enterprise, Ultimate), you can download Windows XP Mode from Microsoft to run legacy software:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx

If your Windows version does not support XP Mode, you can try a third party emulation software (virtual machine) to run Win XP , such as this:

Virtualbox download

It is a very cumbersome method which may not work well, depending on which version of Windows, your hardware and what program you are trying to run:

How to run XP Mode in Virtualbox on Windows 7

 

[djk]

If your Windows 7 version is anything more than Starter and Home (ie. Professional, Enterprise, Ultimate), you can download Windows XP Mode from Microsoft to run legacy software:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx

If your Windows version does not support XP Mode, you can try a third party emulation software (virtual machine) to run Win XP , such as this:

Virtualbox download

It is a very cumbersome method which may not work well, depending on which version of Windows, your hardware and what program you are trying to run:

How to run XP Mode in Virtualbox on Windows 7

This.

However, kirk has to find out that his CPU supports virtualization. Not all Windows laptops come with CPU's that support this.

 

[james t kirk]

I tried loading it on a colleague's machine with Windows XP 32 bit system and it worked.

My machine is Windows Professional 64 bit system.

I will try your links. Thanks.

 

[SirWanker]

In general, Windows 7 64 bit should be able to run both 32bit and 64bit applications.
The key thing here is the 32 bit apps should be installed to Program Files (x86) folder instead of the Program Files folder.
I suspect that the installer loaded your app to the Program Files folder ( not surprising since it was written before 64 bit systems existed).
Try uninstalling then when you re-install it , replace the Program Files reference in the installation path to Program Files (x86).

As for possible incompatible drivers, can't help you there.

 

[shakenbake]

I tried loading it on a colleague's machine with Windows XP 32 bit system and it worked.

My machine is Windows Professional 64 bit system.

I will try your links. Thanks.

To be safe, you should run programs of that era with nothing more recent than Windows 98 or Millenium. The reason is that there are many incompatibilities between the older Windows systems upto Millenium and Windows 2000 and later; 2000 was based on NT. Ihad many issues with older software that needed sepcific *.dlls that were discontinued after the switch to an NT based operating system. IMHO, Nofrill may have the best solution to your problem with an emulator, such as Virtual PC.