I have an old, old program I need to run in Vista, but it won't. Is there a way?

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Summary: Windows Vista includes some settings that may help older programs designed for older versions of Windows to run with compatible settings.

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Boy, now there's a blast from the past. It's quite possible that you might actually be using software that I had a hand in creating, many years ago.

I can't guarantee that this will work for any specific program (like VB-DOS), but Vista does include some compatibility tricks that may be able to help.

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Using Windows Explorer, locate the executable you're attempting to run. Typically, that'll be somewhere in "c:\program files\product\whatever.exe", but since we're talking legacy programs here that might not be the case. I don't recall where VB-DOS installed itself for example.

Right click on the executable, and click on Properties. Now click on the Compatibility tab:

For many programs you can select Compatibility Mode and choose a prior version of Windows that this program requires for compatibility.

Partly obscured by the example above are these settings as well:

Some older programs are sensitive to these particular characteristics, and Windows Vista allows you to specify that this particular executable should be run with the modifications listed.

There is one potential issue that's easy to overlook, and tools like VB-DOS remind me of it:

There may be more than one executable involved.

For example, if I recall correctly, when you compile a program in VB, it actually runs the compiler separately, and the compiler is a separate executable.

So if the compiler has problems running in Vista, then you'll need to repeat this process for that executable as well. Depending on what program you're running, there may be additional executables as well that could need to be configured like this.

Occasionally, I've also seen the options in the Compatibility tab be grayed out. You probably need to be running as administrator to begin with, but even so I've seen it grayed out at times still. My assumption is simply that this option is not available for all programs.

In a case like that, depending on the urgency of your need, another approach might be to actually run Windows XP (or even an older version) in a Virtual Machine within Vista. Then you're not just being compatible with the older version of Windows, you're actually running it. Products like VMWare, Parallels, or Microsoft's own Virtual PC can be used to create and run virtual machines.

Related:

• What's a 16bit MS DOS Subsystem? There are a couple things to check when a 16 bit MS DOS Subsystem error pops up on your machine.

• What's the difference between COMMAND.COM and CMD.EXE? COMMAND.COM and CMD.EXE are versions of the command interpreter for MS-DOS and Windows. They're both available, but you only really need one.

• When I use Start-Run and type in a command, why does a window just flash and disappear? Start-Run, or the Run item on Windows Start menu is a way to run any program on your machine. Some will work as expected, but Start-Run of others just produces a quick flash. We'll look at why, and what to do instead.

Article C3522 - October 5, 2008

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